Why did we buy that stuff anyway? It had no sunscreen properties. There was just Coppertone back then. They had 3 products. The lotion, Oil - for that deepfried look, and Coccoa Butter - for deepfried lips, knees and elbows (I think later, they added nipples to the list). You could use it on your whole body, but good luck trying to wash it off.
If you had a tendency to burn, you had 3 choices. You could stay in the shade, you could use baby oil mixed with iodine. The babyoil /iodine combo gave no protection from the sun either, but since it was medicated, everybody thought it must be better than plain oil. Or, you could go ahead and burn, then use Solarcaine for 3 days while trying not to let anything touch your skin.
Later, Coppertone got some competition from Hawaiian Tropic. Instead of being greased up with regular oil, you could coat your skin with a thick, oily syrup AND smell like bananas!
My sister would pay me to pick the ants off of her, while she was tanning. You might get ants on you, no matter what product you use. But Hawaiian Tropic attracted them, and once they came in contact with it, they would die a slow, miserable death. Struggling to clean the vile goo from their bodies, while coating another bodypart in the process. I nicknamed my sister’s bellybutton, The Death Pool.
Yeah. Good times… gooood tiiiimes!
As a kid, I would be out by the pool/pond/lake/river for 12 hours straight, get a sunburn, peel, get another sunburn, peel, etc. etc. until by the end of the summer, I had a deep, brown, tan scar over my entire body.
That was considered normal.
It is amazing kids lived past the age of 14 back then.
… but if you used sunscreen, you wouldn’t tan! Duh! :rolleyes:
I loved the Pina Colada oil. Made me hungry.
And where’s that good old kiddy porn?
Now, come on! Those of you past a certain age have to admit that it took a lot longer to burn. Didn’t it?
Remember how great your tan looked with Hawaiian Tropic oil on top of it? I used that stuff way after there was no ozone layer keeping me from burning.
well,… duh…, they called it suntan lotion for a reason.
A sunscreen was an umbrella.
Remember what a toehead is? The kid with the white hair, not blonde, white hair. And skin the same color. Used white-out to cover blemishes.
That was me.
It took me about 10 minutes to turn beet red. I cannot remember a single summer where I did not get multiple sunburns. Plus I was hyper-allergic to poison ivy. In other words, I must be on layer 3,548,445 of skin by now.
My most memorable sunburn, was when I was 8. Our whole clan spent the day at the lake. I didn’t know how to swim, so spent the day on one of those big black inner tubes. I was to little to lay across it, so I stayed inside the hole with my arms draped over it. The sun bounced off the water in the hole, and sizzled my armpits! My back was burnt too, but I barely noticed it. I had to keep my arms raised for a week.
I seem to recall that when sunscreen first started to get popular they put the SPF on bottles of regular lotion, too, and it was about 2 for most of them. (Possibly they still do this, but I don’t buy tanning lotion anymore.)
Heck, I’m part Itallian with slightly olive skin and I got multiple burns every summer too.
<continuing hijack>
Hyper-allergenic to poisin ivy?!? I once had 13 doctors examine me. 3 professionally, (my doc called in two others to consult) and another 10 just curious because word had spread throughout the hospital about the kid with the worst case ever seen!
</ch>
<hijack one-upmanship>I once got a mean case of poison ivy in December, sledding down the hill; they figure my arm brushed against the root of a plant. And then I got a shot one year that was supposed to make me immune for a season. The day after the shot I was in the hospital due to the rash that covered my entire body, including hand palms and bottom of feet and in my ears and nose and my scalp. Hell, sunburns were a walk in the park compared to poison ivy.<end of hijack one-upmanship>
Back to suntan lotion…anybody know of a really good suntan lotion with the highest sunblock that I can use going in and out of a pool during the day, without the need of multiple applications? Also - prefer the spray-on type as I don’t like the feel of lotion on my hands.
Any suggestions will be helpful as, in a case of perfect timing, it is supposed to get into the low 90’s this weekend and I am hoping to get into the pool.
DMark, I use Banana Boat, Active Sport Spray, SPF 25. It’s water and sweat resistant.
You should get one formulated for children. I started buying that kind when my daughter was old enough to start going to the beach, and it’s great: high SPF, waterproof, etc. You can get a spray or a stick (that one has Barbie on it, but I have some at home that doesn’t) if you don’t want to rub it on. Last summer I even found a spray with a bonus stick for the face.
OK…thank you Hillbilly Queen for your suggestion, but as a Gay man, I simply HAVE TO get that Barbie stick to place next to my towel! And it sounds like it is one SPF away from wearing a flannel shirt, which is exactly what I need.
Ooops, where are my manners? Thank you Susie Derkins for sharing!
No problem! And…heehee. 
I used to use Bullfrog when I was on the swimming and diving teams in high school. As long as you blotted instead of rubbing when you dried off, it would last a long, long time. I was in and out of the water for 3 hours every day during practice. Even during day-long meets I’d only need to reapply it two, maybe three times.
“Towhead.” It’s spelled “towhead.” Not “toehead.”
I have had great results with Coppertone Sport SPF 48.
It is a lotion, but it is not slimy like lotion. It stays on in spite of sweating or swimming as promised. When we were in Puerto Vallarta, it kept me sunburn-free, except when I would miss a tiny spot, then I could see just how fried I would have been all over without the sunscreen.