So why are these dramas that focused on daily life and characters called soap operas? According to "Today I Found Out" -- here's the reason that might not be too surprising:
Today I found out why soap operas are called soap operas.
This all started out in the 1920’s; a simpler time where Jazz was swell; the Soviet Union was in its infancy; Robbert Goddard became the first rocket man, and the world only existed in black and white…
In this bustling time, radio was the Bee’s Knees. On the radio was a series of serials aimed at women aired during the day time. Dames thought these were the cat’s meow and ate up every second of them. The radio networks themselves decided they needed to think up ways to make more clams off these shows and so came up with the idea of getting companies to sponsor the episodes.
Now these dolls were no dumb Doras, so the radio networks sought to match the advertisements closely with their target audience to get a good response. This campaign hit on all sixes and made these shows extremely profitable.
Among the first major sponsors of these serials were soap manufacturers Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, and Lever Brothers. Eventually, due to the fact that so many of the sponsors were soap manufacturers, the media started calling these shows “soap operas”. Nifty!
If you think about it the first major sponsors of the radio (and later) TV dramas were soap manufacturers. Refresh Man took a stretch when it got its sponsorship from Dr. Douxi skincare. Guess what? The whole series is defined by soap products and the whole story is focused on selling Meimei soap -- even if it means reinventing the soap with adding something like eggshell membrane and matching towards the modern world.
So far, this would be the first soap opera I'd watch that gets defined by a bar of soap!
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