Boston Drug Store Ad - Feb. 2, 1972

I’ve written before (here) about how Downtown Lorain had two separate stores with the ‘Boston’ name. One was Smith and Gerhart, which started out in 1893 originally known as The Boston Store, before switching to its more well-known monicker in the 1920s. 

The other store was Boston Drug, a drug store/vitamin store that first appeared in the early 1960s at 362 Broadway. It eventually moving to Fourth Street in the early 1970s (which is where I remembered it) and became more of a discount store.

And here’s an ad for that store that appeared in the Lorain Journal on Feb. 2, 1972 – fifty years ago this month. As you can see, it was still mainly promoting vitamins in its ads.

The inclusion of Chocks in the ad caught my attention. 

What were Chocks? Ah, I guess you’d have to be a Baby Boomer to remember them.

Chocks Vitamins was an early attempt at a daily vitamin for kids. My mother bought them for my siblings and me for a while. I can still remember the chalky taste.

Here’s a great photo of the Chocks bottle (one featuring Charlie Chocks), courtesy of Todd Franklin and his Flickr page.

And here’s an early version, courtesy of Pinterest.

Chocks seemed to have the market to itself for while. Eventually, however, Flintstone Vitamins (introduced in the late 1960s) became popular and, consequently, the de facto vitamin for kids. 

As a result, Chocks disappeared. Now nobody remembers them except aging Baby Boomers (like me) who might think of them as they pop a variety of bad-tasting vitamins.