Attends Is Being Sold

[Angela Bauer]

Although I am away on vacation, since my name as been brought into the Attends controversy, let me add my experience.

I bought my first box of Attends Small in August 1981, because I knew I could not wash gauze diapers at my university. Attends was then the leading brand of adult disposables in the USA and was owned by P&G. I continued to wear Attends Small to manage my urinary incontinence. In 1991 I married at which time I did start to wear pinned gauze diapers around the house and to bed.

At some point P&G decided to get out of the adult diaper business in North America, while retaining the Attends brand and factories outside North America. Paper Pak Corp was the leading maker of institutional adult disposable diapers when they bought Attends. By the time P&G sold, Depend had become the leading adult disposables sold in stores. Paper Pak made no effort to regain retail shelf space. A few years ago Paper Pak Corp changed their name to Attends Health Products, which is the same company simply using a different name.

During 2011 it was announced that Attends Health Products was being sold to a large Canadian paper pulp corporation, which already owned a major facility in the same area of North Carolina as the primary Attends factory.

For the past several years I have purchased about 6 cases of Attends Small Breathable and 2 cases of Attends Youth (which are the same size and a classic poly-plastic design with sticky tapes). Since I primarily wear disposable slip-in pads, I only recently received a case each of Small Breathable and Youth. These are identical to similar diapers left in open cases in my closet.

This could mean that Small Breathable and Youth are not sold in such vast quantity that freshly manufactured cases are being shipped. Perhaps the more popular medium sizes are newer production since the sale.

Personally I have used a lot of cases of Attends over the past 30 years without any quality issues. Mind you, I only consider Attends as part of my continence management, not as ABDL products. Fortunately those desiring more babyish diapers can buy them from ABU and Bambino, so long as you weigh enough to fit into Medium. Those companies ignore people, such as me, who are petite. KCWW's Depend Division has never made an adult small which fit me well.

[Darkfinn]

I'd be curious to see if the new owners try to bring the brand up to premium diaper standards though...

Attend has a "premium" diaper... the Extended Wear.

The extended wears are what used to be regular Attends like 10 years ago... except they are cloth backed instead of plastic and have 4 fasteners instead of 6. Despite my aversion to cloth backed disposables I have tried them a few times... they perform well but the price per unit is too high.

Now if Attends took the extended wear back to plastic outer shell and 6 tapes I'd be all over it, and I imagine many fans of vintage Attends would be as well.

[drynot]

Now if Attends took the extended wear back to plastic outer shell and 6 tapes I'd be all over it, and I imagine many fans of vintage Attends would be as well.

Even with 4 tapes I'd give them a go if they were plastic backed....providing the tapes were decent though....

[Baby Brian]

Agreed, Back in the 90's they were great diapers. Up into the mid 2000's they were ok- definetly better than Depends, but they they cut back even more on them and Attends became about on par with Depends- Worthless. I don't intend to try them again any time soon but I wonder if they've improved on the design by now.