Chas at Dustbury has a funny post on Shinola shoe wax which, as it happens, was a Detroit product when it finally went toes up long, long ago. Where better for the demise of a product than bankrupt Detroit?
Only folks who still wear leather shoes that need periodic shining are likely to have ever heard of Shinola, despite the old put down phrase of my youth many probably have heard but don’t really understand.
I requested (and hope Chas’s impeccable research will out) a post on Vitalis or Brylcreem. Awful stuff. I used to slather one or the other on my hair in high school back in the 50s when motor oil [Vitalis] or bacon grease [Brycreem] was the only choice of hair products and the conformity of teenage “cool” demanded one or the other.
I still recall with a shudder the way the residue used to slide down my forehead and neck when the temperature rose above eighty degrees. Talk about poop. No one was more grateful than I when, in the 70s blow-dry became the norm. Followed, for those of us at a certain age, by hair spray.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
A little dab will do you! Don’t forget Dippity-Do, for hair that would turn a 50 cal.
Dippidy-Do was for girls.
Unfortunately not according to my grandmother.
The male version of Dippity-Do was Butch. Identical, just labeled differently.
And yes, I remember the ad campaign that announced the death of Brylcream: “the wet head is dead!”
Nobody could sell anything called Dippity-Do to hetero males of the 1950s. ‘Sides, I remember the ads with the women fussing with their hair.
Butch? That’s funny. Butch is a contemporary identifier for the masculine side of a lesbian relationship, often denoted by extremely short hair and rolled up sleeves. Sometimes also applied to extremely masculine (at least in appearance) gay men.
The wet head is dead rings a bell. Wasn’t so much wet, though, as greasy as all get out. Even reflected light, as I recall. Good riddance.
“Nobody could sell anything called Dippity-Do to hetero males of the 1950s. ‘” I know, but when my grandmother sat me, I was her guinea pig for her Hollywood fantasies and all she had was Dippity- Doo’ scarred for life I was.
Gotta watch out for them grandmothers, being two generations behind and all.