For most people, memories of childhood coughs and colds are synonymous with a menthol-smelling ointment in a dark blue jar with a turquoise cap.
For more than a century, Vicks VapoRub has been a household name across continents. How it became one has roots in the Spanish flu pandemic in the early 20th century.
The story begins with an act of fatherly love.
In 1894 in the state of North Carolina in the eastern United States, the nine-year-old son of a pharmacist named Lunsford Richardson was sick with croup, a respiratory infection that causes a bark-like cough.
Desperate to find a treatment, Richardson began testing out mixtures of aromatic oils and chemicals at his pharmacy and produced an ointment that helped his son.
But this was not Vicks VapoRub – at least not yet.
Seeing that his ointment had worked for his son, Richardson started to sell it for 25 cents a jar. The strong-smelling product consisted of menthol, camphor, eucalyptus and several other oils blended together in a petroleum jelly base. The ointment helped open blocked noses, and when rubbed on the chest, the vapour soothed a cough.
Richardson initially named his concoction Vick’s Croup & Pneumonia Salve. An enthusiastic gardener, he thought of the name after seeing an advertisement for seeds of the Vicks plant, whose leaves smell like menthol when crushed. He also borrowed the name from his brother-in-law, Dr Joshua Vick, a trusted doctor in their town of Greensboro. He felt “Vick” was “short, easy to remember and looked good on a label”.
‘Magic’ salve to VapoRub
In 1911, 17 years after the salve was created, Richardson’s son Henry Smith, the one who once suffered from croup, was steering the family business. He renamed the product Vick’s Vaporub Salve from Vick’s Magic Croup Salve, the name under which it had been sold since 1905. That year, the packaging was also changed from transparent glass to the distinctive cobalt blue.
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By then, Richardson had also created 21 remedies for various ailments, including Vick’s Little Liver Pills for “constipation and torpid liver”; Turtle Oil Liniment for “sprains, sores and rheumatism”; Tar Heel Sarsaparilla to purify “bad blood”; and Grippe Knockers for the flu. They were sold under the Vick’s Family Remedies company, which he set up in 1905. But none sold as well as the original salve.
So in 1911, Henry discontinued all the other products, renamed the business Vick Chemical Company and began focusing solely on marketing and distributing their signature product. The company began distributing large quantities of free samples while salesmen posted advertisements on streetcars and visited pharmacists, urging them to try the product.
Marketing during the Spanish flu
Seven years later in 1918, the deadliest pandemic in modern history tore across the world. The Spanish flu claimed the lives of 50 million people – more than eight times the number of COVID-19 deaths.
This was when Vick’s VapoRub sales began to soar.
“Its closest rival was Ely’s Creme Balm … something of a copycat product but doesn’t seem to have had the same cachet,” explained Catharine Arnold, author of the book Pandemic 1918.
She added that there were other remedies for respiratory ailments, including coughs, colds and the flu, such as Hale’s Honey of Horehound and Tar. Some products did not stand the test of time, such as “vaporisers”, similar to modern nebulisers, and throat lozenges such as Formamint. It contained the chemical formaldehyde, which is toxic in large amounts.
However, a marketing campaign led by Smith took the Vicks brand onto the global stage.
When the pandemic hit, the company produced a series of six ads. Rather than solely promote Vick’s VapoRub, the series focused on raising awareness about the Spanish flu and included information about symptoms, treatment and tips to avoid getting sick. It urged people not to panic and conveyed that the brand cared about people’s wellbeing at a bleak time. The flu was just another variation of an influenza that strikes every century and is caused by germs that attack the nose, throat and bronchial tubes, the ads said. Vick’s VapoRub would “throw off the grippe germs” and make it easier to breathe, they said.
Years later, the accuracy of this content came under criticism. Still, “at the time, this advertisement must have seemed reassuring, telling readers it was just the same old flu, only, of course, it wasn’t,” Arnold said.
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“Spanish flu was an atypical autoimmune virus which attacked the youngest and fittest and caused unusual reactions, such as violent haemorrhaging and the notorious heliotrope cyanosis when people’s skin turned blue.”
However, the advice in the advertisements to rest and stay in bed was “sensible”, she added, because the virus was spread through human contact.
Becoming a household name
Sales skyrocketed, and in October 1918 – seven months after the outbreak of the pandemic – Vick Chemical Company informed pharmacists that huge demand had wiped out its excess stocks. Supplies expected to last four months had run out in three weeks.
Newspaper notices published at that time showed the company had received orders for 1.75 million VapoRub jars in a single week, and the daily turnover of the business was about $186,492. The jars came in three sizes costing 30 cents, 60 cents and $1.20.
“Big shipments are en route to jobbers [wholesalers] by freight and express. Until these arrive, there may be a temporary shortage. All deals postponed. Buy in small lots only,” one notice read.
The company informed the public that it was working day and night to catch up with demand. The orders received were twice the company’s daily output, and by November 1918, the firm said its factory was running 23.5 hours daily to produce 1.08 million jars weekly.
The product gained worldwide popularity during the pandemic, and according to company data, VapoRub sales grew from $900,000 to $2.9m from 1918 to 1919.
Afterwards, Vick Chemical Company continued to market its product in novel ways. It sent millions of free samples to mailboxes and in 1924 published a 15-page advertisement in the form of a children’s book called The Story of Blix and Blee. The story, written in rhyming verses, was about two elves named Blix and Blee who lived in an empty Vicks VapoRub jar beneath an old jujube tree. One night, they rushed to the rescue of a sick child, little Dickie. The elves convinced the child, who was refusing to take the medicine given by his mother, to use Vicks VapoRub to soothe his cough so he could sleep.
More than 130 years later, Vicks VapoRub is sold in about 70 countries on five continents with more than 3.78 million litres (more than 1 million gallons) of it produced annually. From 2011 to 2016 alone, there were more than a billion units sold worldwide, according to its owner Procter and Gamble.
For Arnold, Vicks VapoRub is part of an American childhood.
“Generations of us grew up with that familiar waxy menthol compound, robes and pyjamas redolent of Vicks during flu season,” she said. “That familiar blue and green label is as much of an American cultural icon as Coca-Cola or Campbell’s soup.”
This article is part of Ordinary Items, Extraordinary Stories, a series about the surprising stories behind well-known items.
Read more from the series:
How the inventor of the bouncy castle saved lives
How a popular Peruvian soft drink went ‘toe-to-toe’ with Coca-Cola
How a drowning victim became a lifesaving icon