Keeping your lips looking and feeling healthy is quick and easy with ChapStick® Classics. No wonder it’s America’s favorite lip balm. Wherever you go, whenever you need it, ChapStick® Classics protect to help heal for softer, healthier lips every day. So make sure you’ve always got ChapStick®.

Take your pick of ChapStick® Classic Original, Classic Cherry, Classic Spearmint or Classic Strawberry.

Keeping your lips looking and feeling healthy is quick and easy with ChapStick® Classics. No wonder it’s America’s favorite lip balm. Wherever you go, whenever you need it, ChapStick® Classics protect to help heal for softer, healthier lips every day. So make sure you’ve always got ChapStick®.

Take your pick of ChapStick® Classic Original, Classic Cherry, Classic Spearmint or Classic Strawberry.

In the early 1870s, Dr. Charles Browne Fleet,^[2] a physician and pharmacological tinkerer from Lynchburg, Virginia, invented ChapStick as a lip balm. The handmade product, which resembled a wickless candle wrapped in tin foil, was sold locally, but did not have much success.

In 1912, John Morton, also a Lynchburg resident, bought the rights to the product for five dollars. In their family kitchen, Mrs. Morton melted the pink ChapStick mixture, cooled it, and cut in into sticks. Their lucrative sales were used to found the Morton Manufacturing Corporation.

In 1963, The A. H. Robins Company acquired ChapStick from Morton Manufacturing Corporation. At that time, only ChapStick Lip Balm regular stick was being marketed to consumers; subsequently, many more varieties have been introduced. This includes ChapStick flavored sticks in 1971, ChapStick Sunblock 15 in 1981, ChapStick Petroleum Jelly Plus in 1981, and ChapStick Medicated in 1992. Picabo Street is commonly seen on television commercials as one of the company's endorsers.

ChapStick is a brand name for lip balm manufactured by Wyeth Consumer Healthcare, used in the United States, Australia, Canada, and United Kingdom. It is intended to help treat and prevent chapped lips; hence the name.

Due to ChapStick's popularity, the term has become a genericized trademark, used to refer to any lip balm contained in a lipstick-style tube and applied in the same manner as lipstick. However, the term is still a registered trademark, with rights exclusively owned by Wyeth.

ChapStick comes in several different varieties, each with its own flavor and stylized applicators. Various formulations include the Classics, Moisturizers, Medicated, Flava-Craze, Overnight, and All-Natural.

Chapstick is sometimes available in special flavors developed in connection with marketing partners such as Disney (as in cross-promotions with Winnie the Pooh or the movie Cars) or with causes, such as Breast Cancer Awareness, in which 30¢ is donated for each stick sold,^[1] (as in the "Susan G. Komen Pink Pack"). The "Flava-Craze" line is marketed to children, with colorful applicators and "fun" flavors such as "Grape Craze," "Blue Crazeberry," and "Watermelon Splash."

Any given ChapStick may contain camphor, beeswax, menthol, petrolatum, phenol, Vitamin E, and aloe. However, there are hundreds of variants of ChapStick, each with its own composition. Hundreds of generic lipbalms also exist, each with their own varieties and flavors, meaning there are several thousand Chapstick and Chapstick-like products available to consumers.

Are Lip Balms Addictive?

Excerpted from the Australian edition of Cosmopolitan Magazine, December, 2002:

"Since dry lips can be a chronic condition and balms provide immediate relief, habitual use may feel like an addiction," says David Leffell, a professor of dermatology at Yale University. "But there's no ingredient that causes a true chemical dependency."

Excerpted from InStyle Magazine, September 1, 2002:

We've all heard -- perhaps even spread the rumor: Certain lip treatments are spiked with addictive ingredients, causing our lips to be incessantly chapped and thus making us constantly reapply the product. But there is no scientific evidence to support the claim. So why the rumor? What feels like an addiction is a psychological effect that results when you get used to your lips feeling soft and supple from applying balm and then stop using it. According to San Francisco dermatologist Seth Matarasso, "When you stop using balm, your lips lose that softness, so you probably start licking them to achieve that hydration, which in turn dries them out even more."

Excerpted from InStyle Magazine, April 1, 2001:

Don't worry about getting addicted to lip balm. That's a myth, according to Lawrence Moy, an L.A. dermatologist, who says "People get used to putting it on over and over, but you can't do any harm by over-moisturizing."

Excerpted from the Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh, PA), March 6, 2001:

The Internet has fueled a rumor that lip balms, especially those that create a tingling sensation, are addictive.

However, dermatologists Dr. Bruce Bart of Hennepin County Medical Center and Dr. Marian McEvoy of the Mayo Clinic said there's no evidence that any lip balm is addictive.

"I've heard of that business on the Web site and I can think of absolutely no valid reason why anyone would say something like that," Bart said.

Excerpted from The Oregonian (Portland, OR), January 11, 2001:

According to Dr. Jerome Z. Litt, assistant clinical professor of dermatology at Case Western University School of Medicine, "It's not possible to become addicted to lip balm. Not unless it's made with heroin or cocaine. It's just that when people stop using it, their lips get dry. So they use it again."

Excerpted from Woman's World, February 1, 2000:

I love using lip balm, but I've noticed something odd: whenever I forget to apply it, my lips get chapped immediately. Is it possible they've lost their ability to moisturize themselves?

In a word, no. In fact, most of the moisture on your lips comes from your tongue, anyway.; My guess is that you've just developed the habit of having a certain feel to your lips. When you don't use lip balm, your lips automatically feel dry, even if they're not. (Though they're certainly dryer than if you had lip balm on them!)...Roy S. Rogers, M.D., professor of dermatology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.

Excerpted from News (Buffalo, NY), December 21 1999:

But University of Kentucky skin doctor Margaret Terhune chuckles at the notion that lip balm can be an addiction.

If someone wants to put on lip balm all day long, it's not harmful, she said. People don't build up a resistance.

Excerpted from Men's Health, November 1999:

Is it possible to become addicted to lip balm? I've heard that it makes the lips lose their ability to moisturize themselves.

That's not going to happen, says Nelson Lee Novick, M.D., a dermatologist in New York. "Lip balm is no different from any skin moisturizer -- it's just waxier so that it will stick to your lips." Dryness of the lips is caused mainly by environmental factors, such as wind, dry indoor heating, or air-conditioning; it is not a symptom of an out-of-control lip balm habit.  "If you're hooked on using it, it's just because moisturized lips are more comfortable than dry lips," says Dr. Novick. And lips are particularly prone to sunburn and certain types of skin cancer, so using a lip balm with SPF 25 or higher really can save your skin.

Excerpted from Allure, September 1999:

But while it may seem as if there's an addictive connection between balm and chapped lips, there simply isn't (and no, tingly ingredients like camphor don't hook you). Lip balms form a temporary seal to lock in moisture, and it's scientifically impossible for an oil-based barrier to pull moisture from your lips; Oil and water, remember, don't mix. That's why petroleum-based lip balms are always a smart choice for chapped lips. "It's the gold standard," says Chicago dermatologist Marianne O'Donoghue. "It's the very best thing that you could possibly put on your lips, your hands, or your feet."

Excerpted from News-Sentinel (Knoxville, TN), February 1, 1999:

Dr. Meredith Overholt (a Knoxville dermatologist) chuckles at the notion that lip balms are addictive.

"No," she says, "it's more the people who overuse them that drives their own need of these things.

"There isn't anything in them that is going to have an effect on your brain, or whatever."

Excerpted from Cosmopolitan, October 1998:

Do balms contain an addictive ingredient?

"No. Lip balms are generally made from nonaddictive mineral oil and waxes, so your 'application addiction' is just a harmless habit," says Robin Ashinoff, M.D., chief of dermatologic and laser surgery at New York University Medical Center.

Excerpted from Columbia University's Go Ask Alice Web Site, December 20, 1996:

There is no ingredient in any of the lip balms/moisturizers on the market that is physically addictive. You may feel that you're addicted to lip balms/moisturizers because you've become so used to the feeling of well-moisturized and non-irritated lips.