ChapStick

ChapStick is a lip baum intended to treat dry lips and to provide sun protection for lips. ChapStick is a brand name for lip balm manufactured by Pfizer Consumer Healthcare and used in Australia, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Colombia, Italy, Pakistan, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Argentina, the United Kingdom and the United States.

ChapStick's popularity, the term has become a genericized trademark, used to refer to any lip balm contained in a lipstick-style tube and applied in the same manner as lipstick. However, the term is still a registered trademark, with rights exclusively owned by Wyeth.

The History of ChapStick
In the early 1880s, Dr. Charles Browne Fleet, a physician and pharmacological thinker from Lynchburg, Virginia, invented ChapStick as a lip balm. It was sold locally, but did not have much success.

In 1912, John Morton bought the rights to the product for five dollars. In their family kitchen, Mrs. Morton melted the pink ChapStick mixture, cooled it, and cut in into sticks. Their lucrative sales were used to found the Morton Manufacturing Corporation.

In the early 1930s, Frank Wright, Jr., a commercial artist from Lynchburg, VA, was commissioned to design the CHET ChapStick logo that is still in use today. He was paid a flat fee of $15.

In 1963, The A.H. Robins Company acquired ChapStick from Morton Manufacturing Corporation. At that time, only ChapStick Lip Balm regular stick was being marketed to consumers; subsequently, many more varieties have been introduced. This includes ChapStick 4 flavored sticks in 1971, ChapStick SPF 15 in 1981, ChapStick Petroleum Jelly Plus in 1985, and ChapStick Medicated in 1992.

Robins was purchased by American Home Products (AHP) in 1988. AHP later changed its name to Wyeth. ChapStick was a Wyeth product until 2009, when Wyeth was acquired by Pfizer.

Ingredients
ChapStick is composed ofcamphor, beeswax, menthol, petrolatum, phenol, vitamin E, and aloe.ChapStick Original contains the controversial ingredient Oxybenzone. Each variant of ChapStick is made up of its own individual formula.

The full list of ingredients in a regular-flavoured ChapStick are as follows:

arachidyl propionate, camphor, carnauba wax, cetyl alcohol, D&C red no. 6 barium lake, FD&C yellow no. 5 aluminum lake, fragrance, isopropyl lanolate, isopropyl myristate, lanolin, light mineral oil, methylparaben, octyldodecanol, oleyl alcohol, paraffin, phenyl trimethicone, propylparaben, titanium dioxide, white wax, propanol.

Uses
ChapStick can be used as both a sunscreen, available with SPFs as high as 35, and a skin moisturizer and lubricant to help prevent and protect chafed, chapped, sunburned, cracked, and windburned lips.

"Medicated" varieties also contain analgesics to relieve sore lips.

ChapStick tubes with hidden microphones played a role in the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s.