"Barbo Hair Treatment" bottle

[peggysz]

Hello, I often read on this site but rarely chat. I've got this Barbo Bottle with a really nice label, and Ive been looking for information about the company or anything about this bottle. Of course, the label is the best part. Without that , it would be another slick. I guess. So please would you all look at my photos, and tell me anything you may know about this. Thank you so much! ~Peggy

 

[Sitcoms]

Hi Peggy, always love old paper label bottles; something I never find in tact while dump digging. I couldn't find much on the specifics of the company (like when it was founded, etc.), but it seems that the product was a sham and did not work.

I was able to find an article in a 1919 edition of "Michigan Food and Drug Monthly" that goes into detail about how the product actually probably destroyed people's hair rather than help it. The article posts two ads put forward by the Barbo Manufacturing Co., then goes to explain that they simply were appealing to gullible people, noting that the company specifically stated that they "assume no liability for the results of its use by anyone".

I assume your bottle is from around the time this article was written; they post the label of the bottle in this article and it matches the one on your bottle. The article then goes on to state that the composition contained lead acetate, which was more likely to ruin the hair of the person than help it. Here's a picture of the article and a link:

Michigan Food and Drug Monthly

books.google.com

 

[Sitcoms]

Hello, I often read on this site but rarely chat. I've got this Barbo Bottle with a really nice label, and Ive been looking for information about the company or anything about this bottle. Of course, the label is the best part. Without that , it would be another slick. I guess. So please would you all look at my photos, and tell me anything you may know about this. Thank you so much! ~Peggy

To add, even though the product didn't work, it manage to stick around in the market. One of the only other things I can find is a portion of "The Forty-Seventh Report on Food Product and Thirty-Fifth Report on Drug Products, 1942", produced by the Connect Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven, CT. While this article doesn't go in to whether or not the product worked, it did review the ingredients; free sulphur, lead acetate, bay rum, and glycerine. Here's a link to that article; its on the page labelled "463" https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/CAES/DOCUMENTS/Publications/Bulletins/B475pdf.pdf

 

[peggysz]

WOW!

To add, even though the product didn't work, it manage to stick around in the market. One of the only other things I can find is a portion of "The Forty-Seventh Report on Food Product and Thirty-Fifth Report on Drug Products, 1942", produced by the Connect Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven, CT. While this article doesn't go in to whether or not the product worked, it did review the ingredients; free sulphur, lead acetate, bay rum, and glycerine. Here's a link to that article; its on the page labelled "463" https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/CAES/DOCUMENTS/Publications/Bulletins/B475pdf.pdf

you certainly found a whole lot more than I did. Lol. I really appreciate this! Ive got to read all of it. Thank you!!