Murphy’s Oil Soap: A Most Unusual Story

Murphy Oil Soap

During my career refinishing furniture, Murphy’s Oil Soap has morphed from a regionally available natural soap made with potassium hydroxide (similar to lye) and vegetable oil (instead of animal fat) to a nationally available and very popular furniture-care product. I watched this transformation happen and find the story fascinating.

I find it fascinating because furniture and woodwork don’t get dirty very often and washing them often with soap and water when they aren’t dirty can only cause problems. Water gets under a finish through cracks and splits and causes the finish to peel. Everyone knows this at some level (just look at the peeling paint on building exteriors) so how did Murphy’s pull this off?

Some genius marketing!

Murphy’s was started in Ohio in 1889 and owned by the Murphy family until 1991 when the company was bought by Colgate/Palmolive. I called Murphy’s in the late 1970s as the transformation was happening. I spoke to a Murphy descendant and got the following story confirmed.

In the early 1970s, Homer Formby started selling his lemon-oil furniture polish by claiming that it replaced the natural oils in wood. Never mind that furniture woods don’t contain natural oils and that a finish is there to keep liquids out of the wood. Through 30-minute TV infomercials and thousands of appearances in shopping malls and at antique clubs, Formby was able to implant this false idea of replacing natural oils into the minds of most Americans as fact.

To wit: Wood contains natural oils that should be replaced regularly with a lemon-oil furniture polish, which is really little more than petroleum distillate (mineral spirits) and a lemon scent.

At the same time, manufacturers of other furniture-care products were using advertising to convince people that they needed to “clean” their furniture often with furniture polish.

So along comes this small soap manufacturer that had found a local market selling a natural soap made from vegetable oil and alkali rather than animal fat and alkali, and its product was called “oil” soap! Someone realized that all they had to do was advertise the soap as a furniture-care product and people would draw the conclusion themselves that they were replacing the “natural oils” in wood at the same time they were cleaning their furniture. The company didn’t have to make this claim at all, and they don’t.

Murphy’s Oil Soap was transformed from a natural soap to a furniture-care product, sold in the furniture-care section of supermarkets rather than in the soap section.

I hate it that so many people are now washing their furniture with soap and water, but I stand in awe of the marketing that led them to think they should.

— Bob Flexner

Editor’s note – You’ll find all of Bob’s books in our store: “Flexner on Finishing” and “Wood Finishing 101.”