Sapolio goes viral, Snow does the same

"The snow the snow the beautiful snow it brightens the world like Sapolio." I learned this jingle/meme when I was a little kid, and it's right at the front of my brain every time I watch it snow, as it's doing - AGAIN - here in Maine. It even snowed in Alabama. Meetings have been canceled, driveway as yet unplowed. Wondering whether I had spelled Sapolio correctly, I came across this April 6, 1936 article in Time, which makes it clear that Sapolio was one of the pioneers of modern marketing, with branding in Europe as well as the US. Here's another jingle, a riff on Gilbert and Sullivan from the archives at Boise State:

When I was a lad, I served a term
As office boy to an attorney's firm;
I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor
And I polished up the handle of the big front door.
I polished up that handle so carefullee
That now I am the ruler of the Queen's Navee,
But I couldn't have polished it bright I know
If I had not used SAPOLIO.

So these days, it's Google, Twitter and Facebook that get us around, and as soon as I'm back in New York, I'll check out the old Sapolio factory at West and Bank Streets. As I already know from Google street views, it's a handsome old building, on the west bank (where else) of Manhattan.