Dr. Scat

[The 4 oz. size. Click for a larger bottle.]

I’ve had this bottle for a long time. I probably bought it at a going-out-of-business office-supply store, long after I stopped using a manual typewriter. I may have been channeling Charlie Brown: “I think it needs me.”

Dr. Scat Typewriter Platen Roll and Type Cleaner is powerful stuff. It is made of ten parts ool-ya-koo, five parts shoo-bitty-oww, and one part zot. Any more zot and the bottle would have exploded by now.

The company that produced this item is no longer known as the Dr. Scat Chemical Company. It’s now the Starkey Chemical Process Company, still in La Grange, Illinois. A page describing the company shows the Dr. Scat name on a brick wall and lists “Dr. Seat” as one of the company’s brands. Oops. Or better make that oopapada.

[This post is the fifteenth in an occasional series, “From the Museum of Supplies.” Supplies is my word, and has become my family’s word, for all manner of stationery items. The museum is imaginary. The supplies are real.]

Other Museum of Supplies exhibits
Dennison’s Gummed Labels No. 27 : Eagle Turquoise display case : Eagle Verithin display case : Faber-Castell Type Cleaner : Fineline erasers : Illinois Central Railroad Pencil : A Mad Men sort of man, sort of : Mongol No. 2 3/8 : Moore Metalhed Tacks : National’s “Fuse-Tex” Skytint : Pedigree Pencil : Real Thin Leads : Rite-Rite Long Leads : Stanley carpenter’s rule