DO YOU KNOW OR REMEMBER? [I]

 

A range of items has been used as subject matter for reading /discussion by me in the recent past. During the course of my conversation with some elder persons, quite a few things engaged our time. As is normally the case, these are things of the past and have held their places of pride with many households. Some of them have “lived” with their same old glory; some have undergone name change , some had changes in their market fortunes, some witnessed legal battles, almost all of them had their clientele intact until they chose to wind up on their own. 

As the day begins with dental care, let me start with those items. Times were when tooth pastes had to fight their way into the market, as tooth powders were more popular. Equal number of products from either category was popular, though the total number was far lower as compared to the present day. One interesting feature that comes to mind is manufacturers did not field both paste and powder. For instance the then leader of Toothpastes was FORHANS which never had a “Powder version”. It was a product of respected quality and retained its basic version “brown” till 1990or so where after, had to yield to market pressure for a paste that would liberally froth out while brushing. Thus came, FORHANS –BLUE. These products lived on their merit and had very little backup from media advertisements. Another tooth paste of late 40s was MACLEANS that had a market in many parts of the globe. Another was, KOLYNOS. This was an early product to claim “sparkle” of teeth. Then came,‘COLGATE’ whose powder too was popular. Somewhere in the 1960s came the later dominant BINACA, It was rechristened CIBACA.  There has been a paste popular as NEEM and is still holding its domain. The early market was for “powders”. Some well known names coming to mind are KALIGHAT, NANJANGUD, GOPAL and PYORRHOEA.                            

Of these, the last has opted to spell PYOREA now-a-days. Yet another was FAROOKI from Hyderabad area. I am sure, there would have been much more, serving in distinct areas. Toothbrush brands were not this many. Brush users had the habit of using tongue cleaners; this habit seems to have dwindled.

~Prof. K. Raman