Sunday 28 November 2010

Face Each Day With Confidence


This clumsily drawn pamphlet from the 1930s offers the constipated consumer easy access to a whole range of skills and accomplishments that you never knew you needed. The ability to lift a chair by one leg with the use of only one hand may be just the sort of party piece to enhance your social acceptability. If there’s a suspicion about that you are a tedious mediocrity the remedy may be in your own extended hand gripping a chair at every opportunity. Possessing the strength to throw a winsome growing child across the room as shown here is the perfect way to indulge your aversion to children and convince your audience that you’re always good for a laugh. Just keep a smile on your face and all will be well. Smiling isn’t easy if constipation has you in its grip. The laxative power of Beecham’s Pills, a beguiling compound of ginger, aloes and soap, is certain to restore your good humour and transform you into an object of universal admiration.


Beecham’s Pills are no longer on sale but the name persists in use, attached to a range of remedies for the common cold produced by GlaxoSmithKline. As a company, Beecham expanded from its Victorian origins to acquire a large portfolio of famous brands but a series of mergers and takeovers led to the eventual extinction of the business name with its final absorption into GlaxoSmithKline in 2000. One of the great Victorian brands was consigned to commercial oblivion.



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