Savvy marketers have been known to inspire amazing trends. Remember the "pet rock" and "cabbage patch dolls?" The efforts of one savvy company have propelled duct tape, a common tool box item, into one of the most popular and widely used household items. The newly available colored duct tape has further rocketed the cult following of this product.

Duck Brand tapes has been marketing duct tape as a quick fix for almost everything for years, and with good reason. Duct tape was developed during World War II as a waterproof sealing tape, but its durability quickly promoted it to repairing equipment, from guns to airplanes. With its fabric mesh and strong, rubberized glue, duct tape has been used to fix almost everything in the world.

When these GI's came home, they didn't forget their "wonder tape," and many continued to use duct tape to fix everything they could. Every family has had a hose, refrigerator, washing machine or vehicle repaired with duct tape at one time or another.

Duck Brand decided to capitalize on the tape's versatility with advertising campaigns, contests and events, propelling the tape into the realm of the "cool". Contests featuring duct tape fashions, car repairs, purses, wallets and other items out of duct tape have become hip. With the new trendy status of the tape, a facelift was in order, so new colors were introduced. Standard colors include red, yellow, green and blue. A camouflage printed tape has been marketed to outdoorsmen, facilitating hard to see repairs to camping and hunting gear.

The newest line of colored duct tapes by Duck Brand is the "Xtreme" line, neon shades of orange, lime green, yellow and pink. A clear tape, although not as popular as the colors, is also available.

Colored duct tapes inspire home improvement nuts and creative types alike to get busy. If they "stick with it," who knows what they can make out of this popular tape next!