Two Stories of Uncle John and ChapStick


Story One

Dr. C. D. Fleet, a physician from Lynchburg, Virginia, invented Chapstick or lip balm in the early 1880s.   Fleet made the first Chapstick himself that resembled a small wickless candle wrapped in tin foil.

Morton Manufacturing Corporation - Chapstick

Fleet sold his recipe to fellow Lynchburg resident John Morton in 1912 for five dollars after failing to sell enough of the product to make it worth his continued efforts.  John Morton along with his wife, Florence Massie, started production of the pink Chapstick in their kitchen.  Mrs. Morton melted and mixed the ingredients and then used brass tubes to mold the sticks.  The business was successful and the Morton Manufacturing Corporation was founded on the sales of Chapstick.

In 1963, the A. H. Robbins Company bought the rights to Chapstick lip balm from Morton Manufacturing Corporation. At first, only Chapstick Lip Balm regular stick was available to consumers.  Since 1963, a number of different flavors and types of Chapstick were added:

    1971 - four Chapstick Lip Balm flavored sticks were added
    1981 - Chapstick Sumblock 15 was added
    1985 - Chapstick Petroleum was added.  The current manufacturers of Chapstick is the Wyeth Corporation.  Chapstick is part of the Wyeth Consumer Healthcare Division.

This article can be found at:  http://inventors.about.com/od/cstartinventions/a/chapstick.htm



Story Two

Chapped lips the world over have Dr. C. D. Fleet to thank for their relief. In the early 1880s, he invented a petroleum-based lip balm to combat dry, cracked lips. He called his invention ChapStick. Hopes of success were crushed, however, when he was unable to sell his new product in his hometown of Lynchburg, Virginia. Dr. Fleet sold the rights to his lip balm for $5.00 to a fellow Lynchburg resident named John Morton.

Morton asked his wife to work on manufacturing the lip balm. She melted the pink lip balm mixture on her kitched stove, poured it into a funnel into brass tubes, and then moved the tubes to their porch for cooling. After it had cooled, the lip balm was cut into sticks and put into containers for shipping.

John Morton established the Morton Manufacturing Corporation to market the ChapStick. Up until 1963, Morton Manufacturing only sold Regular ChapsStick Lip Balm but in that year, Morton sold its rights to A. H. Robbins Company, and a number of new products were added. Over the next thirty years, the ChapStick line of lip balms grew to include flavored stocks, ChapStick with sunblock, ChapStick in jelly tubes, medicated ChapStick and even natural ChapStick.

As is to be expected, ChapStick has undergone changes in formula, form, and packaging throughout the years. But the petroleum is still poured into molds, just like it was in the beginning, only now they use modern equipment. No doubt ChapStick will continue to soothe the discomfor of chapped lips long in the future.

This article can be found at:  http://www.riversidegx.com, Press Proof