VINTAGE 1920S WHIZ AUTO BODY POLISH WOOD CRATE BOX CAMDEN NEW JERSEY
The R.M. Hollingshead Corporation was a major, established chemical plant in Camden, New Jersey, known for producing lubricants, polishes, and cleaning products under the "Whiz" brand. The company was founded by Richard Milton Hollingshead, and also sold anti-freeze, as well as saddle soap. The brand Whiz was well known for many household products, including early stove cleaners. While it appears the auto body polish is no longer on the market,
we recall that Whiz Hollingshead is famous for something else. Namely a spectacular fire that hit Camden, New Jersey and the inventor of the drive in movie theatre, see history below.
“In 1888, at age twenty, Richard M. Hollingshead Sr. cooked up a homemade recipe for harness dressing on the stove of his parents’merchantzille, NJ kitchen. He ingeniously parlayer that modest beginning into a corporation that would become the largest producer of automotive chemicals and lubricants in the world. The fledgling entrepreneur added leather dressing and polish, stove polish, carriage soap,hoof dressing, castor axle oil, and carriage top dressing to his early line of livery products, thus beginning the first chapter of his American success story.
No sooner had young Hollingshead Sr. built his business model upon maintaining horses and carriages, but, at the beginning of the twentieth century, along came the first noisy, smelly, high-maintenance automobiles. Hollingshead shrewdly observed that the manufacture of the new horseless carriage held great potential for needing new products and he quickly rolled out Whiz brand auto top dressing, auto cushion dressing, and roadside hand cleaner, among others.
During WW1, Hollingshead neatsfoot oil waterproofed shoes, and shoe dubbing helped battle “trench foot.” Whiz axle grease kept the wheels of war rolling while Whiz saddle soap preserved leather.
By 1920 the thriving peacetime Hollingshead enterprise boasted of producing 98 automotive products, in addition to household products such as polishes, soaps and cleaning agents, floor wax, and insecticides.
The Hollingshead corporate ship took many turns as it navigated the changeable economic waters of the last half of the 20th century. As late as the early 1970s, Hollingshead was still the third largest employer in Camden. The Hollingshead name later became associated with Dayco (1969), Classic (1974), and most recently Malco chemical company (1982), of Barberton, OH, which continues to produce Whiz products.” Source: rivertonhistory.com
Measurements: 14” long x 10” wide x 8-3/4” tall
Condition: good for its age, still solid, stamped on both ends.
See image of auto body polish tin in photos, not included.
Great piece for all you Whiz collectors out there!
Some trivia:
“On June 6, 1933, eager motorists park their automobiles on the grounds of Camden Drive-In, the first-ever drive-in movie theater, located on Admiral Wilson Boulevard in Pennsauken, New Jersey.
Park-In Theaters–the term “drive-in” came to be widely used only later–was the brainchild of Richard Hollingshead, a movie fan and a sales manager at his father’s company, Whiz Auto Products, in Camden. Reportedly inspired by his mother’s struggle to sit comfortably in traditional movie theater seats, Hollingshead came up with the idea of an open-air theater where patrons watched movies in the comfort of their own automobiles.
He experimented in the driveway of his own house with different projection and sound techniques, mounting a 1928 Kodak projector on the hood of his car, pinning a screen to some trees, and placing a radio behind the screen for sound. He also tested ways to guard against rain and other inclement weather, and devised the ideal spacing arrangement for a number of cars so that all would have a view of the screen.