One does not become the world’s leading brand of sanitary replacement vaginas without ruffling a few feathers. In the early years, rival manufacturers, and no small number of clergy tried an amusing array of smear campaigns to take Bronson down a peg. We took a pounding for a little while, but with some good, old-fashioned persistence, Bronson managed to beat them off.
Here we see a vintage ad literally attempting to convince young women that Bronson would start them on a path to Hell. Ironically, this would later become the inspiration for our slogan; “You’ve Got a Friend Down There.”
2001. It was a new century, and Bronson had found a new focus; diversification. Gone were the days when a vagina could sell itself. Build quality, and luxurious materials were not enough to convince a busy woman to treat herself to shiny new genitalia. Clearly, the time had come to think outside the box. Whole new product categories had to be invented – whether women wanted them or not.
Research had shown that a significant, and increasing portion of Bronson’s primary demographic no longer considered hygiene their top priority when considering retrogenital surrogation. Suddenly freed of numerous engineering constraints, the marketing department went into overdrive, inventing bold new products that had not been possible before. Vaginal Odorant Aerosol Mousse (VOAM) was one such product.
VOAM was initially test-marketed to existing Bronson customers in French Canada. After an initial hiccup with Metric sizing of the applicator tip, VOAM performed well. “Maple Gingerbread,” “Beef Bog,” and “Pineapple-Cilantro” became runaway hits. Soon, VOAM took the entire North American market by storm with innovative scents like “Cucumber Cobbler,” “Mountain Sweatlodge,” and “Sorority Luau.” Every snack aisle in the U.S. featured dozens of varieties, many of them seasonal, or regional limited editions.
Here we see an early print ad that introduced Canadians to the concept. Initial runs took a licking for not being bilingual, but all was quickly forgiven as women found new pride and confidence in their deliciously scented Bronson Vaginas.
Bronson’s involvement with the German government in the 1930s marked a particularly dark period for the company. Most of the detailed research from this collaboration was ultimately destroyed, but not before a few specific design innovations made it back to consumer products here in the US — albeit in heavily redacted form. The few scraps of explicit documentation that survive are disturbing to say the least.
Here we have a fairly impenetrable engineering diagram uncovered decades later amongst personal correspondence between none other than Wilhelm Reich and Sigmund Freud, who appeared to disagree vehemently on certain specifics of the design. The degree to which either of them influenced later Bronson designs remains unknown. It’s probably just as well.
