A Newark talcum-powder business and a family name.

Speed Stick began inside a family company that was already decades old. English Wikipedia’s article on Mennen says The Mennen Company was founded in 1878 by Gerhard Heinrich Mennen, who had come to the United States from Germany. The company was based originally in Newark, New Jersey, and its early business rested on a borated talcum toilet powder sold under the family name. Wikipedia says the firm moved to Morristown, New Jersey, in 1953, where it made and sold over-the-counter medicines and personal products.

The family name was put to work in advertising long before the stick existed. The United States National Park Service, in its visitor information for Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, says that a sign painted on the rock face of Maryland Heights above the railway tunnel between 1903 and 1906 reads “Mennen’s Borated Talcum Toilet Powder”. Wikipedia describes the painted advertisement as faded and indistinct today.

The family stayed involved for generations. Wikipedia says the company was led by several generations of the Mennen family until its sale, and it notes that Gerhard Mennen’s grandson, G. Mennen Williams, served as Governor of Michigan from 1949 to 1961 and later as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.

By the second half of the twentieth century, the Morristown company had a portfolio of personal-care names. Wikipedia lists Skin Bracer, Speed Stick and Baby Magic among the products made there. Wikipedia’s Speed Stick article gives 1963 as the year Speed Stick was introduced, with The Mennen Company as its owner from 1963 to 1992, and it says the product was known for years as “Mennen Speed Stick”.

The range widened in 1983. Wikipedia records Lady Speed Stick as introduced that year, and the Mennen article describes it as Mennen’s move into a women’s range, with a shape designed to fit a woman’s hand. The same article names Teen Spirit as another Mennen deodorant brand of the period.

From Morristown to Colgate-Palmolive.

The sale came in 1992. On 13 February 1992, United Press International reported from New York that Colgate-Palmolive — described in the report as the maker of toothpaste and Irish Spring soap — had said it agreed to acquire Mennen Co., a personal-care company headquartered in Morristown, New Jersey, subject to regulatory approval. UPI named Speed Stick, “for men and women”, among Mennen’s brands, together with Baby Magic, Mennen Skin Bracer and Afta. Colgate said the purchase was part of its plan to expand its operations around the world. Colgate-Palmolive has owned Speed Stick since 1992.

The change of owner reordered the names. Wikipedia’s Speed Stick article says the product was formerly known as “Mennen Speed Stick” before Colgate-Palmolive’s purchase, and that current products carry the words “by Mennen” in small type on the label. Wikipedia’s Mennen article says the Mennen name is being phased out in some regions, with Speed Stick and Lady Speed Stick treated as brands in their own right, while Skin Bracer and Afta were still sold “by Mennen” in North America in 2024.

Other parts of the Mennen business went in different directions. Wikipedia says the Baby Magic line was sold to Playtex, which later sold it to Naterra, while Colgate-Palmolive kept the “Baby Magic Mennen” branding for Latin America. In France, Wikipedia says, the Mennen name belongs to L’Oréal through its Mennen-LASCAD subsidiary for a line of men’s grooming products. The Morristown site has also gone: Wikipedia, citing a September 2018 report in the local newspaper group New Jersey Hills, says the former headquarters and plant in Morris Township was demolished in spring 2018 and replaced with housing and shops, with the Mennen Arena still standing beside it.

Colgate-Palmolive’s own description of the brand today is brief. On its US brands page, the company says Speed Stick and Lady Speed Stick are available in stick and gel form and in a range of scents, and it lists scent names that include Irish Spring and Original. The company also places Speed Stick within its personal-care business alongside its oral-care and home-care brands, with Colgate toothpaste at the centre of the group.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group belong to the bathroom shelf: deodorants and antiperspirants, hairsprays and face scrubs. Personal-care brands of this kind sit at many different points in the trade, from names that still carry the place or the people who started them to labels that have passed through several owners and now belong to much larger consumer-goods groups.

A brand of this kind is usually carried less by a single formula than by a container and a name: a twist-up stick, a pressurised can, a squeezable tube, each with a label that has to be read at a glance on a crowded shelf. The company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or redrawn its packaging several times. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and how its cans, sticks and tubes have looked over time.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time and how its labels and advertising have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A product name in front, a family credit behind, and a race car.

The name is the core of the identity. Wikipedia’s account of the brand’s history shows how the hierarchy shifted: under Mennen the family name led, as “Mennen Speed Stick”, and under Colgate-Palmolive the order has been reversed, with “by Mennen” kept as a small credit on the label. Lady Speed Stick, from 1983, adds a word in front of the original name, and Colgate’s range adds scent names such as Irish Spring and Original after it.

Colour belongs to the product as much as to the pack. Wikipedia’s Mennen article describes Speed Stick as known for a green wide stick with a fougère fragrance, and that green is the starting point for this guide’s palette. The hex values here are our reading of that description, not a published specification, and no pack or stick is reproduced.

The advertising has favoured entertainment and sport. Wikipedia says Speed Stick was promoted on the web series Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis, in which the host would break off an interview midway to promote the product, and that the brand bought a commercial on CBS during Super Bowl XLVII in 2013. In a press release dated 13 February 2014, Colgate-Palmolive said its Speed Stick GEAR line had become the primary sponsor of driver Cole Whitt’s car for Swan Racing at the 2014 Daytona 500, and that a documentary series following his preparation for the race would appear on the Speed Stick YouTube channel from March 2014. Wikipedia adds that the sponsorship went on to appear on cars run by BK Racing, Front Row Motorsports and Premium Motorsports.

For a design guide, Speed Stick shows how a product name can outgrow the family house that created it, moving from “Mennen Speed Stick” in Morristown to a Colgate-Palmolive brand with “by Mennen” kept as a small credit, while a green stick and a two-word name carry it across men’s and women’s ranges. Compare it with Irish Spring, the Colgate-Palmolive soap whose name also appears in the Speed Stick range, and Old Spice, another American men’s toiletries brand that changed owners. For this guide we use stick green and deep forest on cap white with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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