On September 8th 1930. 3M started production of their now world famous, Scotch tape.
No it’s not Scottish but it does have an amusing, if slightly insulting story behind it.
The brand name Scotch came about while Richard Drew was testing his first masking tape to determine how much adhesive he needed to add. The body shop painter became frustrated with the sample masking tape and exclaimed, “Take this tape back to those Scotch bosses of yours and tell them to put more adhesive on it!” The name was soon applied to the entire line of 3M tapes.
Indeed, the brand so embraced the notion of being cheapskates that until 1944 their mascot was one Scotty McTape, a kilted boy with an enthusiasm for tape.
It’s not the only instance of Scottish stinginess, I lived in France for wee while, and I recall a sign in some shop windows, I don’t recall exactly what the sign said, but to me it had obvious connection to Scotland, I asked my then Girlfriends brother, who had been living in France for some time, what it was for, he told me that it meant you would get a bargain in the said shops, as the Scottish connotation inferred we shopped there, and we were a canny lot!
Now we may have this reputation, but it is by no means justified, for instance did you know that us Scots are more likely than people from the rest of the UK to give to charity … in 2018, 12 percentage points higher than the UK average of 64 percent as a whole.
