Quirky vintage ad of the day: EGYPTIAN TENEXINE!

 

As you might know by now, I adore everything Victorian/Edwardian - particularly the costumes, which make me dizzy with joy, but also the quirky little ads for products that no longer exist. I could not find anything on Egyptian Tenexine - what it is, or was; what it was supposed to do; whether it was a health aid, or a tranquillizer, or an energizer, or what. Maybe a bottle of glue? 

The ad portrays an impossibly elegant lady in a blue gown standing in front of a paunchy older gentleman (paunches being quite socially acceptable and even desirable in those times, a sign of prosperity). The woman appears to be chastising or at least wagging her finger at the man, while he leans back with one hand up as if to defend himself. Meantime, a little boy in the corner is messing about with the hem of her dress, nailing it down or something? A small dog appears to be running away in the bottom right corner. But it's the caption at the very bottom that intrigues me the most: "WITH A BOTTLE OF TENEXINE IN THE HOUSE, DIVORCE IS ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE". 

So what's going on here? The bottle of EGYPTIAN Tenexine (so what's Egyptian about it?) looks almost like an ink bottle with a stopper. Or is it some kind of beauty enhancement? And if so, why is she wagging her finger, and why is the little boy nailing her dress to the floor? Back in that era, people collected Egyptian mummies and even ground them up into powder and ate them. Was this a flavour enhancer for the mummies? I've GOT to find out some more about this!

NEWS FLASH! Another ad for Egyptian Tenexine!

The scales are falling from my eyes! This ad establishes that Tenexine IS a kind of glue (as I suspected).  I'm still not clear on the "divorce" reference in the previous ad - maybe the man would love to get rid of his nagging wife, but can't because they are "stuck like glue" to each other? Has the little boy glued her hem to the floor, or what? Horrible thought. This fellow flapping in the breeze at least makes it clear what the product is. I assume this is meant to be some sort of politician, maybe a crooked one, stuck to his "post" (an actual post, as you can see) by the wondrous power of Tenexine.

I did find a bit more about the product - there was an actual old glassTenexine bottle for sale on Worthpoint, an impossibly expensive and elite auction site featuring trolls I can't afford, among other things. And yes, the bottle looked exactly as pictured here. It was called "mucilage", a term I remember from childhood -  a gooey, brownish liquid  that came in a bottle with a weird rubber stopper in it. You pressed the pink rubber stopper down on your paper, and a bit of mucilage came out of a tiny slot. Do they even make the stuff any more? It strikes me as a product likely made from boiling down old horse hooves. I seem to remember a friend of mine referring to it as "mule sewage". 

But why is the Tenexine "Egyptian" in one ad, and not the other? THAT is the mystery of the day.