Vicks is an American brand of over-the-counter

medication Medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal product, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to medical diagnosis, diagnose, cure, treat, or preventive medicine, prevent disease. Drug therapy (pharmaco ...

s owned by the American companies

Procter & Gamble The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is an American multinational consumer goods corporation headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was founded in 1837 by William Procter and James Gamble. It specializes in a wide range of personal health/con ...

and

Kaz Incorporated Kaz, Inc. is a Marlborough, Massachusetts–based manufacturer and distributor of health care products. History Max Katzman invented the first electric vaporizer (original U.S. patent no. 1,628,784, issued May 17, 1927) and, in 1926, he founded ...

. Vicks manufactures NyQuil and its sister medication, DayQuil as well as other medications in the "Quil" line. Vicks also produces the Formula 44 brand of cough medicines, cough drops, Vicks VapoRub, and a number of inhaled breathing treatments. For much of its history, Vicks products were manufactured by the family-owned company Richardson-Vicks, Inc., based in

Greensboro, North Carolina Greensboro (; ) is a city in Guilford County, North Carolina, United States, and its county seat. At the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, its population was 299,035; it was estimated to be 307,381 in 2024. It is the List of municipalitie ...

. Richardson-Vicks, Inc., was eventually sold to Procter & Gamble in 1985. Procter & Gamble divested the Vicks VapoSteam U.S. liquid inhalant business and sold it to Helen of Troy in 2015. In German-speaking countries (apart from Switzerland), Vicks is known as ''Wick'' to avoid brand blundering, as "Vicks" when pronounced in German would sound similar to a vulgar word.

History

In 1890, pharmacist

Lunsford Richardson Lunsford Richardson (December 29, 1854 - August 21, 1919) was an American pharmacist from Selma, North Carolina, and the founder of Vick Chemical Company (which became Vicks, Richardson Vicks Inc.). Early life Lunsford Richardson was born in 1 ...

of Selma, North Carolina, took over the retail drug business of his brother-in-law Dr. John Vick, of

. After Dr. John Vick saw an ad for ''Vick's Seeds'', Lunsford Richardson began marketing ''Vick’s Family Remedies''. The basic ingredients of the range of products included castor oil,

liniment Liniment (from , meaning "to smear, Anointing, anoint"), also called embrocation and heat rub, is a medicated topical preparation for application to the skin. Some liniments have a viscosity similar to that of water; others are lotion or balm; s ...

, and 'dead shot' vermifuge. The most popular remedy was ''

Croup Croup ( ), also known as croupy cough, is a type of respiratory infection that is usually caused by a virus. The infection leads to swelling inside the trachea, which interferes with normal breathing and produces the classic symptoms of "bar ...

and Pneumonia Salve'', which was first compounded in 1891, in Greensboro. It was introduced in 1905 with the name Vick's Magic Croup Salve and rebranded as

VapoRub Vicks VapoRub is a mentholated Topical medication, topical ointment, part of the Vicks brand of Over-the-counter substance, over-the-counter medications owned by the American consumer goods company Procter & Gamble. VapoRub is intended for use C ...

in 1912 at the instigation of H. Smith Richardson, Lunsford's oldest son, who had gained valuable sales and marketing experience while working for a period in New York and Massachusetts after attending college. Smith Richardson assumed the presidency of the company in 1919 upon his father's death. Lunsford Richardson sent out millions of samples of Vicks VapoRub, "inadvertently" inventing the concept of junk mail, say North Carolina state historians. The flu epidemic of 1918 increased sales of VapoRub from $900,000 to $2.9 million in just one year. In 1931, the company began selling cough drops. In 1948, Edward Mabry became president of Vicks, then known as the Vick Chemical Company. In 1952, Vicks began selling cough syrup, and in 1959 they introduced Sinex Nasal Spray. The company began selling NyQuil in 1966. The parent company became Richardson-Merrell and then in 1982 divided into prescription drug company Merrell Dow (sold to Dow Chemical Company) and over-the-counter drug company Richardson-Vicks which retained the Vicks brand. The company archives (including related personal records of the Richardson family) from at least about 1920 or so, up to the 1985 sale to Procter & Gamble, are housed at the

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC, UNC–Chapel Hill, or simply Carolina) is a public university, public research university in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States. Chartered in 1789, the university first began enrolli ...

. In March 2015, Procter & Gamble sold the Vicks VapoSteam U.S. liquid inhalant business to Helen of Troy Ltd.

References

External links

Vicks brand website

Vicks brand website - Canada

Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Wick

Vick Chemical Company
at the ''Encyclopedia of North Carolina''
Procter & Gamble Sells Vicks VapoStream U.S. Business to Helen of Troy
Wall Street Journal {{Procter & Gamble Procter & Gamble brands Ointments Products introduced in 1890