Lady Wildroot Cream Hair Dressing

Wildroot Hair Tonic was introduced by the Wildroot Company, Buffalo, N.Y., in 1911. Trademarked in 1932, the Wildroot brand was eventually bought out by Colgate-Palmolive in 1959. The hair tonic was primarily marketed as a dandruff remedy. Advertisements in the late 1940s and early 1950s asked, "Can your scalp pass the fingernail test?"

This bottle of Cream Hair Dressing is from 1951 through 1953. It was often featured in Nancy Sasser’s "Buy-Lines" and a similar newspaper shoppers’ column called "Jesse’s Notebook" by Jesse de Both. Advertisements suggest Wildroot stopped selling their Lady Wildroot Line around the mid-1950s.

This object is one of over 700 items from Glaser’s Drug Store of Sayre, Pennsylvania. In 1921, Simon Glaser (1860-1936), an immigrant from Russian Poland, established the drug store at 121 West Packer Avenue in Sayre, PA. His son, Sidney Glaser (1899-1992), soon joined him in the business and continued to operate the store until 1961. After retiring, Sidney Glaser retained thousands of products dating from the 1920s – 1960s, including pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, personal care products, and vitamins, and donated many of them to the Smithsonian in 1985.

Currently not on view