ChapStick is a
brand name
A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create a ...
of
lip balm
Lip balm or lip salve is a wax-like substance applied topically to the lips to moisturize and relieve chapped or dry lips, angular cheilitis, stomatitis, or cold sores. Lip balm often contains beeswax or carnauba wax, camphor, cetyl alcohol, l ...
manufactured by
Haleon
Haleon plc is a British multinational consumer healthcare company with headquarters in Weybridge, England. It is the largest consumer healthcare business in the world, with brands including Sensodyne toothpaste, Panadol and Advil painkillers a ...
and used in many countries worldwide. It is intended to help treat and prevent
chapped lips, hence the name. Many varieties also include sunscreen in order to prevent sunburn.
Due to its popularity, the term has become a
genericized trademark
A generic trademark, also known as a genericized trademark or proprietary eponym, is a trademark or brand name that, because of its popularity or significance, has become the generic term for, or synonymous with, a general class of products ...
. It popularly refers to any lip balm contained in a lipstick-style tube and applied in the same manner as lipstick. However, the term is still a
registered trademark
The registered trademark symbol, , is a typographic symbol that provides notice that the preceding word or symbol is a trademark or service mark that has been registered with a national trademark office. A trademark is a symbol, word, or wo ...
, with rights exclusively owned by Haleon.
Its main competitors in the US,
Carmex
Carmex is a brand of lip balm produced by Carma Laboratories, Inc. It is sold in jars, sticks, and squeezable containers.
History
Carma Laboratories, Inc. began in Wisconsin in the early 1930s when Alfred Woelbing began experimenting with creat ...
and
Blistex, also use the popular lipstick-style tube for their lip balm products. In Iceland and in the United Kingdom, the product's main competitor is
Lypsyl, made by
Novartis
Novartis AG is a Swiss-American multinational pharmaceutical corporation based in Basel, Switzerland and
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States (global research).name="novartis.com">https://www.novartis.com/research-development/research-loc ...
Consumer Health and distributed in similar packaging to ChapStick.
History

In the early 1880s,
Charles Browne Fleet, a physician and pharmacological thinker from
Lynchburg, Virginia
Lynchburg is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. First settled in 1757 by ferry owner John Lynch, the city's population was 79,009 at the 2020 census. Located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mount ...
, invented ChapStick as a lip balm product. The handmade product, which resembled a wickless candle wrapped in tin foil, was sold locally, and did not have much success.
In 1912, John Morton, also a Lynchburg resident, bought the rights to the product for five dollars. In their kitchen, Mrs. Morton melted the pink ChapStick mixture, cooled it, and cut it into sticks. Their lucrative sales were used to found the Morton Manufacturing Corporation.
In 1935,
Frank Wright, Jr.
Frank Boggs Wright Jr. (18 November 1912 – 21 February 2008) was an American commercial artist whose career extended from the mid-1930s to the late 1990s. A native of Madison Heights, Virginia, he was perhaps best known for designing the Chap ...
, a commercial artist from Lynchburg, Virginia, was commissioned to design the CHET ChapStick logo that is still in use today. He was paid a one-off fee of $15.
In 1963, The A.H. Robins Company acquired ChapStick from Morton Manufacturing Corporation. At that time, only ChapStick Lip Balm regular stick was being marketed to consumers; subsequently, many more varieties have been introduced. This includes ChapStick four flavored sticks in 1971, ChapStick
Sunblock 15 in 1981, ChapStick Petroleum Jelly Plus in 1985, and ChapStick Medicated in 1992.
Robins was purchased by American Home Products (AHP) in 1988. AHP later changed its name to
Wyeth
Wyeth, LLC was an American pharmaceutical company. The company was founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1860 as ''John Wyeth and Brother''. It was later known, in the early 1930s, as American Home Products, before being renamed to Wyeth in ...
. ChapStick was a Wyeth product until 2009, when Wyeth was acquired by Pfizer. Pfizer sold the manufacturing facility in Richmond, Virginia, on October 3, 2011, to Fareva Richmond, who now manufactures and packages ChapStick for Pfizer. In 2019,
GlaxoSmithKline
GSK plc, formerly GlaxoSmithKline plc, is a British Multinational corporation, multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with global headquarters in London, England. Established in 2000 by a Mergers and acquisitions, merger of Gl ...
Consumer Healthcare acquired ChapStick from Pfizer.
Composition
Ingredients commonly include
camphor
Camphor () is a waxy, colorless solid with a strong aroma. It is classified as a terpenoid and a cyclic ketone. It is found in the wood of the camphor laurel ('' Cinnamomum camphora''), a large evergreen tree found in East Asia; and in the k ...
,
beeswax
Beeswax (''cera alba'') is a natural wax produced by honey bees of the genus ''Apis''. The wax is formed into scales by eight wax-producing glands in the abdominal segments of worker bees, which discard it in or at the hive. The hive workers ...
,
menthol
Menthol is an organic compound, more specifically a monoterpenoid, made synthetically or obtained from the oils of corn mint, peppermint, or other mints. It is a waxy, clear or white crystalline substance, which is solid at room temperature and ...
,
petrolatum
Petroleum jelly, petrolatum, white petrolatum, soft paraffin, or multi-hydrocarbon, CAS number 8009-03-8, is a semi-solid mixture of hydrocarbons (with carbon numbers mainly higher than 25), originally promoted as a topical ointment for its he ...
,
phenol
Phenol (also called carbolic acid) is an aromatic organic compound with the molecular formula . It is a white crystalline solid that is volatile. The molecule consists of a phenyl group () bonded to a hydroxy group (). Mildly acidic, it ...
,
vitamin E
Vitamin E is a group of eight fat soluble compounds that include four tocopherols and four tocotrienols. Vitamin E deficiency, which is rare and usually due to an underlying problem with digesting dietary fat rather than from a diet low in vitami ...
,
aloe and
oxybenzone
Oxybenzone or benzophenone-3 or BP-3 (trade names Milestab 9, Eusolex 4360, Escalol 567, KAHSCREEN BZ-3) is an organic compound. It is a pale-yellow solid that is readily soluble in most organic solvents. Oxybenzone belongs to the class of aroma ...
. However, there are many variants of ChapStick, each with its own composition. Due to safety concerns, phenol is banned from use in cosmetic products in the European Union and Canada.
The full list of ingredients in a regular-flavored ChapStick is:
arachidyl propionate,
camphor
Camphor () is a waxy, colorless solid with a strong aroma. It is classified as a terpenoid and a cyclic ketone. It is found in the wood of the camphor laurel ('' Cinnamomum camphora''), a large evergreen tree found in East Asia; and in the k ...
,
carnauba wax
Carnauba (; pt, carnaúba ), also called Brazil wax and palm wax, is a wax of the leaves of the carnauba palm '' Copernicia prunifera'' (synonym: ''Copernicia cerifera''), a plant native to and grown only in the northeastern Brazilian states of ...
,
cetyl alcohol
Cetyl alcohol , also known as hexadecan-1-ol and palmityl alcohol, is a C-16 fatty alcohol with the formula CH3(CH2)15OH. At room temperature, cetyl alcohol takes the form of a waxy white solid or flakes. The name cetyl derives from the whale o ...
, D&C red no. 6 barium lake, FD&C yellow no. 5 aluminum lake, fragrance, isopropyl lanolate,
isopropyl myristate
Isopropyl myristate (IPM) is the ester of isopropyl alcohol and myristic acid.
Uses
Isopropyl myristate is a polar emollient and is used in cosmetic and topical pharmaceutical preparations where skin absorption is desired. It is also used as a tr ...
,
lanolin
Lanolin (from Latin 'wool', and 'oil'), also called wool yolk, wool wax, or wool grease, is a wax secreted by the sebaceous glands of wool-bearing animals. Lanolin used by humans comes from domestic sheep breeds that are raised specifically fo ...
, light
mineral oil
Mineral oil is any of various colorless, odorless, light mixtures of higher alkanes from a mineral source, particularly a distillate of petroleum, as distinct from usually edible vegetable oils.
The name 'mineral oil' by itself is imprecise, ...
,
methylparaben
Methylparaben, also methyl paraben, one of the parabens, is a preservative with the chemical formula CH3(C6H4(OH)COO). It is the methyl ester of ''p''-hydroxybenzoic acid.
Natural occurrences
Methylparaben serves as a pheromone for a variety ...
,
octyldodecanol,
oleyl alcohol
Oleyl alcohol , or ''cis''-9-octadecen-1-ol, is an unsaturated fatty alcohol with the molecular formula or the condensed structural formula . It is a colorless oil, mainly used in cosmetics.
It can be produced by the hydrogenation of oleic ac ...
,
paraffin, phenyl trimethicone,
propylparaben
Propylparaben, the ''n''-propyl ester of ''p''-hydroxybenzoic acid, occurs as a natural substance found in many plants and some insects, although it is manufactured synthetically for use in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and foods. It is a member ...
,
titanium dioxide
Titanium dioxide, also known as titanium(IV) oxide or titania , is the inorganic compound with the chemical formula . When used as a pigment, it is called titanium white, Pigment White 6 (PW6), or CI 77891. It is a white solid that is insoluble ...
, white
wax,
propanol
There are two isomers of propanol.
* 1-Propanol, ''n''-propanol, or propan-1-ol : CH3CH2CH2OH, the most common meaning
*2-Propanol, Isopropyl alcohol
Isopropyl alcohol (IUPAC name propan-2-ol and also called isopropanol or 2-propanol) is a ...
. Its net weight is usually .
When manufactured by Wyeth, Chapstick contained no
paraben
Parabens are a class of widely used preservatives in cosmetic and pharmaceutical products. Chemically, they are a series of parahydroxybenzoates or esters of parahydroxybenzoic acid (also known as 4-hydroxybenzoic acid). Parabens are effectiv ...
s.
Uses
ChapStick functions as both a
sunscreen
Sunscreen, also known as sunblock or sun cream, is a photoprotective topical product for the skin that mainly absorbs, or to a much lesser extent reflects, some of the sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation and thus helps protect against sunbu ...
, available with
SPFs as high as 50, and a skin lubricant to help prevent and protect chafed, chapped, sunburned, cracked, and windburned lips. "Medicated" varieties also contain
analgesics
An analgesic drug, also called simply an analgesic (American English), analgaesic (British English), pain reliever, or painkiller, is any member of the group of Pharmaceutical drug, drugs used to achieve relief from pain (that is, analgesia or p ...
to relieve sore lips.
Marketing

ChapStick is sometimes available in special flavors developed in connection with marketing partners such as Disney (as in cross-promotions with ''
Winnie the Pooh
Winnie-the-Pooh, also called Pooh Bear and Pooh, is a fictional anthropomorphic teddy bear created by English author A. A. Milne and English illustrator E. H. Shepard.
The first collection of stories about the character was the book '' Wi ...
'' or the movie ''
Cars
A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport people instead of goods.
The year 1886 is regarded as t ...
'') or with
charitable causes such as
breast cancer awareness
Breast cancer awareness is an effort to raise awareness and reduce the stigma of breast cancer through education on symptoms and treatment. Supporters hope that greater knowledge will lead to earlier detection of breast cancer, which is assoc ...
, in which 30¢ is donated for each stick sold (as in the
Susan G. Komen Pink Pack). The Flava-Craze line is marketed to preteens and young teens, with colorful applicators and "fun" flavors such as Grape Craze and Blue Crazeberry.
US
Olympic
Olympic or Olympics may refer to
Sports
Competitions
* Olympic Games, international multi-sport event held since 1896
** Summer Olympic Games
** Winter Olympic Games
* Ancient Olympic Games, ancient multi-sport event held in Olympia, Greece b ...
skier
Suzy Chaffee starred in ChapStick television commercials in which she dubbed herself "Suzy ChapStick". Another very famous ChapStick advertisement includes basketball legend
Julius Erving
Julius Winfield Erving II (born February 22, 1950), commonly known by the nickname Dr. J, is an American former professional basketball player. Erving helped legitimize the American Basketball Association (ABA), and he was the best-known player ...
(commonly known as Dr. J) naming himself Dr. ChapStick and telling young children about the great things that ChapStick can do.
Diana Golden, a U.S. Olympic Gold medal winning skier and the 1988 Ski Racing Magazine and
United States Olympic Committee
The United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) is the National Olympic Committee and the National Paralympic Committee for the United States. It was founded in 1895 as the United States Olympic Committee, and is headquartered in Col ...
female skier of the year, was also a spokesperson for ChapStick. Former ski racer
Picabo Street
Picabo Street (; born 3 April 1971) is an American former World Cup alpine ski racer and Olympic gold medalist. She won the super G at the 1998 Winter Olympics and the downhill at the 1996 World Championships, along with three other Olympic a ...
, for a time, was seen on television commercials as one of the company's endorsers.
References
External links
ChapStick– Official website
ChapStick UK– Official UK website
{{Haleon
Brands that became generic
Lips
Skin care brands
Haleon