ChapStick
Encyclopedia
Lip balm
Lip balm or lip salve is a wax-like substance applied topically to the lips of the mouth to relieve chapped or dry lips, angular cheilitis, stomatitis, or cold sores. Lip balm often contains beeswax or carnauba wax, camphor, cetyl alcohol, lanolin, paraffin, and petrolatum, among other ingredients...
manufactured by Pfizer
Pfizer
Pfizer, Inc. is an American multinational pharmaceutical corporation. The company is based in New York City, New York with its research headquarters in Groton, Connecticut, United States...
Consumer Healthcare and used in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
, Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
, Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
, South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. It is intended to help treat and prevent chapped lips
Chapped lips
Chapped lips or Cracked lips is a condition whereby the lips become dry and possibly cracked. It may be caused by the evaporation of moisture. Often the lips become dry because the layer of oil that is naturally produced by the body to coat the lips is removed or is lacking...
; hence the name. Many varieties also include SPF 15 sunscreen in order to prevent sunburn.
Creator(S) Josh Brown
Due to ChapStick's popularity, the term has become a genericized trademark
Genericized trademark
A genericized trademark is a trademark or brand name that has become the colloquial or generic description for, or synonymous with, a general class of product or service, rather than as an indicator of source or affiliation as intended by the trademark's holder...
. It now 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. In Sweden and in the United Kingdom, the product's main competitor is Lypsyl
Lypsyl
Lypsyl is a brand of moisturising lip balm owned by Lornamead. It is packaged in a small, cylindrical, twist action tube and is applied like a lipstick....
, made by Novartis
Novartis
Novartis International AG is a multinational pharmaceutical company based in Basel, Switzerland, ranking number three in sales among the world-wide industry...
Consumer Health, which is distributed in similar packaging to ChapStick.
History
In the early 1880s, Dr. Charles Browne FleetCharles Browne Fleet
Charles Browne Fleet was a pharmacist and inventor of the laxative and chapstick. His company, C.B. Fleet, was founded in Lynchburg, Virginia, and still operates producing laxatives, douches, enemas, and other products of the sort.Although his family life was quite mysterious, several matches...
, a physician and pharmacological thinker from Lynchburg, Virginia
Lynchburg, Virginia
Lynchburg is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The population was 75,568 as of 2010. Located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains along the banks of the James River, Lynchburg is known as the "City of Seven Hills" or "The Hill City." Lynchburg was the only major city in...
, invented ChapStick as a lip balm. The handmade product, which resembled a wickless candle wrapped in tin foil, was sold locally, but did not have much success.
In 1912, John Morton, also a Lynchburg resident, bought the rights to the product for five dollars. In their family kitchen, Mrs. Morton 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 1930s, Frank Wright, Jr.
Frank Wright, Jr.
Frank Boggs Wright, Jr. was an American commercial artist whose career extended from the mid-1930s to the late 1990s. A native of Madison Heights, Virginia, he was perhaps best known for designing the ChapStick logo...
, 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 Morton 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
Suzy Chaffee
Suzanne "Suzy" Chaffee is a former Olympic alpine ski racer and actress. Following her racing career, she modelled in New York with Ford Models and then became the pre-eminent freestyle ballet skier of the early 1970s...
was a spokesperson for the brand in the 1970s
1970s
File:1970s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: US President Richard Nixon doing the V for Victory sign after his resignation from office after the Watergate scandal in 1974; Refugees aboard a US naval boat after the Fall of Saigon, leading to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975; The 1973 oil...
. Former ski racer Picabo Street
Picabo Street
Picabo Street is a retired American alpine ski racer. She won gold medals in super G at the 1998 Winter Olympics and in downhill at 1996 World Championships, along with three other Olympic and World Championship medals. She also won World Cup downhill season titles in 1995 and 1996, the first...
is commonly seen on television commercials as one of the company's endorsers.
Robins was purchased by American Home Products (AHP) in 1988. AHP later changed its name to Wyeth
Wyeth
Wyeth, formerly one of the companies owned by American Home Products Corporation , was a pharmaceutical company. The company was based in Madison, New Jersey, USA...
. ChapStick was a Wyeth product until 2009, when Wyeth was acquired by Pfizer.
Composition
Camphor
Camphor is a waxy, white or transparent solid with a strong, aromatic odor. It is a terpenoid with the chemical formula C10H16O. It is found in wood of the camphor laurel , a large evergreen tree found in Asia and also of Dryobalanops aromatica, a giant of the Bornean forests...
, beeswax
Beeswax
Beeswax is a natural wax produced in the bee hive of honey bees of the genus Apis. It is mainly esters of fatty acids and various long chain alcohols...
, menthol
Menthol
Menthol is an organic compound made synthetically or obtained from peppermint or other mint oils. It is a waxy, crystalline substance, clear or white in color, which is solid at room temperature and melts slightly above. The main form of menthol occurring in nature is -menthol, which is assigned...
, petrolatum, phenol
Phenol
Phenol, also known as carbolic acid, phenic acid, is an organic compound with the chemical formula C6H5OH. It is a white crystalline solid. The molecule consists of a phenyl , bonded to a hydroxyl group. It is produced on a large scale as a precursor to many materials and useful compounds...
, vitamin E
Vitamin E
Vitamin E is used to refer to a group of fat-soluble compounds that include both tocopherols and tocotrienols. There are many different forms of vitamin E, of which γ-tocopherol is the most common in the North American diet. γ-Tocopherol can be found in corn oil, soybean oil, margarine and dressings...
, and aloe
Aloe
Aloe , also Aloë, is a genus containing about 500 species of flowering succulent plants. The most common and well known of these is Aloe vera, or "true aloe"....
. ChapStick Original contains the controversial ingredient Oxybenzone
Oxybenzone
Oxybenzone is an organic compound used in sunscreens. It forms colorless crystals that are readily soluble in most organic solvents. A 2008 study by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found the compound to be present in 96.8% of human urine samples analyzed as part of the...
. However, there are hundreds of variants of ChapStick, each with its own composition.
The full list of ingredients in a regular-flavoured ChapStick are as follows:
arachidyl propionate, camphor
Camphor
Camphor is a waxy, white or transparent solid with a strong, aromatic odor. It is a terpenoid with the chemical formula C10H16O. It is found in wood of the camphor laurel , a large evergreen tree found in Asia and also of Dryobalanops aromatica, a giant of the Bornean forests...
, carnauba wax
Carnauba wax
Carnauba , also called Brazil wax and palm wax, is a wax of the leaves of the palm Copernicia prunifera, a plant native to and grown only in the northeastern Brazilian states of Piauí, Ceará, and Rio Grande do Norte. It is known as "queen of waxes" and usually comes in the form of hard yellow-brown...
, cetyl alcohol
Cetyl alcohol
Cetyl alcohol, also known as 1-hexadecanol and palmityl alcohol, is a fatty alcohol with the chemical formula CH315OH. At room temperature, cetyl alcohol takes the form of a waxy white solid or flakes....
, D&C red no. 6 barium lake, FD&C yellow no. 5 aluminum lake, fragrance, isopropyl lanolate, isopropyl myristate
Isopropyl myristate
Isopropyl myristate is the ester of isopropanol and myristic acid.-Uses:Isopropyl myristate is used in cosmetic and topical medicinal preparations where good absorption through the skin is desired...
, lanolin
Lanolin
Lanolin , also called Adeps Lanae, wool wax or wool grease, is a yellow waxy substance secreted by the sebaceous glands of wool-bearing animals. Most lanolin used by humans comes from domestic sheep...
, light mineral oil
Mineral oil
A mineral oil is any of various colorless, odorless, light mixtures of alkanes in the C15 to C40 range from a non-vegetable source, particularly a distillate of petroleum....
, methylparaben
Methylparaben
Methylparaben, also methyl paraben, one of the parabens, is a preservative with the chemical formula CH3. It is the methyl ester of p-hydroxybenzoic acid.-Occurrence:...
, octyldodecanol, oleyl alcohol
Oleyl alcohol
Oleyl alcohol, octadecenol, or cis-9-octadecen-1-ol, is a fatty alcohol coming from inedible beef fat. It is also found in fish oil.Its chemical formula is 1836 or CH37-CH=CH-8OH.It is a non-ionic, unsaturated fatty alcohol....
, paraffin
Paraffin
In chemistry, paraffin is a term that can be used synonymously with "alkane", indicating hydrocarbons with the general formula CnH2n+2. Paraffin wax refers to a mixture of alkanes that falls within the 20 ≤ n ≤ 40 range; they are found in the solid state at room temperature and begin to enter the...
, phenyl trimethicone, propylparaben, titanium dioxide
Titanium dioxide
Titanium dioxide, also known as titanium oxide or titania, is the naturally occurring oxide of titanium, chemical formula . When used as a pigment, it is called titanium white, Pigment White 6, or CI 77891. Generally it comes in two different forms, rutile and anatase. It has a wide range of...
, white wax
Wax
thumb|right|[[Cetyl palmitate]], a typical wax ester.Wax refers to a class of chemical compounds that are plastic near ambient temperatures. Characteristically, they melt above 45 °C to give a low viscosity liquid. Waxes are insoluble in water but soluble in organic, nonpolar solvents...
, propanol
Propanol
Propanol may refer to:*Propan-1-ol, or n-propanol: CH3CH2CH2OH, the most common meaning*Propan-2-ol, or isopropyl alcohol, or isopropanol: 2CHOH...
.
Uses
ChapStick functions as both a sunscreenSunscreen
Sunblock is a lotion, spray, gel or other topical product that absorbs or reflects some of the sun's ultraviolet radiation on the skin exposed to sunlight and thus helps protect against sunburn...
, available with SPFs as high as 35, and a skin moisturizer and 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
Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
of the early 1970s.
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 CarsCars (film)
Cars is a 2006 American animated family film produced by Pixar and directed by John Lasseter and co-directed by Joe Ranft. It is the seventh Disney·Pixar feature film, and Pixar's final, independently-produced motion picture before its purchase by Disney...
) or with causes, such as Breast Cancer
Breast cancer
Breast cancer is cancer originating from breast tissue, most commonly from the inner lining of milk ducts or the lobules that supply the ducts with milk. Cancers originating from ducts are known as ductal carcinomas; those originating from lobules are known as lobular carcinomas...
Awareness, in which 30¢ is donated for each stick sold, (as in the "Susan G. Komen
Susan G. Komen for the Cure
Susan G. Komen for the Cure, formerly known as The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, often referred to as simply Komen, is the most widely known, largest and best-funded breast cancer organization in the US....
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
Winter Olympic Games
The Winter Olympic Games is a sporting event, which occurs every four years. The first celebration of the Winter Olympics was held in Chamonix, France, in 1924. The original sports were alpine and cross-country skiing, figure skating, ice hockey, Nordic combined, ski jumping and speed skating...
skier Suzy Chaffee
Suzy Chaffee
Suzanne "Suzy" Chaffee is a former Olympic alpine ski racer and actress. Following her racing career, she modelled in New York with Ford Models and then became the pre-eminent freestyle ballet skier of the early 1970s...
starred in ChapStick commercials on television in which she dubbed herself "Suzy ChapStick." Another very famous ChapStick advertisement includes basketball legend Julius Erving
Julius Erving
Julius Winfield Erving II , commonly known by the nickname Dr. J, is a retired American basketball player who helped launch a modern style of play that emphasizes leaping and play above the rim....
(AKA Dr. J) naming himself Dr. ChapStick and telling young children about the great things that ChapStick can do.
External links
- ChapStick – Official website
- ChapStick UK – Official UK website
- The History of Chapstick