A month or so ago, my wife brought home an Indestructibles book. She'd picked it up from our local Target store as a baby shower gift for a coworker and said it was made of a neat material that didn't rip.
I asked if it was Tyvek, knowing that Tyvek is a rip-stop fabric. She, a successful Appalachian Trail thru-hiker knows Tyvek as a lightweight ground cloth, and she said she wasn't sure whether the books were Tyvek or not.
So off I went on an internet hunt...
On the Indesctructibles FAQ page, I found the following...
What are Indestructibles made of that is so durable yet paperlike and delightful for my baby?
Indestructibles are printed on a synthetic material made from flashspun high-density polyethylene fibers (getting technical here, we know). It feels like paper, but liquid water cannot pass through it and it is very difficult to tear.
Which then sent me to the wikipedia article on flashspun fabrics...
Flashspun fabric is a nonwoven fabric formed from fine fibrillation of a film by the rapid evaporation of solvent and subsequent bonding during extrusion.
...and wikipedia links onward to 'see also' Tyvek...
Tyvek (/ˈtaɪ.vɛk/) is a brand of synthetic flashspun high-density polyethylene fibers. The name Tyvek is a registered trademark of the American multinational chemical company DuPont, which discovered and commercialized Tyvek in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Tyvek's properties—such as being difficult to tear but easily cut, and waterproof against liquids while allowing water vapor to penetrate—have led to it being used in a variety of applications.
See the parallels between the Tyvek entry on wikipedia and the Indestructibles description?
waterproof...liquid water cannot pass through it...difficult to tear but easily cut...very difficult to tear...flashspun high-density polyethylene fibers...flashspun high-density polyethylene fibers
The books might not be made from the branded Tyvek, but it sounds to me like they're made of a generic Tyvek.
I'm going to take that as a win.
