By Cliff Peale
Enquirer staff writer

Procter & Gamble Co. today will unveil the first basic changes to its Ivory bar soap since it was created more than a century ago.

P&G Ivory Aloe, which is a light green color and contains aloe, will roll off the line at the Ivorydale plant in St. Bernard, several days before the 125th anniversary of the revered brand.

Procter doesn't even make the bar soap itself anymore, having sold the plant to Canadian soap-maker Trillium Healthcare Products Inc. in 2002. And with P&G focusing on health care and beauty care brands, it's no longer among the biggest P&G sellers.

But it's sold 40 billion bars since 1879, and the "99 44/100 percent pure" slogan is believed to be among the longest-lasting existing advertising taglines in the country.

And its creation by P&G scientists in the 1870s as a soap that floats is one of the most prominent stories in P&G lore.

Most have thought the discovery that Ivory floats had been an accident, but P&G's newly released corporate history questions that theory, noting that it was "scrambling" for products to replace the declining candle business.

"Clearly, Ivory represented something more than an accident on Procter & Gamble's part," write the authors of Rising Tide. "The company was energetically looking for something new to make and sell."

The new Ivory Aloe line, which will start shipping to stores this week, "is really the first major change to the base line in its history," P&G spokesman Brent Miller said.

---

E-mail cpeale@enquirer.com