The Swiss Post has honoured the inventor of the toilet duck with a stamp. Who was the man behind the distinctive bottle? We did some research. Welcome to part one of our five-part series on Swiss inventions featured on postage stamps.
Unmistakable – the toilet duck bottle. Photo: SC Johnson
Forty-five years after a patent application was filed for the toilet duck, it’s still on the cleaning product shelves in supermarkets. In Switzerland, ‘With duck neck technology’ is currently written on the distinctively shaped bottles in the respective Swiss languages.
The toilet duck was invented by Walter Düring from Switzerland. In the 1960s, the trained chemist decided that he didn’t want to take over his father’s pharmacy. He expanded on an idea his mother had for a descaler. In 1964, he founded Düring AG. With his wife Vera, he developed the first toilet-cleaning devices. He designed the precursor to the toilet duck, ‘Durgol WC’, a five-litre bottle of descaling solution with a cleaning attachment screwed onto it. It made it easier to clean under the toilet rim.
At the end of the 1970s, the company incurred heavy losses, and Düring considered selling the company. But he didn’t give up that easily. He tried to design a new kind of bottle that would allow users to spray under the toilet rim even when the bottle was almost empty. His drawings piled up in his office. A few days before his 45th birthday in 1980, he had a eureka moment. “I looked at my sketches, and suddenly it clicked. I had found the technical solution. It looked like a duck’s neck,” reports the inventor in the book ‘Schweiz Export’ (Export Switzerland).
Testing a wooden model
BisIt took only one year to bring the product to market. Düring carved a wooden model in the shape of a duck. He went to a sanitary ware shop and tried it out to see how it would fit into various toilet bowls. He then made changes so that the bottle could also fit under the rim of German toilet bowls. He built the first toilet duck filling machines without a mechanic. And in 1981, the toilet duck was launched on the Swiss market. A short TV ad popularised the product. Düring wrote the storyboard himself and directed the video.
The patent for Walter Düring’s toilet duck. The shape made it easier to clean toilets. The first product idea came from Vera Düring, the inventor’s wife.
He defended his patents consistently
Walter Düring applied for patent protection for his invention on 3 July 1980. The title was “Hand Crush Bottle for Generating a Directed Jet of Liquid” (patent CH-638114). Düring produced 12 patents in his career as an inventor. He successfully defended them against imitators time and again. In addition to the patents, which are valid for a maximum of 20 years, he also registered a trade mark. Trade marks can be renewed as many times as needed. ‘WC-Ente’ (toilet duck) is in the Swiss trade mark register as a word/figurative mark. In addition, Düring also had the bottle protected as a shape mark.
In his book ‘Schweizer Export’, the author Willi Glaeser revealed what kind of person Walter Düring was. Apparently he was an inventor through and through. Even when sailing, he brooded over his ideas. And whatever he tackled, he put everything into it. When he learned to sail with his wife Vera, he immersed himself so deeply in the subject that he ended up becoming a Swiss champion. He’s even said to have considered patenting a wind indicator at the time.
The precursor to the toilet duck.
Walter Düring liked to eat cornflakes for lunch
“Anyone who meets the trained chemist struggles to imagine how this polite businessman could become wealthy in the tough cleaning products business. He seems extremely proper and likes things to be practical. He only drinks Nescafé Gold coffee, and at lunchtime he likes to eat cornflakes with milk,” wrote Willi Glaeser. Düring was ‘not at all boastful’, and his business acumen wasn’t immediately apparent either. He once described himself as an incorrigible know-it-all with a great thirst for knowledge.
In 1983, Düring signed a global licence agreement with SC Johnson – marking his international breakthrough. The toilet duck took off in more than 130 countries. In 2000, Walter Düring eventually passed the company on to his children. In 2008, the family sold the global rights to the toilet duck (including trade marks) to SC Johnson. Since then, Düring AG has concentrated on the descaling agent ‘Durgol’. In 2017, the inventor and businessman passed away at the age of 81.
A Swiss Post stamp featuring the toilet duck. Photo: Swiss Post
Swiss inventions on stamps: the background story
Swiss Post has dedicated a stamp to the inventor of the toilet duck. It appeared in September 2025, and was the fifth stamp featuring a Swiss invention. The first four inventions were the garlic press, Menzi Muck diggers, Velcro fasteners and Barryvox avalanche transceivers. We’re dedicating a story to each of these legendary innovations.
“Swiss themes, especially ‘Swissness’, are very popular with our target group
– collectors and philatelists. In combination with the theme of inventions, this helps to draw attention to Switzerland as a country of inventors,” wrote Swiss Post in response to a query from the IPI.
The five inventions were selected during a brainstorming session. “The aim was to showcase the diversity and richness of Swiss inventions while covering our target group’s wide-ranging areas of interest.”
The toilet duck completes the series for the time being. So Swiss Post has compiled a folder containing all the stamps issued to date that feature Swiss inventions.
