Bromo-Seltzer for headaches

[wanswheel]

https://archive.org/details/VoxPop_857/1945-07-16-CBS-Vox-Pop-Repatriated-POWs-Lake-Placid-Club-New-York.mp3#

[Deggesty]

Ah, yes. I well remember the radio advertisements, with the locomotive exhaust saying, "Bromoseltzer, Bromoseltzer, Bromseltzer." I do not remember what show was sponsored, but the phrase still rings in my mind.

[DSchmitt]

Bromseltzer train ad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8utt-Thrt_I

 

[BaltACD]

Tower as it exists today

[Miningman]

Does the clock face still spell out BROMO SELTZER or just the Roman numerals now? Cannot make it out in the photo.

In any case it's nice to see the tower intact and preserved. Good on Baltimore. 

That Bromo ad simulating a steam engine getting underway has been used by several others...remember "Good and Plenty" ...they would rattle the box in unison simulating a chugging effect. 

 

[Firelock76]

Is Bromo-Seltzer made anymore?  I haven't thought about it in years, I suppose I'll have to go out and look just out of curiosity.

[wanswheel]

Yesterday I had no idea there was any such thing as a Bromo-Seltzer train on the radio and today it gives me a headache to realize the inventor of Bromo-Seltzer's daughter married Commodore Vanderbilt's great-grandson who died heroically on the Lusitania.

Baltimore, September 5 – Undoubtedly one of the most effective advertising schemes ever devised by any manufacturer of medicines are the great tower and bottle over the Emerson Building in which the Emerson Drug Company has its home on the northeast corner of Eutaw and Lombard streets. The bottle is about 300 feet above the pavement and constitutes the crown of a clock tower, the dials and figures of which can be seen clearly for a mile or more. Around the bottle the words “Bromo Seltzer” stand out during the day in gigantic white letters and at night in characters of flame, the bottle being lighted up by electricity. The bottle revolves, so that both words, winding around the bottle in a spiral, can be plainly seen from any direction. The tower, with its illuminated phial, is easily the most conspicuous object that greets the eye of the traveler on nearing the city. The Emerson Building, together with the Emerson Hotel, erected at a cost of more than $1,000,000, are twin monuments to the enterprise of the controlling figure in the Emerson Drug Company, and have done a great deal to popularize the manufacturer of the well known headache remedy at home.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Gwynne_Vanderbilt_I

[Miningman]

Bromides were banned in 1975 as being toxic. That ended Bromo-Seltzer production. 

You can buy a reformulated Bromo-Seltzer using acetaminophen instead. Same as Alka Seltzer I quess. 

As to what happened to Emerson Drugs is a bit more mysterious. Maybe someone out there can assist. 

 

[BaltACD]

Miningman

Does the clock face still spell out BROMO SELTZER or just the Roman numerals now? Cannot make it out in the photo.

In any case it's nice to see the tower intact and preserved. Good on Baltimore. 

That Bromo ad simulating a steam engine getting underway has been used by several others...remember "Good and Plenty" ...they would rattle the box in unison simulating a chugging effect.

[Miningman]

BaltACD- Wow thanks! Thats pretty clear!

[wanswheel]

Pretty sure this view of Camden Station was from the tower.

Certainly the angle seems about right.

[Penny Trains]

Deggesty

Ah, yes. I well remember the radio advertisements, with the locomotive exhaust saying, "Bromoseltzer, Bromoseltzer, Bromseltzer." I do not remember what show was sponsored, but the phrase still rings in my mind.

I don't ever remember hearing the commercial, but somehow I've been saying "Bromoseltzer" for just that purpose as long as I can remember!  Funny how society perpetuates things long after their gone when they apply in an unintendedf way. 

[DSchmitt]

Miningman

As to what happened to Emerson Drugs is a bit more mysterious. Maybe someone out there can assist.   

Emerson was aquired by Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical Company  in 1956. 

In 2000 Warner-Lambert was aquired by Pfizer. 

 

[Firelock76]

I was curious, but I never used Bromo anyway.  Being of Italian extraction I prefer Brioschi.  Tastes like lemon soda too!

[BaltACD]

wanswheel

Pretty sure this view of Camden Station was from the tower.

Certainly the angle seems about right.

 

Top picture is about 5 decades older than the bottom picture.

[Deggesty]

I'm sorry, I forgot to tell you: "Bromo-Seltzer fights headaches three ways."

I do not remember ever seeing Bromo-Seltzer, but, in the early fifties, I sold two brands of headache powder that came in little packets. One brand, B-C, sold for a dime a packet, and the other brand, Goody's, sold for a nickel a packet. One customer would buy a box of Goody's at a time.

[Deggesty]

wanswheel

https://archive.org/details/VoxPop_857/1945-07-16-CBS-Vox-Pop-Repatriated-POWs-Lake-Placid-Club-New-York.mp3#

 

I just really looked at the Vox Pop ad--KSL is still broadcasting in Salt Lake City.

[Miningman]

Pittsburgh Penguins win the Stanley Cup...send rush unit train of Bromo-Seltzer to Nashville. 

[wanswheel]

Deggesty

I just really looked at the Vox Pop ad--KSL is still broadcasting in Salt Lake City.

https://www.ksl.com/?sid=20272204

[wanswheel]

Miningman

Pittsburgh Penguins win the Stanley Cup...send rush unit train of Bromo-Seltzer to Nashville. 

The Penguins met Obama, now they can meet Trump. Maybe by train.

[Anonymous]

I always preferred B-C powders.  On a trip from Florida to Texas in the 90s with my mother to visit relatives I came down with the headache to end all headaches.  We stopped at a small country store in Mississippi where I purchased a package and down it went.  In no time my headache was history!  Can't get it here in Germany.  I use Bayer if I get a headache. 

I remember the commercials on 1950s TV of most of the products to rid one of a headache.  My grandfather would purchase the Saturday Evening Post every Saturday PM in Carrollton Texas at Hall's Rexall Pharmacy off of the newsstand in the early 50s and I well remember the Rx sign outside the store.  Rx had a train that toured the USA in the 40s I believe.  Can one of y'all help me fill in the blanks on this one?

[RME]

There is at least one substantial online site describing the Rexall Train of 1936, and its oil-fired NYC Mohawk styled up in Kantola fashion, similar to the scheme on the 'Commodore Vanderbilt' but painted in Rexall blue and white.

You may be confusing this with Hadacol (the "Happy Day Company" patent medicine), which was late '40s and very different.

Might need a bottle or eight after Audrey sings that last one in your ear...

The immense publicity effort associated with that stuff, far later than most people think of patent medicine advertising, is still a useful marketing study.

 

(By the way, "Rx" is an abbreviation for 'response', and can be found in that specific context in some church liturgies, and not 'remedy' in the sense of a potion or formula...)

 

[Firelock76]

The Rexall Train is featured in the Summer 2017 issue of "Classic Trains."  Good article!

[Miningman]

RME- Thanks for the Hadacol story. That is quite the tale. 

My first thought was that this was quite late in time, as a society, for this kind of medicine show, thinking that after the war people had become more leary, wiser, skeptical and intolerant of this kind of thing and that the time to suffer these kind of fools and charlatans had passed.

....but then I look around today with fake news, hidden agendas, the media pushing a ridiculous narrative, junk science, identity politics and tribalism and it's much the same really, just a different product. 

Catchy tune that "Hadacol Bogie". How the heck did he get all those A list celebrities to endorse? Well I guess they are still doing much the same as well!

[wanswheel]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudley_J._LeBlanc

https://archive.org/stream/bub_gb_QgEEAAAAMBAJ#page/n59/mode/2up

[Miningman]

In the video clip on "You bet your Life", what the heck is that thing in place of bow tie that the slick Senator from Louisiana has on? Looks like a dead mouse around his collar! Was this something peculiar to the South Or was this a fashion at the time? I have no recollection of it. I assume it is somewhat like a scarf. 

An locomotive engineer would frequently wear a scarf but that had a purpose.

Terrific stuff Wanswheel. Loved that railroad quiz,  not very challenging but at least they knew the answers. 

Add on Comment- Reading the bio of Senator Dudley LeBlanc, I retract my comment of "fools and charlatans". He did many good things, such as introducing a pension for ordinary folk, preserved Acadian heritage magnificently, built roads, and went up against the best, worst and meanest in politics. I'm not sure if there is quite anything like Louisiana politics anywhere else in North America. 

[wanswheel]

August 1930. "Senator Dudley J. Leblanc of Abbeville, Louisiana and women in Acadian dress greet President and Mrs. Herbert Hoover at the White House during a pilgrimage of Louisiana Acadians back to Grand Pre, Nova Scotia, Canada. Young women wearing costumes with sashes naming their Louisiana city."

1949 "State Senator Dudley J. LeBlanc speaks in the Louisiana Legislative chambers at the mailing of first bonus checks to state veterans. Others in the picture include Governor Earl K. Long (in white suit) and Russell B. Long (far left)."

https://www.quackwatch.org/13Hx/MM/15.html

[Firelock76]

LBJ was reputed to have said, "If you want to major in politics, move to Texas.  If you want a doctorate in politics, move to Louisiana!"

[Penny Trains]

Firelock76

The Rexall Train is featured in the Summer 2017 issue of "Classic Trains."  Good article!

 

Firelock76

The Rexall Train is featured in the Summer 2017 issue of "Classic Trains."  Good article!

 

And coincidentaly(?) in the MTH volume 2 catalog!