Well, we've already taken a nostalgic look at the famous (and very long-running) Esso Blue dealer, but what about Aladdin Pink Paraffin?
A friend of mine who claims to have knowledge about such things, tells me that the main difference between the Esso Blue, Regent Super Green and Aladdin Pink paraffins was simply dye and their respective manufacturing companies. But each claimed superiority over the other - less smelly, less smoky, more popular, etc.
And Esso Blue and Aladdin Pink tried to gain our loyalty by employing nice little cartoon characters to charm us.
Esso Blue, of course, struck gold with the Esso Blue dealer (who at first wasn't called Joe, then was), but Pink Paraffin shuffled about a bit. Two characters it brought us were a dog (see the 1961 newspaper ad above) and a "Pongo" - an elephant-like creature. The name, of course, alluded to the lack of pong with Pink.
3 comments:
My uncle Alan wickham designed the pink pongo.
As a kid I thought it was the best thing ever
Perhaps these two colors came about because in the beginning of the battle between Standard Oil and Shell Oil, Standard's cans were blue and Shell's were red.
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