Pine-Sol

Pine-Sol is a registered trade name of the Clorox Company for a line of household cleaning products, used to clean grease and heavy soil stains. Pine-Sol was based on pine oil when it was created in 1929 and during its rise to national popularity in the 1950s. By 2016, Pine-Sol products sold in stores no longer contained pine oil, which was done to reduce costs, but as of 2022 the ingredient has since been reintroduced. History Pine-Sol detergent was invented by Harry A. Cole of Jackson, Mississippi, in 1929. In 1948, entrepreneur Robert Earnest "Dumas" Milner acquired Magnolia Chemical, the Jackson, Mississippi supplier of Pine-Sol. Milner put Howard S. Cohoon in charge of the firm which had six employees: three salesmen and three who produced the product. In the following five years Cohoon turned the company into a multi-million dollar operation selling 20 million bottles throughout the United States and 11 other nations. Cohoon modernized the operation from manual bottling and labeling to full automation. According to Cohoon, at that time pine oil was produced from old yellow pine tree stumps which were previously regarded as worthless. After Pine-Sol went national, Milner Company began a national radio advertising campaign starting with the Robert Q. Lewis show in 1952. By 1955 the Milner company had purchased Perma-Starch, of Illiopolis, Illinois, and by 1959 Milner had grown to a $1.5 million daytime TV advertising package and a $100,000 radio buy shared between Pine-Sol and Perma-Starch.