My Dear, You Smell of B.O.

Lifebuoy Soap Ad – Schenectady Gazette March 13, 1933 (click to enlarge)

“What a kill-joy B.O. is!” says this 1933 Lifebuoy comic strip ad.

“Perhaps its your fault,” says Auntie to Mrs. B.O.

Nothing like being direct.

The Lifebuoy ad warns that B.O. make life miserable for its victims. I like that  it is whispered in parenthesis in case you don’t know that B.O. stands for body odor.

And to add a dramatic flair, B.O. “threatens their jobs, social positions – even their homes!”

Fortunately of course there is a happy ending to the story as normal marital relations will resume now that Lifebuoy has penetrated and purified the pores of Mrs. B.O. removing every trace of body odor.

Lever Brothers came out with Lifebuoy soap in 1895 and the brand is still going strong 120 years later. Though Lifebuoy did not invent the term B.O. for body odor, Odo-Ro-No a deodorant for women came up with the phraseology in 1919, Lifebuoy popularized the saying and made it their own.