Put A Tiger In Your Tank

The Humble Oil Company can trace its origins to an oil gusher strike in 1901, initiating the Texas oil rush. Humble was founded in 1911 in Humble, Texas with a confusing array of names for different areas of the United States thanks to the break up of Standard Oil Company by The Sherman Antitrust Act. Forty-eight years later, Standard Oil of New Jersey acquired the company. Humble struggled for decades with what single brand name to use until 1972 when they chose Exxon. 

Humble first began marketing gasoline nationwide under two different names. First was Enco, a secondary retail brand in certain parts of the United States from 1960 to 1977, and a second brand, Esso, a concocted name for ExxonMobil, brought about by the merger between Exxon and Mobil (Standard Oil of New York) in 1999. The Enco brand was introduced by Humble in the summer of 1960 but the brand was not used in Ohio because of trademark infringement claims made by Sohio (Standard Oil Company of Ohio). Exxon later withdrew from Ohio entirely by the end of the decade except for Southeast Ohio and Columbus.

Humble's Esso brand had a successful advertising campaign in the 1960s and 1970s with, "Put A Tiger In Your Tank" featuring an oversized, illustrated tiger sitting upon or beside an automobile. Some fans took to placing a small, cuddly tiger tail under their gas cap filler door. For a thoroughly confusing Humble history, you might want to read this.

Note the 1959 Chevrolet and 1960 Dodge Dart above