The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has 1.5 million works in its collection, about 4% of which are on display at a given time. Using the average visit duration of three hours, then, that means a guest who wants to see everything should be prepared to admire 111 pieces of art every minute.
So what are the odds that the average tourist has gazed upon Katsushika Hokusai’s 1831 woodblock print The Great Wave Off Kanagawa?
Probably not great.
But take heart, art lovers. Today, Band-Aid is debuting a new collection that will feature Hokusai’s Great Wave and other artworks faithfully reproduced on its adhesive bandages. With guidance from Met curators, the brand chose three of Hokusai’s pieces to use.
Target will stock the collection—which includes a first aid kit adorned with Brother Rabbit, an 1881 textile print by the British artist William Morris—with additional artworks to appear in the months ahead.
For Band-Aid parent Kenvue (known as Johnson & Johnson until 2022), the new collection is a variation on a familiar theme. The $15.5 billion consumer health giant has long featured licensed cartoon and movie characters on its bandages—Spiderman, Barbie, Yoda, Mario, Kermit the Frog, Pikachu, et al. The aim there was to make children feel better about covering their boo-boos.
But with the Met collection, “we’re looking at a more adult consumer than [we do with] some of our cartoon characters,” head of U.S. wound care Steven Maseda told ADWEEK.
A first-aid staple evolves
That’s not just a change in the target consumer, it’s a shift in psychology. From the ivory-hued Band-Aids introduced in 1921 on up to 2021’s Ourtone line for consumers of color, the whole point of adhesive bandages is to be invisible, or at least not obvious.
