Noxzema

The formula was invented by Dr. Francis J. Townsend, a physician and druggist who practiced near the beaches around Ocean City and Snow Hill, Maryland, and called it "Townsend R22," or "no-eczema." He passed it to George Avery Bunting, a druggist who around 1917 sold it as "Dr. Bunting's Sunburn Remedy"; the name became Noxzema, the story goes, after a satisfied customer exclaimed "Sure knocked my eczema!" The small cobalt-blue jar has been its signature since the 1910s. The Noxzema Chemical Company built a small factory in Baltimore in 1926, originated the CoverGirl cosmetics line in the late 1950s using Noxzema's medicated ingredients, and reorganized as the Noxell Corporation in 1966. From 1966 to 1973 Gunilla Knutsson sold its shaving cream on national television with "Take it off. Take it all off."

Procter & Gamble bought Noxell in 1989 in a $1.4 billion merger, and the 1990s jar was aimed squarely at teenagers. Rebecca Gayheart, born in Hazard, Kentucky in 1971, broke into television in a series of Noxzema commercials that began airing in 1991 and made her "the Noxzema Girl" through 1993, a face familiar enough that Cher Horowitz could invoke it in Clueless. Gayheart went on to Beverly Hills, 90210 in 1995, Scream 2 in 1997, the lead in Urban Legend in 1998 and Jawbreaker in 1999.

The brand kept changing hands after that: Alberto-Culver bought it from P&G in 2008, Unilever acquired Alberto-Culver in 2010, and it is now marketed by Evermark, in a blue plastic jar instead of the glass one.