Vicks Vaporub
My obsession with Vicks is hard to pin down. Like everyone, I’ve actually used it since I was a kid. I have horrible sinuses, so I still use a dab about every night. In the last few years, I’ve taken to collecting very old bottles of this stuff, which is fascinating, chemically speaking, because even when the stuff inside is 40 and 50 years old, it still looks and smells the same.
I also collect foreign samples when I can. The hardest one to get was the Polish one since pharmacies in Poland at least are not self serve. Literally everything they carry from drugs to Band Aids are behind the counter, so you have to ask for exactly what you want every time you need something. At the time, I spoke no Polish and the lady behind the counter spoke no English. So you can image me miming what I intend to do with this product, so she can figure out what I need. Since I’ve been collecting Vicks, I have become an inadvertent historian on it and the Richardson Vicks company.
Check out the Vicks Virtual Viewseum below to see the highlights of my collection.