Facebook Blurb # 12 – Just a Pawn in a Chess Game

When RCBC Jupiter Branch Manager Maia Santos-Deguito described herself in a recent Senate inquiry as “but a pawn in a high-stakes chess game played by giants in international banking,” it brought to mind the highly collectible glass chess set manufactured by Avon Products, Inc. in the 1970s.

Avon dates back to 1886, when struggling book salesman David H. McConnell started giving away small vials of perfume to promote his merchandise. Noting that the perfumes generated more appeal than his books, McConnell formed the California Perfume Co. in New York, and hired women to sell them door-to-door, a business model that was to be the progenitor of modern-day multi-level marketing. Because of the popularity of a fragrance branded “Avon” (his favorite playwright Shakespeare lived in Stratford-upon-Avon, London), the company’s name was changed to Avon Products, Inc. in 1934.

In 1965, Avon started promoting scents and lotions in “figural” bottles, or bottles formed to resemble an object or a figure, and produced a variety of shapes like cars, boats, clocks, shoes, phones and many others. The plastic screw-top lid was molded as an integral part of the decanter’s design.

In the early 1970s, public excitement over the upcoming World Chess Championship between grandmasters Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky in 1972 spurred Avon to create a chess set of figural bottles for men’s colognes and after shave lotions, with lids in the form of the various pieces. The Wheaton Glass Co. of Millville, New Jersey, produced amber-colored glass bottles with amber and silver-toned twist-off caps to represent the 32-piece black and white chessmen ensemble. Let’s take a look: