(reprinted with permission from the Plungitania Company sales brochure)
Although the toilet plunger may seem like a mundane device (except when needed) its history is far from that. It starts over a hundred years ago on the small island of Plong in the South Pacific. A young boy was playing a simple game with the bell-shaped flowers of the genus plongalina fragranto flora. He would pluck a flower from the plant and, holding it by its base, pick up ants as they ran along the ground.
One day, distracted by the song of a strange bird, he accidentally picked up his baby sister, who weighed 82 puntas (134 pounds). Stunned by the ease with which he had accomplished this feat, he tried it again. The third time, he had to chase her four kapilas before he could catch her. It was only by threatening to drop her from a nearby tree that he was able to persuade her to let him do the experiments twelve more times.
From then on, he picked up everything – sticks, bugs, birds –even his mother (only once since it took a month for him to learn to walk again). After that, he only worked on very small things.
One day, he happened upon two grownups doing a strange horizontal dance in a nearby cluster of popinella bushes. He was so engrossed by their actions that he didn’t realize he’d placed his flower over a small hole in the ground. As he waited for the strange dance to finish, he absentmindedly squeezed and released the base of the flower in time with the couple’s movements. When they were finally finished, the boy released his grip and was surprised to see fall out of his flower, three pachunkas (similar to our American brown gopher), two packages of oatmeal (a sacred dish on that island), and a used rubber balloon.
It was, as we say in our industry, the Dawn of Suction. It didn’t take long for other boys to take up the flower game, nor much longer for the grownups to do the same. Soon, “plonging”(sticking the plunger on another person’s face) became the national sport. It wasn’t long before rampant competition spurred rapid developments, including the addition of a short pole to make the flower easier to use from a distance.
In 1893, famed explorer, Felipe Horwitz, discovered the island of Plong. He immediately saw the potential in the boy’s toy and negotiated an exclusive contract for its use. When he returned to America, he replaced the flower with orange rubber from the local rubber mine and put his new device into production. It only took one small ad in Flushing to make it an instant success in the nascent toilet market.
For many years, this accidental invention brought pleasure and wealth to the island. Unfortunately excessive use of the device during tribal conflicts ultimately brought about the extinction of that race. The last member, Amosookaploqitik (“He-whose-face-is-too-sucked-to-eat”) died of malnutrition in 1973.
So when you buy this plunger, you are not just getting a device to unclog your toilet, you are participating in a young boy’s hopes and dreams…..You are buying the sun and the sea, the soft breezes, the gentle fragrance of the plungalina bush….You are taking with you a piece of the evolution of humankind.