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UK pensioners recently voted the Brillo Pad their favourite cleaning product, with more than 70% of over-65s using them at least once a day.
In addition to their normal function of removing the protective coating from non-stick frying pans, pensioners have also found them invaluable for a wide variety of other tasks, including removing moles, warts and callouses, descaling trout, cleaning vinyl records and using as a substitute for Shredded Wheat (but not Shreddies, due to the obvious disparity in size).
Brillo Pads were invented by the Hungarian Olympic fencer, Florian Brillio, who used them to create a very high gloss finish on the blade of his sabre, thereby blinding most of his opponents on the way to his 1928 gold medal triumph. In later years, he developed a large range of alternative pads for specific users, including those for blind people (the Braillo Pad), zoo keepers (the Gorillo Pad), whale hunters (the Krillo Pad), weather forecasters (the Umbrillo Pad) and art historians (the Utrillo Pad).
In a recent survey of under-35s, more than 92% thought a Brillo Pad was a very good tablet computer.