vintage – Tidbits and Timemachines

Apologies for being MIA for months and months. I promise, I will be back in the near future to finish revisiting The Bell Jar with you and hopefully moving on to another great novel. In the meantime, I wanted to post a quick, fun, yet useful, tidbit.

Have you ever gotten a stain on your shirt and thought, well now, how on earth am I going go get that out? Well, look no further. I have been there. While walking my dog today, I tried to do a good deed. I picked up a McDonald’s wrapper that was lying in our neighborhood park parking lot to throw away. Unbeknownst to me, the wrapper had a package of honey dipping sauce with it. I ended up slopping honey all over one of the gloves I was wearing. As soon as I got back home, I grabbed a handy little pamphlet I inherited from my Grandma, entitled Housecleaning Hints. It has tons of useful information right at your pre-internet fingertips on how to keep your entire house, including drapes, davenport/sofa fabrics, and apparel clean.

The closest thing to getting honey out on this list is to soak it in boiling water (fruit stains). I used very hot water, and crossed my fingers. For other trouble shooting ideas on stains, give this a gander:

This particular book was put out by Procter & Gamble in 1931. American companies in the early to mid-20th century were known for giving out free publications as a way to corner more of their share of the market. The General Foods Cooperation did it with Jell-O. Calumet and Clabber Girl baking powders had their own free cookbooks. And, have you ever noticed that General Mills always insists you use Gold Medal All-Purpose Flour or Swans Down Cake Flour in every Betty Crocker baking recipe? It’s a not so clever way to make more money.

Procter & Gamble is quite the conglomerate of businesses these days. While items such as Chipso Flakes and Star Washing Powder have long since landed in the graveyard of bygone products, Procter & Gamble’s modern portfolio ranges from Pringles to Mr. Clean to Gain to Tide to Crest toothpaste, not to mention 17 other big names. They really are a force in the American logo landscape.

Vintage Ad of the Week – October 31, 2024

Saturday Evening Post – January 3, 1959

I mentioned a while back that I was going to try to find a few more evenly gendered ads. In that spirit, we have a man and his ball. Bowling ball that is.

Ads that use bowling are a bit hard to come by. You wouldn’t think so, since the Golden Age of Bowling wasn’t that long ago. During the 1960s-1970’s pro bowlers were being signed on for boku bucks. Some even rivaled contracts of NFL players.¹ It was big business. The advertising executives at Vicks knew a good thing when they married cold tablets with bowling. Bowling was so huge it had stars like Dick Clark and Jayne Mansfield advertising for AMF (American Machine and Foundry), which had moved into the bowling industry after WWII.² AMF helped to automate the game, by creating a pin setting machine as early as 1946.³ With its rise in popularity in 1959 it’s no wonder companies wanted to get in on the game. Not to mention, men get colds too. What a great way to grab a man’s attention.

A quick snapshot of Vicks. Vicks was founded back in 1894. They would go on to create a host of healthcare products. A quick rundown of their most famous products include⁴:

1894 – Vicks Croup & Pneumonia Salve
1911 – VapoRub
1931 – Vicks Cough Drops
1941 – Vicks Inhaler
1951 – Vick’s Cough Sryup
1958 – Vick’s Formula 44
1959 – Sinex Nasal Spray
1966 – NyQuil
1974 – DayQuil
2012 – ZzzQuil
2018 – VapoCool

That is some powerhouse of over the counter cold and flu assistance.

There are a few things to really love about this ad. First, the fact that they claim it helps relieve colds and sinus pain up to 53% faster. Not 50%, nor 55%, but 53%. It is so precise. They don’t present any evidence to back this 53% claim up. Misleading? Most likely, but it sounds good.

Secondly, the tablets are “double buffered” to speed up relief. What does “double buffered” mean? It piqued my interest, so I looked it up. All I could find was the use of the term “buffer” with reference to computers and the definition as it relates to medicine or chemistry in general. MedLibretexts.org defines buffering as, “buffer: A solution used to stabilize the pH (acidity) of a liquid.” Frankly, when I hear the word “buffer” I think of the generic meaning, to create a distance or protective space around something. If someone were to ask, what comes into your mind when you hear the words “medicine” and “buffer”, I would reply “Bufferin”, which is common NSAID whose base is aspirin. Either way, to tout something is “double buffered” sure does sound marvelous on paper. Its promise of fast relief ads certainty. If you know what “double buffered” means with relation to Vicks Cold Tablets, let me know in the comments, please.

Finally, this ad has a guy bowling. At first glance one might think, what’s so great about this ad? It’s just another sexist ad from the 50s. A guy and his bowling ball. How old fashioned. But, look in the background. His wife/girlfriend/date/sister plays an important part in this ad. She’s keeping score. I know it sounds like such a little thing, but I still love it. Back in 1959, they didn’t have automatic scoring. You had to score your own game on paper. I find the harmony of this ad, very refreshing. Just two people out having a good time. Celebrating the power of Vicks to make you feel stronger, faster. What fun!

Oh, and the last line, “Pick you up fast…relieve that tied, dragged-out feeling of a cold with two stimulating “pick-up” medications.” is cute. Not only will you pick yourself up fast using this medicine, but you can “pick-up” those spare pins, once you are feeling better with Vicks Cold Tablets.

Fea, John, and John Fea. “The Golden Age of Bowling.” Current, 26 Mar. 2014, currentpub.com/2014/03/26/the-golden-age-of-bowling/. Accessed 31 Oct. 2024.
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“1959 Archives – International Bowling Museum & Hall of Fame.” International Bowling Museum & Hall of Fame, 2023, http://www.bowlingheritage.com/tag/1959/. Accessed 31 Oct. 2024.
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Center, Smithsonian Lemelson. “Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation.” Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, invention.si.edu.
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“Vicks.” Vicks.com, vicks.com/en-us/vicks-history.
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Tag: vintage

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