Mr. Muscle Circa 1986

Mr. Muscle is a brand of hard surface cleaners. It has been manufactured by S. C. Johnson & Son, since their purchase of Drackett from Bristol-Myers in 1992. The original product was developed at Drackett in 1986.

Oven cleaners at the time were pretty much all the same as Reckitt & Colman's Easy-Off, the leading brand. A strong base such as caustic soda attacked grease by saponification. Surfactants attacked both grease and food spills. An abrasive may be present to help scour the oven. The product worked better if the oven was hot, and working in a fairly close space with hot oven cleaner fumes was unpleasant, to say the least.

Appliance manufacturers offered continuous-clean ovens, which had a special coating. Consumers, however, discovered these overs were rarely cleaned by the process. Additionally, supplemental use of chemical cleaners destroyed the special coating that enabled continuous-clean to function. Manufacturers next offered self-cleaning ovens, which allows the oven to run at a special high-temperature setting, effectively burning food residue into a carbon deposit. Early self-cleaning ovens weren't thoroughly satisfactory. At worst, they left carbon stuck to the oven surfaces. At best, they left carbon residue on the oven floor.

Industry legend has it that Drackett researchers, while trying to find a cold oven cleaner, found that ammonia would plasticize food spills, making them easier to remove. However, this took hours - and ammonia would evaporate in that time. Looking for a less volatile chemical with the general characteristics of ammonia, they found that monoethanolamine had similar properties.

MEA is a weak base, so it required the addition of caustic soda as well as surfactants and bentonite as an abrasive. Like most household cleaning aerosols, the propellant is a blend of propane and isobutane. Because the product required significant time to work properly, it was marketed as an overnight oven cleaner.

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