I was watching some old TV ad clips from the 1950’s-it seems that ad men back then were fond of pointing out the new “revolutionary” ingredients in the stuff they were hawking. Like toothpaste-one brand was touted as containing something called “GL-70”. My question: were these mysterious ingredients actually patented? This would prevent copying, even if the “GL-70” was something like distilled H2O.
According to Wikipedia, the composition of GL-70 was never revealed (and may not have even existed as an actual chemical compound). GL-70 was probably trademarked, but it’s likely it wasn’t patentable because it was just a name for an existing compound. Thus, if GL-70 were distilled water, Gleem could continue to advertise GL-70 (and no one else could).
A similar case was Crest Tootpaste with Flouristan. Flouristan was the chemical stannous flouride and other toothpastes were free to use it (and did). But since Crest trademarked “Flouristan,” others couldn’t say it was in their toothpaste. Flouristan sounded like something new and different, while “stannous flouride” sounded stodgy and old.
“New Vitalis with V-7 keeps your hair neat all day, the greaseless way.”
“Propylene glycol” doesn’t lend itself to memorable copy like that.