Wondering what year they packaged in this wrapper? Maybe an updated version is available in the grocery store, I will check. You can buy it online. It was heralded as a stress reliever and solution to a woman feeling overwhelmed by her life. “Calgon, take me away!”
Our custodian, Dan, found a case of this product and not sure what year the packaging is from. I meant to look and see if it had a zip code on it as I used to find items in the art room pre 1964 without a zip code. They still sell this stuff when I went to look it up in a search. I guess I am out of touch.
At first I thought this was just for the washing machine but it says “bathtub ring’ .
Here is one vintage commercial touting a similar product that is sure to offend someone with the retro thinking.
Not sure if anyone is still trying to get taken away with Calgon bath but here is one old TV commercial. There is another that is totally non PC that may come to your min and is on YouTube but I won’t link it.
I love these old nostalgic adverts – I wonder what that product was doing to the skin since its’ purpose was to clean the bath 🙂
It’s supposed to be good for skin, preventing soap scum from forming and sticking to it. It largely replaced more alkaline bath salts based on sodium carbonate — until the increased cost of phosphates (as in calgon) caused carbonate to make a comeback in bath salts. But most makers have removed any water softening function from their bath salts — those containing Epsom salts actually harden water — as soapless cleaners like bath gel and body wash, which leave no scum, have become more popular in bathing.
But your point is a sign of the times. As people have become used to specialized (and pseudo-specialized) products, it’s become harder to promote products as multi-purpose. “If this soap does laundry, what must it do to my skin?” “If this is good for skin, how could it clean laundry?” Not realizing we used to use the same soap for both. People might even become reluctant to drink water from a bathroom, as opposed to kitchen, faucet!
I haven’t see this in years. I thought they went out of business. Makes you think of other old ads.
BE ENCOURAGED! BE BLESSED!
If only relieving stress was that easy.
What a funny flashback, thanks for the laugh. Simple solution to all your cares…
CALGON ??!! wow I have missed it. Thanks for letting me know it still exists…..
For those of us of a certain age, we cannot hear the name “Calgon” without also hearing “Take me away!” Thanks for the Blast from the Past, Ruth.
I used to love the smell of it — it made me feel clean and soft!! I think Avon tried to mimic it with Skin So Soft but the only thing it does is leave a horrible bathtub ring PLUS you run the possibility of slipping in the tub because it’s TOO oily!!
That is a great commercial – it wonder if the Calgon really works… 🙂
My birthday is in early February and I received a package containing Calgon body cream and Calgon body mist. Both products products say “Take me away” under the Calgon name.
One of my university classes had us study advertising to make conclusions about society and our roles. This one sure says volumes!! xx
When I am stressin’ I still say “Calgon, take me away …” So, that’s how memorable it was and that’s a home run in the marketing world!
I remember those commercials! I was a small kid at the time, but the woman’s drama clearly made an impression on me. 🙂 (This post also reminded me of a cleaning commercial I saw a year or two ago that was HILARIOUS! It’s a bit risque, though – so I’ll leave it to you to find it on YouTube if you want to see it. Just search “Method Shiny Suds” – and you have been warned.) 🙂
The funny thing to me is that a decade earlier, Calgon had a TV ad for the same products using exactly the same theme — stress relief — but it never created a meme like the one you’re thinking of. It showed a lady in overcranked (comically fast motion) film packing a suitcase, while the voice over said, “Next time you think you need an ocean cruise…” And she’s just packed the box of bubble bath, and the film slows to normal speed as she instead takes the box out and sags into the suds to the sound of a strings-and-brass slide.
It’s just like the way Wendy’s had a “Where’s the beef?” commercial with an elderly male actor that nobody but me took note of, but then Clara Peller became famous in the role. Who can figure these things?
Pingback: Day 334 | Three Daily Delights
You can get another clue to when that box dates from by looking for a statement of phosphate content. However, I’m pretty sure from the box design that it would’ve been after such a statement started appearing on it. The photo shows a caution statement against eye irritation (and possibly ingestion), which would’ve appeared after part of the phosphate was replaced by more alkaline carbonate and/or sesquicarbonate.
Calgon originated as a photographer’s slang in German for sodium hexametaphosphate, and had many applications as a nonprecipitating and innocuous water softener, including as you see laundry and bathing, although its biggest volume use was in preventing boiler scale. Calgon Corporation formed in Pittsburgh to market it, and applied it as a trademark to various products (including Calgonite machine dishwashing detergent), although calgon with a lower case “c” could still be applied generically to the original substance. In the early 1960s they developed a line of bath toiletries that incorporated water softening plus more perfume, but continued to label the regular water softening powder for bathtub as well as washing uses.
Later they spun off “Calgon” as a toiletries trademark that has passed thru other hands, and as part of the deal agreed to stop labeling any of the cleaning-oriented products (basically just the water softening powder) for toiletry use. I think the trademarks are currently owned by Reckitt and Colman on one hand and Benckiser-Beecham on the other, though I may have lost track, though as I say, anybody could sell sodium hexametaphosophate as “calgon” or claim calgon as an ingredient. Due to the legal restrictions imposed on phosphates as fertilizers for algae in sewage, the cleaning products now have little or no phosphate in them anyway, and even the bath salts have much less of them than they used to because of increased prices of phosphate minerals.
So if you’re interested enough, you could probably bracket the time of that box pretty closely via various clues of corporate ownership and addresses, phosphate content, and records of vintage packaging. I’m guessing the late 1970s, maybe 1980s.