How they came up with the name Certs

Matt: Where did Certs get its name? — Rip Van Laer, P.B.

I hope you’re grateful, Rip. Who else would take this question seriously? Warner-Lambert was pretty dumbfounded that we were wasting their time with it, too, when they could be out slaying headaches and subduing sinuses. It took some digging through the corporate archives, but they finally came up with this. Certs is a baby of the Eisenhower years, when one of the best things your product could have was the A-okay from the magazine Good Housekeeping. The “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval,” I think. Warner-Lambert ran their new breath freshener past G.H., they liked it, and some corporate deep thinker came up with the name Certs, for “certified by Good Housekeeping.”Ho, I don’t buy it either, but the spokesmint insists that’s the story. And I suppose it is hokey enough for the ’50s.

As long as I had my foot in Wamer-Lambert’s door, I asked about Retsyn, the secret ingredient each Cert has a drop of. (The ’50s were also big on “secret” ingredients, especially if they involved “space-age technology.”) More shuffling through the files, more strange tales. Before there was Certs, there was Clorets, another Warner-Lambert gift to the world of social correctness. The freshener in Clorets is chlorophyll, a natural product. “Retsyn” is the “ret” from “Clorets” plus “syn” for “synthetic.”