Leeming-Pacquin

Leeming-Pacquin was a mid-20th-century American cosmetics, toiletries and fragrance company formed from two older firms - the Thomas Leeming & Company and Pacquin, Inc. Pacquin, Inc. was incorporated as a perfumers' firm in New York in 1923 by L. Frantz, H. M. Lester and J. W. Lester (it grew out of the earlier Pacquin-Lester operation; the Pacquin hand-cream brand was first used in commerce around 1921). The Thomas Leeming & Company, named after Thomas Leeming, was a long-established American marketer best known for bringing Dr Jules Bengue's French analgesic balm to the United States as Ben-Gay. Both Thomas Leeming & Company and Pacquin, Inc. were acquired by Charles Pfizer & Co. in 1961 and combined into Pfizer's Leeming/Pacquin division, which became a major consumer-products and fragrance operation - its best-known scent line was the 1960s men's brand Hai Karate (cologne, aftershave, soap-on-a-rope), and it also launched the 1970 women's fragrance line Skinny Dip. The division's portfolio over time included household names such as Barbasol, Ben-Gay and Visine. Pfizer later sold its consumer-products division (including these brands) to Johnson & Johnson in 2006.