Products that have been repurposed

September 14, 2013 10:01 PM

Does anybody have any examples of products that have been repurposed, and are as well known or now better known for their new use? An example would be Excel, which is as commonly used to display tabular data as it is for its spreadsheeting functionality.
posted by jedro to Computers & Internet (27 answers total)

Coffee stirrers and cocktail straws used to be what all straws were like when they were made of paper and rye grass. Once plastics came along, the diameters were able to increase, and that's what we're used to nowadays. The aforementioned are now niche straws as opposed to the standard straw one expects.
posted by oceanjesse at 10:11 PM on September 14, 2013

Avon Skin-So-Soft started as a bath oil and became known as a mosquito repellant, so much so that Avon started marketing it as one. Snopes has the DEETails (sorry, couldn't resist).
posted by girlhacker at 10:12 PM on September 14, 2013 [5 favorites]

Duct tape was originally Duck tape (made from scraps of material called from memory duck cotton) and used for insulating wiring, then on to being used in duct work and thus the name change, and it is now a days used for well pretty much everything.
posted by wwax at 10:19 PM on September 14, 2013 [6 favorites]

Best answer: Pipe cleaners. Did you know you can use them to clean pipes??
posted by phoenixy at 10:27 PM on September 14, 2013 [12 favorites]

Originally a veterinary treatment for cow's udders, 95% of Bag Balm sold today is used for other purposes. Wikipedia says "squeaky bed springs, psoriasis, dry facial skin, cracked fingers, burns, zits, diaper rash, saddle sores, sunburn, pruned trees, rifles, shell casings, bed sores and radiation burns." It is the best treatment for dry skin I have ever used.
posted by seasparrow at 10:32 PM on September 14, 2013 [4 favorites]

Oh, and there's also the category of vibrating personal massagers--sometimes it's a little unclear whether companies really mean for their items to be used for the stated purpose or are just being coy in the marketing, but it seems like at least in some cases (Hitachi e.g) they probably really were meant to be massage tools.
posted by phoenixy at 10:43 PM on September 14, 2013 [2 favorites]

Nalgene water bottles were originally lab equipment. It was only after hikers began re-purposing them as drinking water bottles that Nalgene started making and branding them for that use.
posted by JiBB at 10:46 PM on September 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

Microplane started out as woodworking tools before someone repurposed one for kitchen use.
posted by O9scar at 11:47 PM on September 14, 2013 [3 favorites]

Boppy pillows were originally made to help babies sit up...now they're used as breastfeeding support pillows.
posted by christinetheslp at 12:18 AM on September 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

Viagra was originally developed for the treatment of high blood pressure. It had . . . ummm . . . side effects.
posted by wjm at 1:25 AM on September 15, 2013

Ecstasy was intended to be a slimming product, and heroin was marketed as a cough suppressant.

Kleenex (tissues in general, really) were first sold as a way to remove make-up, not for dealing with colds.
posted by BinaryApe at 1:32 AM on September 15, 2013

Beta blockers, used commonly by stage artists to calm stage nerves.
posted by Namlit at 2:29 AM on September 15, 2013

Kleenex facial tissue was originally marketed for removing makeup, not blowing your nose.

(Oops, beaten to it.)
posted by jon1270 at 2:33 AM on September 15, 2013

Corkscrews were originally for getting stuck balls out of your musket.
posted by Segundus at 6:39 AM on September 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

Twitter was launched as a Foursquare-like application that allowed you to broadcast in realtime where you were so you would meet up with your friends on the fly. It has, of course, evolved into primary use an asynchronous chat, micro-blogging, press-release, ambient awareness tool instead.
posted by crush-onastick at 7:19 AM on September 15, 2013

Parents used to give their children chewable aspirin tablets for pain and fever until the interaction between aspirin and the development of Reye's Syndrome was discussed in the 1980s.

"Baby-Size" chewable aspirins are now recommended for heart patients that can benefit from a steady low dose and not recommended for children anymore. The 81mg tablet size has remained from the children's medicine days even though there's no reason for this exact amount.
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:22 AM on September 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Auto-Tune was first developed to find oil deposits using sound waves.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 7:46 AM on September 15, 2013 [5 favorites]

pyrex was originally a glass created and used for train lantern covers and battery covers - the wife of one of the corning scientists used a chopped off battery cover to bake a cake and the pyrex brand was born. now corning/pyrex is just a brand name under world kitchens and real pyrex is used for lab equipment.
posted by nadawi at 7:49 AM on September 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

Lotus 1-2-3 used to be a dominant spreadsheet app. The 1-2-3 was because it could be used as a spreadsheet, for graphics, and for data. So, the re-purposing was built in to the original products.
posted by theora55 at 7:58 AM on September 15, 2013

Tongue depressors, toothpicks, popsicle sticks and pool noodles are sold more for craft purposes than for their named use.
posted by Ookseer at 10:09 AM on September 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

On the drug side, Proscar was originally a prostate cancer drug, and the side effect was reduction in baldness. They dropped the dosage and repackaged it at Propecia.
posted by radioamy at 10:27 AM on September 15, 2013

Teflon had military uses before it was used in cookware.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:30 PM on September 15, 2013

flickr was originally supposed to be a social networking game.

This is fairly significant, because Eric Ries, in the Lean Startup method, uses that as the description for what is called the "pivot" in startup-making. Now, this is a fancy-ass term for "repurposing or changing the direction of your product, or changing your product". Realizing you failed a little bit, that is. So you can search for Silicon Valley pivots, and that will be a thing.
posted by curuinor at 5:35 PM on September 15, 2013

What a fascinating thread!
Copy machines were originally high-tech carbon paper -- they were used to make 1,2,3 copies. Then they became printing presses.
posted by LonnieK at 6:55 PM on September 15, 2013

Since we're talking drugs that are now marketed for their side effects, Latisse is sold to lengthen and thicken eyelashes (requires a prescription despite the strictly cosmetic purpose), but was originally developed as a glaucoma drug.
posted by vytae at 7:55 PM on September 15, 2013

Rat poison was repurposed as warfarin, an anti-clotting agent helpful for people at risk of strokes or clots.

Some good ones in this previous thread or repurposed inventions.
posted by barnone at 10:49 PM on September 15, 2013

This is a bit on the edge, but I'll give it a go:

The piano as we know it today is an apparatus that can compete with the noise of a whole orchestra. We know it as a loud instrument that also can be played softly.
But the piano grew out of a rather humble instrument that until the last decade of the 18th century wasn't even meant to be "loud"-loud. Everyone agreed that the great thing about it was that it had flexible dynamics. People made distinctions between poorly-built "fortepianos" with a silly sound and a bad touch, and those that sounded "like the best woodwind instruments" instead, but nobody was demanding more volume until earliest somewhere around 1802.
posted by Namlit at 9:10 AM on September 16, 2013 [1 favorite]