Tank McNamara by Bill Hinds for August 01, 2016

What’s a Dopp kit?

Toiletries kit (toothbrush, razor, etc)

In the service, we called it a douche kit, and 55 years later, I still have it.

That’s an impressive Dopp kit..And yeah, I don’t expect anyone much under 50 has the slightest clue what that is.

It’s a Man’s Toiletry Bag. I Looked it up

I am also 66 and I never heard of it. I also spent 12 years in the Army and never heard my shaving kit called anything other than a shaving kit

I think Bill Hinds is a native Texan; like me. I grew up calling it a Dopp kit. Maybe it’s a Texas thing.

I’m 88, spent 31 years in the Army, and never heard of it.

Wow, Dopp kit, haven’t heard that in years! I still call it that.

@olddog1Ya think we might could have something in common? Ah, yas……

I’m 82 and 27 years in the Navy> Dopp kit was what we called them.

I got one as a gift just before enlisting in the Army. I believe that they were made by a (German?) company whose name was Dopp. Very good leather work and a plastic liner just in case something leaked or spilled. Had a metal O ring at one end to carry it by. Still have one after 50+ years. They are by today’s standards a little heavy. They had a very flat and rigid bottom panel so that they didn’t slide off the sink or tray below the mirror.

The Dopp Kit was first produced by Charles Doppelt, a leather goods designer who immigrated to the U.S. from Germany in the early 1900s. Although it may have been Doppelt’s nephew and employee, Jerome Harris, who actually invented the snazzy leather toiletries case, Doppelt was the boss and so the finished product bore a cropped form of his name, giving us the ‘Dopp Kit.’ Dopp Kits were manufactured by the Charles Doppelt Company until the firm was purchased by Samsonite in the 1970s, and Dopp Kits today are made by Buxton. The popularity of Dopp Kits was evidently boosted considerably by World War II, in the course of which the U.S. Army issued them to recruits by the millions.

Only time I ever heard anything like that (was actually a dope kit) was for my muzzle-loading kit, though its also (and usually) referred to as a “possibles pack or bag” and contains everything you need to load, fire and maintain your black powder rifle or arms.

I spent 4 years in the Air Force in the 60s, and I knew it as a Dopp kit. Air Force basic was in Texas, so maybe that’s the tie in.

Never heard it called “Dopp Kit.” In the Navy it was always a douche kit or douche bag…