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Home» Pharmacies Sell the Pabst Tonic

Pharmacies Sell the Pabst Tonic

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Miss A. Rhoda walked into Milwaukee’s Kopf Pharmacy on October 21, 1897. She ordered one bottle of Best Tonic, which cost her twenty-five cents. The Hugo S. Kopf Pharmacy, located at 78 Juneau Avenue, was one of many pharmacies that sold the Pabst Tonic.

The customers were middle class women who would not enter a saloon for alcohol, but would have no fear in buying alcohol-based medicinal beverages from the pharmacist.  There were no laws regulating patent medicines until 1906 so the manufacturers used whatever methods necessary to provide the product to its customers.

Cards and pamphlets about this Pabst medicinal product were distributed in the pharmacy.  Advertising of patent medicines was possible because the manufacturers supplied the promotional material as well the campaign suggestions.  It was not uncommon to conduct a contest to see what pharmacist would construct the best window display with its Tonic product as the focus of the display.

It was mostly  in the pharmacy that Pabst promoted its Best Extract.

 

Join Thomas Mickey as he writes a book about the Pabst Brewery’s medicinal beverage Pabst Extract, first produced in 1887 and for decades sold in pharmacies across the country.

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