How The Bachelor Does Laundry With Salvo Tabs

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Has frigilux seen this yet?

I bet he'd be all over these if they were available today?
 
Salvo Tabs Appear On FleaPay Often Enough

And someone is buying them up; why one does not know. Even when new the things IIRC tended to resemble hockey pucks and were nearly as insoluble as well. *LOL*

That Mr. Cox is shown putting the things on top of the wash is pretty brave.
 
Ben, I have been on the planet so long I actually remember that commercial! Perhaps it did foster my current fondness of the pod format.

Thanks for posting it, Launderess! Can always count on you for a gem from the archives.
 
Having used a couple of boxes of Salvo tabs, I can attest that you need to use MORE bleach, not less...by themselves, they hardly clean at all! And anything less than hot water and you'll have half of the "hockey puck" left at the end of the rinse cycle.

They are really low sudsing, though, so P&G got that right. They might be one of the sources of the notion that you need lots of suds to get clothes clean. I can imagine people trying them and jumping to that conclusion, anyway.
 
What about lever's concorrential product..."Vim"...
Salvo looked like was more advertised than this one, and also their commercials looked better structired in advertising all the "supposed" qualities they should have had...
Not only whitest whites...

Even though,their latest ones, ie the ones calling them "dirt bombs" were not much liked...from what it seems....

 
We used both Salvo and Vim and when new, in the early mid-sixties, they gave very good results. My mother was not one to be satisfied with partly clean laundry. Of course, our water heater was set to 160F.
 
I remember my mom using these for a while in the Westinghouse FL. She usually would break them in two, unless it was for really dirty items.

Seems like she did have trouble with them disolving, as I remember an old canning jar that she put them in with hot water to disolve if she wasn't doing a hot wash.
 
Vim

Have a NOS box of those tablets myself, but the box is "newer" looking or maybe just better preserved. Have not tried them yet because between the vintage All (with three B's) and Surf ( for stinky laundry) have two boxes of vintage detergents opened already.

Need to either join a step program or have a yard sale! *LOL*

From my limited research VIM tabs were introduced twice to the market and neither was a resounding success.
 
 
We used Salvo for a short time, it did have issues with dissolving.  Vim was unknown to me until it was first mentioned on AW.
 
Cannot Remember The Whole Story

But Lever Bros. first attempt at a powdered low foaming laundry detergent, and it failed horribly and was promptly withdrawn from market. Housewives complained the stuff turned to solid bricks inside the box. This was before Monsanto and Lever Brothers began playing patty-hands in aid of the latter acquiring the former's "All" detergent brand, so was around 1954 I should say.

LB later reintroduced "VIM" as tablets in the early 1960's, but again the thing never really took off for the same reasons as Salvo. Housewives did not really warm to premeasured detergent in great numbers and VIM suffered from the same solubility problems as Salvo more or less.

 
Then your household was among the lucky I suppose. Complaints about Salvo and Vim tablets not dissolving are documented and found easily enough. As for myself cannot say regarding VIM since the box of tablets is still shrink wrapped as arrived from seller. As one has no immediate plans to open guess the matter will remain a mystery for the foreseeable future.
 
Interesting thing about this television commercial.

Just who was Mr. Cox's target audience? Other bachelors who do their own laundry? Shouldn't think that market was so vast in the 1950's or 1960's to warrant a television spot. If the advert was directed at women especially housewives that dig about "better than a wife" certainly would have put a few noses out of joint.

Perhaps there was some sort of latent gay theme going (again hence the "better than a wife" comment.

Either way the commercial is rather an odd duck IMHO. Most television spots for laundry products of the era featured men that directed themselves to ladies/housewives.

If the commercial was done during the run of "Mr. Peepers" series then perhaps it was to emphasize that character's bachelor status (though IIRC he did eventually marry).

Just from a marketing standpoint the thing seems all over the place.
 
Wally Cox was a TV star

...and known for a particular character. It may be that little thought went into the commercial except that it sell the product and be entertaining (which it is).

I saw the pilot episode for Andy Griffith once...it was actually an episode of the Danny Thomas Show, where Danny gets arrested driving through a small town. Anyway, Danny Thomas and Andy Griffith do a commercial for Maxwell House Instant Coffee. The most striking thing about the ad is that Andy Griffith has ENORMOUS armpit stains on his khaki uniform. Probably made at the end of a long day under hot TV lights. It's hard to believe they would actually air anything like that, but they did!
 
OTOH, to compensate, in their other advertising they showed totally or almost the opposite, here you have Wally, a skinny funny kinda "vintage nerd" bachelor not macho at all, nor what you may call "strong man", in their others they had an housewive piloting an airplane and launching a few tablets as if they were bombs, dirt bombs, kinda US Military... (war years indeed).
Don't recall the words she says...gotta find the videos..

Perhaps, I say perhaps and this is the only thing I can actually think about, not sure if it makes much sense, they wanted purposedly to break the rules and schemes, being their detergent actually a sort different detergent being in tablets...
From what it seems they had a bad reputation in dissolving, and probably, powders were cheaper to use...OTOH, they didn't promise anything else but what other detergents in powders used to, lower suds, whitest whites with the plus of being easier to use, but though not dissolving well and not being as convenient if you had to break them in half to get actually the right dose...oh the old good wives not standing to forced overdosing or underdosing! How I love them!
They needed a reason more than easier to use or whitest whites to get people to switch buying tablets instead of powders..... something out of the ordinary, a reason to make them believe they were too retrograde, not directly, but indirectly giving the idea of new and change through advertising, that reflects also in big changes going through the 60s and 70s in terms of "woman role", youth etc...
So a bachelor stating not needing a good wife to take care of him, and an housewife piloting airplanes were that sort of changes that reflected in their detergents advertising...

But again...not sure how much sense or truth in this...just a thought...still very odd and maybe too forced...but this is the only thing I can think about...

[this post was last edited: 6/5/2014-16:58]
 
Did A Bit Of Readin Up On Mr. Cox

Apparently he was very pally with Marlon Brando (MB was one of the persons who received Mr. Cox's ashes after his death and did the scattering), and also like many film/television stars of the era wanted to break out of the roles he was often typecast. While Mr. Peepers made Mr. Cox so to speak but he like close friend Marilyn Monroe (they both were in MM's last film Something Has To Give, well at least before MM was given the push) wanted to do more than just than one type.

You'd be surprised to learn that Mr. Cox apparently was quite butch. Went in for motorbikes and such (something in common with Marlon Brando). Still as Divine says in "Lust In Dust" it's always the little ones that have something to prove..... *LOL*
 
Do not know him, actually never heard of him before.....
The impression it gives me in that advert, is the total opposite of what you describe, also by the way he speaks, but you never judge a book by it's cover, then he is acting so not sure how much of the actual himself there is or is hidden in the Mr Cox role, anyway, in the video,he is not your typical looking "butch"...rather a kinda "mozzarella" to use an italian term.. Cliches are nothing but that, and we all know that and can recognize one, but back then as it is today they plays an important role in advertising... But if he was that butch actually, so, that would have been even better for the hypothetical goal of the advertising, since he would have been the object of desire of many women ...but he doesn't need one to be his wife..I think...
 
Vim and Salvo

My mom tried both Salvo and Vim. Salvo was white and Vim was blue. I liked Vim better because it smelled better. We had a TL Coronado washer. She would start the washer, add the tablets and let them dissolve and then in went the clothes. Vim sort of smelled like ALL at the time, not like the All smells now.
She decided to not use either one because they were expensive, more than a box of Oxydol or Rinso Blue.
 
UK and Vim

Over here Vim was a scouring powder for cleaning the old white sinks or the top of the stove the same as Ajax. I remember it being very gritty and could easily scratch the surface beyond clean to ruined :O)

Austin
 
Over here Vim still is a cleanser powder! They also have a chlorinated version, called Vim Clorex. There is also a multipurpose liquid.
And yes, it has that really a gritty consistency, my granma is fond of it, I am not as I find it not having really got degreasing properties or enough surfactans in it... Also, it has not really a good scent.
I do rather prefer Calinda powder the comcorrential product, that is much more soapy and it has a more fine scouring powder than the previous, also it have a good lemony scent, even though, when it comes of such cleansers my favourite is the american Comet or BKF.
 
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