Glass Wax vanishes while Mr. Bubble carries on

Dagnabbit: You might be an old fogey if you still have Gold Seal Glass Wax in the classic pink can tucked away on some forgotten shelf or in a neglected storage compartment.

Loyal Glass Wax fans insist that no product ever invented has done a better job of cleaning glass and mirrors, silverware, metal appliances or chrome automobile bumpers.

Do you recall the print advertisements of the early 1950s that featured “Goldie,” the Gold Seal seal? She wore the Gold Seal medallion around her neck, and said: “Sponge it on, wipe it off; it’s quick and easy.”

Cleaning windows became a breeze. Just a few dribbles of the pink goop applied to a damp sponge could cover a lot of glass. When it dried to a white haze, simply swoosh it off with a dry cloth and magically, the window pane was left sparkling clean.

The Glass Wax product was introduced to the public by Harold Schafer of Bismarck, N.D., owner of Gold Seal Products Co., a floor wax business he started in 1942. Tom Hintgen, a columnist with The Daily Journal of Fergus Falls, Minn., wrote that Schafer was attending a conference in Minneapolis in 1945 where he learned about “an emulsion that was used in World War II to clean aircraft windshields.”

The next morning, Hintgen reported, Schafer “ordered two boxcars of the emulsion. It came in three colors – pink, blue and green. Schafer picked pink.” Schafer’s Glass Wax was an instant success and went into national distribution in 1948.

Linda M. Young, author of HolidayHarbour blog, may have started the conversation about “whatever happened to good old Glass Wax?” In one of her essays, she reminisced about past Christmas seasons when Glass Wax offered sets of holiday stencils to make “window wonderland” images as decorations. The 59-cent stencil packets contained 34 designs.

Dave Jacobs responded online to Young, adding a bit of Gold Seal history. He said the “phenomenal success of Glass Wax was repeated again” by Gold Seal in the 1950s with the introduction of Snowy Bleach and in 1961 with the rollout of Mr. Bubble.

Glass Wax, Snowy Bleach and Mr. Bubble each rose to become the top product in the world in their respective categories, Jacobs reported.

Gold Seal scored a marketing trifecta. Randy Hoffman, author of the BisManCafe blog, specializes in Bismarck history. He wrote: “At its height, Gold Seal had annual revenues of $50 million, positioning it as the largest privately held business based in North Dakota.”

The Gold Seal family business was sold to Airwick Industries of Wayne, N.J., in 1986. Soon thereafter, Airwick was acquired by a British company, Reckitt & Colman. The business eventually morphed into the Reckitt Benckiser Group (RBG) in 1999. RBG silently discontinued production of Glass Wax in 2002.

Jacobs said he figures Reckitt Benckiser deep-sixed Glass Wax without a proper burial because the product contained petroleum distillates. The Glass Wax containers were imprinted with messages that cautioned consumers that contents are “harmful or fatal if swallowed.”

“Even so, I can’t imagine anyone with half an ounce of common sense who would ever have a problem in using the product,” Jacobs commented.

The Schafer family’s Gold Seal legacy, however, continues to live on through the popularity of Mr. Bubble. The product was launched in 1961. Very rapidly, Mr. Bubble became a favorite bath-time tub buddy in millions of American homes.

Mr. Bubble promised to “bubble kids clean and leave no bathtub ring.” The tagline was: “Mr. Bubble makes getting clean almost as much fun as getting dirty. Kids come out so clean, their own mothers don’t recognize them.”

Since 2008, the Mr. Bubble brand has lived on as a member of the family of personal care products owned by The Village Company (TVC) of Chaska, Minn., a privately held enterprise. Its headquarters is about 25 miles southwest of Minneapolis.

On Mr. Bubble’s 50th birthday in 2011, the character was updated in an attempt to become “more animated and appealing to today’s kids, while still maintaining the nostalgia that parents know and love,” wrote Lisa McTigue Price for Packaging Digest magazine. “A dramatic change from the original pink bubble with white outlines, the new Mr. Bubble was created with brighter pinks and deeper dimensions.”

The “refreshed” Mr. Bubble seems to be quite content at TVC, complementing the diversified Sesame Street brand of children’s personal care products. Imagine how much fun you can have in the tub with Cookie Monster, Elmo and Big Bird all joining Mr. Bubble. “Rub-a-Dub-Dub.”