ChapStick

Not to be confused with Chopsticks.
A tube of ChapStick

ChapStick is a brand name of lip balm manufactured by Pfizer Consumer Healthcare and used in many countries worldwide. It is intended to help treat and prevent chapped lips, hence the name. Many varieties also include sunscreen in order to prevent sunburn.

Due to its popularity, the term has become a genericized trademark. It popularly refers to any lip balm contained in a lipstick-style tube and applied in the same manner as lipstick. However, the term is still a registered trademark, with rights exclusively owned by Pfizer. Its main competitors in the US, Carmex and Blistex, also use the popular lipstick-style tube for their lip balm products. In Iceland and in the United Kingdom, the product's main competitor is Lypsyl, made by Novartis Consumer Health and distributed in similar packaging to ChapStick.

History

In the early 1880s, Dr. Charles Browne Fleet,[1] a physician and pharmacological thinker from Lynchburg, Virginia, invented ChapStick as a lip balm. The handmade product, which resembled a wickless candle wrapped in tin foil, was sold locally, and did not have much success.

In 1912, Kip Martin, also a Lynchburg resident, bought the rights to the product for five dollars. In their family kitchen, Mrs. Martin melted the pink ChapStick mixture, cooled it, and cut it into sticks. Their lucrative sales were used to found the Morton Manufacturing Corporation.

In the early 1950s, Frank Wright, Jr., a commercial artist from Lynchburg, VA, was commissioned to design the CHET ChapStick logo that is still in use today. He was paid a flat fee of $15.

In 1963, The A.H. Robins Company acquired ChapStick from Martin Manufacturing Corporation. At that time, only ChapStick Lip Balm regular stick was being marketed to consumers; subsequently, many more varieties have been introduced. This includes ChapStick 4 flavored sticks in 1971, ChapStick Sunblock 15 in 1981, ChapStick Petroleum Jelly Plus in 1985, and ChapStick Medicated in 1992. Skier Suzy Chaffee was a spokesperson for the brand in the 1970s. Former ski racer Picabo Street, for a time, was seen on television commercials as one of the company's endorsers.

Robins was purchased by American Home Products (AHP) in 1988.[2] AHP later changed its name to Wyeth. ChapStick was a Wyeth product until 2009, when Wyeth was acquired by Pfizer. Pfizer sold the manufacturing facility in Richmond, Virginia on October 3, 2011 to Fareva Richmond, who now manufactures and packages ChapStick for Pfizer.[3]

Composition

ChapStick Flava-Craze

Any given flavor of ChapStick may contain camphor, beeswax, menthol, petrolatum, phenol, vitamin E, aloe, and oxybenzone. However, there are hundreds of variants of ChapStick, each with its own composition.

The full list of ingredients in a regular-flavored ChapStick are as follows:

arachidyl propionate, camphor, carnauba wax, cetyl alcohol, D&C red no. 6 barium lake, FD&C yellow no. 5 aluminum lake, fragrance, isopropyl lanolate, isopropyl myristate, lanolin, light mineral oil, methylparaben, octyldodecanol, oleyl alcohol, paraffin, phenyl trimethicone, propylparaben, titanium dioxide, white wax, propanol. Its net weight is usually 4 g.

Uses

ChapStick functions as both a sunscreen, available with SPFs as high as 50, and a skin lubricant to help prevent and protect chafed, chapped, sunburned, cracked, and windburned lips. "Medicated" varieties also contain analgesics to relieve sore lips.

ChapStick tubes with hidden microphones played a role in the Watergate scandal.[4]

Marketing

ChapStick is sometimes available in special flavors developed in connection with marketing partners such as Disney (as in cross-promotions with Winnie the Pooh or the movie Cars) or with charitable causes such as breast cancer awareness, in which 30¢ is donated for each stick sold (as in the Susan G. Komen Pink Pack). The Flava-Craze line is marketed to preteens and young teens, with colorful applicators and "fun" flavors such as Grape Craze and Blue Crazeberry.

US Olympic skier Suzy Chaffee starred in ChapStick television commercials in which she dubbed herself "Suzy ChapStick". Another very famous ChapStick advertisement includes basketball legend Julius Erving (commonly known as Dr. J) naming himself Dr. ChapStick and telling young children about the great things that ChapStick can do.[5]

US Olympic Gold medal skier Diana Golden, 1988 Ski Racing Magazine and United States Olympic Committee female skier of the year, was also a spokesperson for ChapStick.[6]

References

  1. ↑ History of Charles Browne Fleet
  2. ↑ A H Robins Company Records at Virginia Historical Society
  3. ↑ http://www.nbc12.com/story/17026127/fareva-plans-to-expand-and-create-more-jobs
  4. ↑ The Watergate Files - The Watergate Trial: May 1972 - June 1973 - Overview
  5. ↑ Where Are They Now? Suzanne 'Suzy Chapstick' Chaffee, celebrity skier
  6. ↑ http://www.skinet.com/skiing/1999/12/disabled-ski-pioneer-diana-golden-dies

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to ChapStick.
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