How many immortal lines did its tunewriters score? How many taglines became part of the cultural discourse? “Plop plop, fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is!” “Mama Mia, that’s a-spicy-a-metaball!” But commercials were almost beside the point: Alka Seltzer really worked. It started out as a home remedy of Tom Keene, the editor of a local newspaper in Elkhart, Indiana, a mixture of aspirin, bicarbonate of soda, and lemon juice, that apparently allowed the paper employees to stay healthy in the midst of a raging flu epidemic. Andrew H. ‘Hub’ Beardsley, chairman of the nearby Dr. Miles Medical Company was intrigued at the idea and commissioned his chemist to develop a similar mixture in pill form. So was born the mainstay of cold and flu sufferers everywhere.

On this day, November 3, in 1931 Alka Seltzer went on sale. The Alka comes from alkali (aspirin) and the Seltzer is essentially carbon dioxide, the same substance that gives soda the “pop.”

With general pain relief and the ability to lower stomach acidity, it was advertised as a cure for just about anything: “The Blahs,” as one commercial called it. Commercials were what gave Alka Seltzer its life — it started out as a sponsor of “Saturday Night Barn Dance” on WLS in Chicago, before coming into its own. The Speedy Alka-Seltzer character, made of two Alka-Seltzer tablets, who, voiced by Dick Beals, sang and danced his way in over 200 television commercials.