Let's go by stages.
First off, I remember when I was living in South America, the *only* suds-controlled detergent was Skip (Unilever). That went away in 1990, I think, so there was basically *nothing* I could use in a washer and get clean clothes. It was either too little detergent and soiled clothes, or enough to clean and then rinsing for the ages.
At that point, I got some All, Tide and powdered Wisk to use there. Powdered Tide and powdered Wisk had at that point just come out with some ultra (or whatever the name was) formula and they were just fine for both toploaders and frontloaders. Tide obviously made more suds than Wisk or All, but the machines (both top- and front-loaders) would go thru the entire cycle without sudslocking and results were much better than the high-sudsing detergents they had for sale down there.
Now, sure, you can point to All, Dash, AD or whatever you want. One hands feeds you while the other hand slaps you is precisely what P&G, Unilever etc did. They promulgated a mindset that high-suds was good even while selling low-sudsing detergents, and worse, there were *fewer* low-sudsing detergents than high. And the cheaper detergents were all low-sudsing, so anyone that could not afford expensive stuff or wanted to use Tide (even if it was more expensive), would be guaranteed to be buying/using a top-loader, thereby not saving detergent.
The *other* side of this, which many people don't know or don't consider is how the companies themselves worked back then, not sure if it's still the same. P&G did not operate like a regular European company, which only watches the bottom line for the corporation as a whole, no sir. Each "division" (like say, Tide, Cheer, Oxydol, Downy, Dawn, Bounce, etc etc etc) operated like its own company which had to show a good profit to the point that the internal division competed against each other for clients.
The secrecy between each division was fierce because no one at say, Tide, wanted people at say, Cheer or Oxydol to learn about the new developments and other divisions were only "allowed" to use new technologies when the division was dropping it for an even newer one. So, for example, Cheer would get Tide's "current" enzymes when Tide had a new cocktail ready to release and, similarly, Tide with Beach only got the bleach activator tech when Oxydol (or Biz, can't remember exactly) was moving to a newer one. *Sometimes*, but not always, P&G would start a new "company"/division to test how a new idea would sell because they did not want to have clients think badly of their already stablished brands. If I recall correctly, that's precisely why they started Solo (with built-in fabric softener) and a year or two later moved the technology to Bold and killed Solo a few years after.
I can't remember if the book Soap Opera speaks about companies propaganda against front-loaders but it might. It certainly offered other examples of the war among the divisions and even worse, among Unilever, P&G etc. It did not stay inside the companies either, if you were married to someone at Tide and another Tide employee (or their spouse) saw you shopping for Cheer or Dash, there'd be hell to pay tomorrow morning at work. And if you were caught shopping for Unilever (or some other company), you might even lose your job.
If, at any point, those corporations *wanted* to support front-loading washers, they would stop advertising how lovely and persistent their suds were, and they'd make *more* low sudsing detergents and advertise the few high-sudsing detergents as "ideal for twin-tubs and wringer/conventional washers" instead of automatics.
And you can also look what happened in other countries. UK, for example, started seeing one brand after another releasing the "Automatic" version of each of their detergents, naturally they cost more. Until a couple of decades passed and most of the detergents were "Automatic" with a few remaining ones being for non-automatic machines and/or hand washing.
We've seen a relatively similar process here, first with "HE" versions until so many people were using HE machines that they decided to raise the bar a bit more and release the "HE Turbo" versions. The prices speak for themselves. Those versions cost more (or at least it used to initially -- I have not compared prices recently because in the past 15 years I've been only buying HE/HE Turbo), and for a while even All started sudsing more so people were forced to buy the HE versions.
Ask yourself this: is there *anything* more ludicrous than *All* the detergent that was the lowest sudsing until 1997 or so and could be used for *any* washer, become so sudsy that you "needed" All HE?
Is that the way for corporations which "support" front-loaders and are not afraid of losing money to act/react?
In my opinion, they sabotaged the introduction of front-loaders in US. Then companies who could not make a front loader for love or money piled on and helped the propaganda as much as they could too.
