[1] In the early 1880s, Charles Browne Fleet,[2] a physician and pharmacological thinker from Lynchburg, Virginia, invented ChapStick as a lip balm product.

The handmade product, which resembled a wickless candle wrapped in tin foil, was sold locally and did not have much success.

[3] In 1935, Frank Wright, Jr., a commercial artist from Lynchburg, Virginia, was commissioned to design the CHET ChapStick logo that is still used today.

[7] SBC had been formed a year earlier by Yellow Wood Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm, to purchase the North American rights to the Suave brand previously owned by Unilever.

The full list of ingredients in a regular-flavored ChapStick is: arachidyl propionate, camphor, carnauba wax, cetyl alcohol, D&C red no.

ChapStick functions as both a sunscreen, available with SPFs as high as 50, and a skin lubricant to help prevent and protect chafed, chapped, sunburned, cracked, and windburned lips.

ChapStick is sometimes available in special flavors developed in connection with marketing partners such as Disney (as in cross-promotions with Winnie the Pooh or the movie Cars) or with charitable causes such as breast cancer awareness, in which 30¢ is donated for each stick sold (as in the Susan G. Komen Pink Pack).

The Flava-Craze line is marketed to preteens and young teens, with colorful applicators and "fun" flavors such as Grape Craze and Blue Crazeberry.

In Iceland and in the United Kingdom, the product's main competitor is Lypsyl, made by Novartis Consumer Health and distributed in similar packaging to ChapStick.