Mid-90s Pampers and when was cloth-backed introduced?

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In Scotland, Pampers Baby Dry nappies still had a plastic backing in early 2000.

I wore what I think were those for bed wetting then as an 11 year old, and those were indeed plastic.

My sister was born in April 2000. I was put on nappy-duty right from the start, so I knew first-hand that the transition between plastic- and cloth-backed was by no means complete at that point.
Her very nappies at the hospital were plastic-backed. Although I can't comment on which brand, they were devoid of any designs at all. In that case they were perhaps a medical brand for infants. As I recall, most of the ones she wore at home during her first few months of life were plastic-backed, and perhaps a few "hybrids" - we bought a mixture of Pampers, Huggies and supermarket types for her then. All of the Huggies were cloth-backs, but I think the Baby-Dry and supermarket were plastic, and still relatively crinkly and even bulky.
By the time of that Christmas, I think the Baby Dry had gone fully cloth-backed.

Supermarket nappies generally stayed plastic-backed at that time, their shift came more in the following years -- roughly 2001-2003, but it still wasn't unusual to see plastic-backed brands up to and including 2006.
I remember my sister had some “Tesco Value” nappies c. early 2003, which were plastic-backed.

The "cloth-backed" of back then was still half-the-world away from the cloth-backed of today.
 
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I have some Huggies from 97/98 that have the Cloth Like layer over the plastic, so at least that year if not earlier than that
 
Osthagen said:
In Scotland, Pampers Baby Dry nappies still had a plastic backing in early 2000.

I wore what I think were those for bed wetting then as an 11 year old, and those were indeed plastic.

My sister was born in April 2000. I was put on nappy-duty right from the start, so I knew first-hand that the transition between plastic- and cloth-backed was by no means complete at that point.
Her very nappies at the hospital were plastic-backed. Although I can't comment on which brand, they were devoid of any designs at all. In that case they were perhaps a medical brand for infants. As I recall, most of the ones she wore at home during her first few months of life were plastic-backed, and perhaps a few "hybrids" - we bought a mixture of Pampers, Huggies and supermarket types for her then. All of the Huggies were cloth-backs, but I think the Baby-Dry and supermarket were plastic, and still relatively crinkly and even bulky.
By the time of that Christmas, I think the Baby Dry had gone fully cloth-backed.

Supermarket nappies generally stayed plastic-backed at that time, their shift came more in the following years -- roughly 2001-2003, but it still wasn't unusual to see plastic-backed brands up to and including 2006.
I remember my sister had some “Tesco Value” nappies c. early 2003, which were plastic-backed.

The "cloth-backed" of back then was still half-the-world away from the cloth-backed of today.
Were there two different lines at that point?

Something tells me that Baby-Dry were plastic and Pampers Premiums were cloth?
 
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Huggies went all cloth in 96’
Pampers went all cloth in 1999
Luvs became cloth in 2001
 
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PCS said:
Were there two different lines at that point?

Something tells me that Baby-Dry were plastic and Pampers Premiums were cloth?
There were two lines of Pampers. That must have been the case since 1996 at least.

That’s probably the case, but I don’t remember Pampers Premium ever being bought, so I can’t say for definite.

Australian Huggies didn’t go cloth-backed until 2001, despite the transition being c. 1996 in most countries.
 
In the UK I remember there was still plastic backed nappies until the late 90s.
 
CookieMonstah said:
In the UK I remember there was still plastic backed nappies until the late 90s.
There were plastic backing nappies until later than that.
 
Osthagen said:
There were plastic backing nappies until later than that.
Well yeah but I had Pampers and they switched at the end of the 90s.
 
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CookieMonstah said:
Well yeah but I had Pampers and they switched at the end of the 90s.
In my experience, Pampers (Baby-Dry) was plastic-backed up to early 2000. The Scottish one’s were, at any rate.

There was nothing plastic-backed by them (that I know of) after that.
 
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I regularly bought baby diapers in US grocery stores between 1996-1997. At the beginning, in the area I lived, the choices were about 50-75% cloth-like and 25% plastic. By the end of 1997, you were lucky to find a single brand of plastic backed diapers, granted if I had actually gone to drug stores, I may have had better luck. I remember settling on the expensive Benneton brand diapers which were more like a textured styrofoam matte backing than the normal smooth shiny plastic, just to avoid the cloth-like. For some reason grocery stores always had the strange Benneton diapers...
 
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Th
jellyjigger said:
I regularly bought baby diapers in US grocery stores between 1996-1997. At the beginning, in the area I lived, the choices were about 50-75% cloth-like and 25% plastic. By the end of 1997, you were lucky to find a single brand of plastic backed diapers, granted if I had actually gone to drug stores, I may have had better luck. I remember settling on the expensive Benneton brand diapers which were more like a textured styrofoam matte backing than the normal smooth shiny plastic, just to avoid the cloth-like. For some reason grocery stores always had the strange Benneton diapers...
That’s quite early by global standards. The last store-brand plastic backed nappies I found in the UK was 2014 (Wilkos).
 
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PCS said:
Th

That’s quite early by global standards. The last store-brand plastic backed nappies I found in the UK was 2014 (Wilkos).
Definitely so, in the early 00s, supermarket nappies seemed to be mostly plastic-backed.
 
Speaking of Pampers, I still miss the old font and baby pic.
 
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12srepaid said:
Speaking of Pampers, I still miss the old font and baby pic.
When I was last in Italy (2015), the Pampers there still had the old 1986-2000 logo.
 
PeteyUK said:
I was born towards the end of 1993 and I’ve been trying to work out which nappies I wore as a baby, as I don’t have many photos. I just know they were Pampers.

Would they likely have been white, plastic-backed, and with a patterned tape along the top?

And when were cloth-backed nappies introduced? I quite like them but I’m not sure where that comes from.

I'm also from 1993 and my mom kept a diaper for me (from Pampers), this is what it looked like! If you are interested I will take some better pictures next time.

pampers1993.png
 
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Diaper historian here.

- Pampers introduced cloth back as an option of their premium diapers, but switched to all cloth backed shortly after 99'....so the size six diaper was briefly available in plastic. The first gen ones still had a plastic landing zone...but featured the cloth cover.
- Huggies made the switch in 1995/96(Ultratrim)
- Luvs was the last holdout and made the switch in 2001.

However, because of restocking issues, you could still find them about a 6 months to 1.5 years of them discontinuing them(depending on the store).

The VERY last company to do it was a Dollar store variety called "Bentley". This was around 2010.
 
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Wow! I’m impressed that there were more options for cloth-backed baby diapers in the mid-late 90s than I thought. I used to assume that most diaper companies made the permanent switch to cloth-backing sometime in the early 2000s.
 
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quartz200420012 said:
The first gen ones still had a plastic landing zone...but featured the cloth cover.
Those were my favorite pampers ever made, so comfortable!!!
 
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