The Electric Hand Torch

In the 1890s, Eveready Battery Company, Inc. was marketing what was called an electric hand torch, known today as the flashlight in most countries. By 1913, the company was acquired by the National Carbon Company, Inc., a unit of Union Carbide & Carbon Corporation, later known as Union Carbide. Sales of its Eveready Layerbilt batteries grew rapidly in the 1920s because of the new craze for the radio, which was battery-operated at the time. The company sponsored The Eveready Hour program.

Perhaps the most important battery-powered invention was the portable transistor radio, which was being sold around the world. The long-lasting alkaline battery was invented in 1957. In 1959, Union Carbide formed a Consumer Products Division in order to capitalize on the trend toward portable radios and other battery-operated gadgets. Fast forward to 1986, as Union Carbide was forced to sell its productive battery unit and restructure in an effort to quell a hostile takeover. Ralston Purina Company was the buyer. Eveready began selling its first lithium AA battery in 1992. 

Eveready established an advertising campaign in 1988 with a series of fake advertisements that would be interrupted by a drum-banging pink bunny in flip-flops. The ads went head-to-head with their rival, Duracell, which had its own bunnies. Eveready's commercials appeared to be real ads for a product, then suddenly the rabbit burst onto the screen, with the slogan “Still going...” Despite the popular Energizer Bunny mascot, the humorous ads did little to increase sales.

Purina spun off Eveready in 2000, renaming the business unit Energizer Holdings, Inc. It is one of the world’s foremost manufacturers of dry cell batteries and flashlights. Its stiffest competition continues to be Duracell. 

Shampoo Tube

If you are of a certain age, Prell Shampoo was a common product in your home. Attractively priced, it was an iconic, clear green concentrate in a unique, unbreakable soft plastic tube. It has not disappeared from shelves since 1947. It continues to be a viable choice for both women and men.

Prell shampoo was founded by Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1955, Prell was initially marketed toward women "who want their hair to have that radiantly alive look." But men discovered it as well, who seem to be attracted to its nostalgic fragrance. Concentrated Prell Radiant Shampoo dates back to around 1957 and was designed by Donald Deskey, a renowned figure in modern industrial design. Prell became one of the top-selling shampoos by 1977.

Throughout Prell's long history, it has been loved for its rich lather and clean scent. It is the oldest consistently made American shampoo brand. Prell, with its distinctive green color, became widely recognized due to its unique advertising campaigns and appearances in popular culture. 

Procter & Gamble sold the brand to Prestige Brands International in November 1999. Prestige then sold Prell to Ultimark Products in October 2009. In 2016, Scott's Liquid Gold-Inc. acquired Prell. In turn, Prell Products Inc., headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, acquired Prell from Scott's Liquid Gold in 2022. Despite the advertising glut of more expensive shampoos with ingredients that are difficult to spell, Prell remains a popular product for many.

Bazooka Joe

Bazooka is an American brand of bubble gum that was introduced in 1947. It is a product of Bazooka Candy Brands (BCB), which was a division of The Topps Co. until the latter’s acquisition by Fanatics, Inc. in 2022. By 2023, Apax Partners acquired BCB and its product portfolio.

Back in 1953, the individually wrapped pieces of Bazooka bubble gum featured a comic strip inside and the character, Bazooka Joe. The kid's black eyepatch gave him a singular appearance. Joe is joined in his various misadventures by a motley crew of six characters. The comics generally consisted of child-friendly jokes, as well as small advertisements for overly eccentric merchandise one could obtain in exchange for comics and a few cents or dollars. Over the decades, Bazooka Joe's illustration style and mode of dress changed to keep up with the times. 

The Bazooka gum was most likely named after the rocket-propelled weapon of the same name developed by the U.S. Army during World War II, which was named after an earlier musical instrument used by radio comedian Bob Burns. He is credited with inventing the crude metal instrument in the 1910s and popularizing it in the 1930s. The instrument had a low-register PVC pipe sound that felt right at home with Spike Jone's City Slickers band.

Slide Soap

Lava is a heavy-duty hand cleaner in soap bar developed in 1893 by the William Waltke Company of St. Louis, Missouri. Procter & Gamble acquired the Lava and Oxydol brands in 1927. In 1995, P&G sold the Lava brand to the Block Drug Company, a pharmaceutical company based in Jersey City, New Jersey, that specialized in dental care products. Its two most popular products included Polident denture cleanser and Poli-Grip denture adhesive. By 1999, the WD-40 Company bought the Lava brand from Block Drug.

Unlike typical soap bars, Lava contained ground pumice, which gave the soap its name. The soap and pumice combination is intended to scour tar, engine grease, paint, dirt, grime, filth, and similar substances from the skin. The original beige-colored Lava bar soap, without moisturizers, is no longer manufactured.

Note: The word lava comes from Italian and is likely derived from the Latin word labes, which typically refers to a disaster, downfall, landslip, or slide.

Acting for Beans

Below are four Hollywood personalities (and one dummy) who served as spokespersons for four popular coffee brands from the 1930s through the 1970s.

Virginia Christine

San Francisco's Pioneer Steam Coffee and Spice Mills was the original name behind Folgers of 1850. Employed as a teenager, James A. Folger eventually became a full partner in the company by 1865. By 1972, Folger bought out the partners and renamed the company, J.A. Folger & Co. Skipping ahead about a century, supporting actress Virginia Christine played "Mrs. Olson," a Swedish neighbor who recommended a cup of Folgers coffee as a break from the character's hectic day in television commercials. Beginning in 1965, she played the character for twenty-one years. In 1971, Christine's hometown of Stanton, Iowa, honored her by transforming the city water tower to resemble a giant Swedish-style coffee pot.

Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy

Chase & Sanborn Coffee was created by the coffee roasting and tea and coffee importing company of the same name in 1864 in Boston, Massachusetts. Named for Caleb Chase (1831-1908) and James Sanborn (1835-1903). They were the first to sell ground coffee in sealed cans. When Standard Brands was formed in 1929, it acquired Chase & Sanborn until 1981 when the company merged into Nabisco. Nabisco sold Chase & Sanborn to Colombian, Alberto Duque in 1982. The Chase & Sanborn Hour/Program was a radio variety show that featured ventriloquist pioneer Edgar Bergen and sidekick Charlie McCarthy. Though their contract was not renewed after a decade on the program, their radio career continued until 1956 before breaking into television.

Margaret Hamilton
Introduced in 1892 by wholesale grocer Joel Cheek, Maxwell House Coffee was named in honor of the Maxwell House Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee, its first major customer. The blended coffee was so well-received, it became the hotel's house brew. In 1915, Cheek and Partner began advertising with the now-famous "Good to the last drop" slogan. Along this timeline, Maxwell House introduced its iconic coffee cans to seal in freshness. A 1970s campaign for Maxwell House featured actress Margaret Hamilton, famous for her role in the original, The Wizard of Oz. She played Cora, the general store owner who proudly announced that Maxwell House was the only brand she sold. 

John Zaremba
Hills Bros. has its origins with the two sons of a Maine shipbuilder, Austin Hills and Reuben Hills, aka R.J. Hills. In 1898, Edward Norton, of New York, used his United States patent on a vacuum process for canning foods, which was subsequently applied to coffee. By 1900, Hills Brothers of San Francisco were the first to pack roast coffee in vacuum-sealed cans. Late in his career, character actor John Zaremba was the primary spokesperson for Hills Bros. in the 1970s and 1980s. His character was a fictional, senior globe-hoping coffee bean buyer, hardly recognizable to those who knew him from the 1950s. But the voice was unmistakable. Zaremba was a busy actor, noted for science fiction films, but television made up the bulk of his career with numerous supporting roles. He may be best remembered as a doctor in the 1960s series, Ben Casey, and for thirty episodes as a scientist on Time Tunnel. 

The Hoover Do Over

The Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border splitting Nevada and Arizona. From 1931 to 1936, over four million cubic yards of concrete and eighty-eight million pounds of plated steel were used. And with the removal of rock from the canyon walls, boring four diversion tunnels, and the sacrifice of more than 100 lives, the dam quickly became a symbol of the American "can-do" spirit. For millions of people in the 1930s, Hoover Dam, and on a lesser scale, the Empire State Building, came to symbolize what American workers could do even in the depths of the Great Depression. 

When President Herbert Hoover lost the White House in 1932 to President Roosevelt, his new Interior Secretary, Harold Ickes, snubbed the Hoover name from the day of the dam’s dedication. “This great engineering achievement should not carry the name of any living man but, on the contrary, should be baptized with a designation as bold and characteristic and imagination-stirring as the dam itself.” His political bias blotted out the fact that Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Calvin Coolidge already had dam sites attached to their names. 

As a former mining engineer, Hoover took an active part in settling the engineering problems and the location of the dam in Black Canyon. When he left office, construction finished more than a year ahead of schedule. The Hoover name was vindicated when House Resolution 140 was introduced and passed by the 80th Congress in 1947. President Harry S. Truman signed the resolution and restored the name Hoover Dam to the structure. To clarify, the names "Boulder Canyon Dam" and "Boulder Dam" were simply references to nearby Boulder City, Nevada, and not official. Almost a million people still come to visit the huge dam every year.

Note: The illustration above highlights the intake towers before Lake Mead was filled to its normal operating level.

RKO Blood on Fort Apache

The films below were released by RKO Radio Pictures in 1948, and they are two famous Western films with different premises. Though both deal with a clash of personalities, one is a traditional Western, while the other is a shadowy, moody, noir Western.

Fort Apache
Released March 27, 1948, Fort Apache is an American Western saga, the first of John Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy." It was followed by She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950), all starring John Wayne. The film was one of the first to present an authentic and sympathetic view of Native Americans.

Wayne's substantial co-star is Henry Fonda, supported by a talented cast including Shirley Temple, Pedro Armendariz, and John Agar. Cinematography is by Archie Stout. Fonda plays an arrogant and abrasive Lieutenant Colonel in command of Fort Apache, much to Wayne's disappointment, who had expected to receive that commission.

Blood On The Moon
Released November 9, 1948, Blood on the Moon is considered one of the best noir Westerns, in contrast to the sunlit saga of Fort Apache. It is a moody, "psychological" film starring Robert Mitchum, a role that neither Wayne nor Fonda could pull off. There is little of the Western formula approach to this story. The supporting cast includes Robert Preston, Walter Brennan, and Barbara Bel Geddes. The film is directed by another legend in cinema, Robert Wise. The outstanding cinematography is by Nicholas Musuraca. 

Of note is an extended fight between Mitchum and Preston without any stuntmen. Then again, it took three days to shoot. Wise wanted realism, where the winner is also badly beaten and exhausted, instead of a cliched brawl where the hero comes out clean and unscathed. Mitchum's acting was lauded at the time, whereas both Wayne and Fonda somewhat cancelled each other out of any accolades.

Note: From a budget of approximately $2.1 million, Fort Apache had a box office total of $3 million. Blood On The Moon made a decent profit out of a $1.5 million budget with a $2.4 million box office take.