Axe Brand Universal Oil, since 1928

Axe Brand Universal Oil is a clear, colourless medicated oil in a small flat glass bottle with a black screw cap. The bottle's white label is bordered in green and blue and carries the Chinese name 斧標驅風油 above the English, with the trademark that gives the oil its name: a raised arm swinging an axe. It comes in a tall green and white carton printed 'A handy medicine for the home'. The oil is a blend of eucalyptus, menthol, camphor and other essential oils, a few drops of which are rubbed on the temples, the stomach or an insect bite.

"Axe Brand Universal Oil": a tin tray with a carton of the oil, issued by the Leung Kai Fook Medical Store, Singapore. The National Museum of Singapore dates it to the 1960s. Advertising tray, 1960s. via Roots.gov.sg, National Museum of Singapore

Its maker, Leung Yun Chee, came to Singapore from Shunde in southern China in the 1920s and managed a silk trading firm. By the company's account he met a German physician, Dr Schmeidler, who gave him the formula. In 1928 Leung closed his silk business and founded the Leung Kai Fook Medical Company in South Bridge Road, Singapore, to make and sell the oil.

The current No. 1 bottle, 56ml, beside its green and white carton with the axe trademark. Maker photograph, current. via axebrand.com.sg

Sales were slow at first against established oils from China and Hong Kong. Leung adopted the axe as a mark every household would know, because an axe was used daily to cut wood for cooking. He gave away pamphlets with stories on one side and advertisements on the other, along with calendars and tin trays, and in 1967 founded the evening newspaper Shin Min Daily News. Pilgrims sailing to Mecca took the oil with them, and Saudi Arabia became its first large overseas market.

Production left the cottage factory in South Bridge Road for a seven-storey building in Macpherson in 1970. After Leung's death in 1971 his sons ran the firm, and the oil is now made in factories in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, China and Vietnam and sold in more than fifty countries, its packaging printed in eleven languages.

Timeline

1928 First made · Claimed Axe Brand Universal Oil enters production in Singapore.

1970 Production Production moves from the South Bridge Road cottage factory to a seven-storey factory in Macpherson.

1971 Ownership Leung dies and his son Leong Heng Keng takes over the business.

2015 Recognised The brand is one of five given the SG50-IPOS heritage brand award by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore.

Milestones as we found them, not as we've checked them.

The date

One source supports this year. Treat it as the maker's claim.

The maker's history puts the founding of the company and the first sale of Axe Brand Universal Oil in 1928, and English Wikipedia says the oil was introduced in 1928. The National Library Board's Infopedia, citing a 1993 Business Times profile, says Leung Yun Chee closed his silk business and started the company in 1928, and the Business Times (2016) says the story of the company and the oil began that year. All of these rest on the family's own account, so the year is marked claimed.

Why it still counts

One product. One named medicated oil from one maker, the Leung Kai Fook Medical Company, sold under the axe trademark since its launch; medicated oils are a type, but this is a specific oil with its own name, mark and start date.

The same object. Today's oil is a colourless blend of eucalyptus, menthol, camphor and other oils, applied in drops for headaches, colds, stomach-ache and insect bites, which is what the maker says the founder sold; no source records a reformulation, though none sets out the 1928 recipe. Packaging and factories have changed, not what the oil is.

The production run. Production moved between factories without a recorded stop, and the Japanese occupation is a wartime stop not counted as a gap, during which the maker says sales grew; no source records a period when the oil was not made.

Axe Brand Universal Oil

Timeline

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