Wow, Anacin.

Anacin came into a pharmaceutical Wild West, developed by a Minneapolis chemist. He sold it, soon after, and it wound up in the Whitehall Laboratories' portfolio. Whitehall dates back to a small Civil War-era lab in Philadelphia.

They were big in toothpaste, but Anacin was the top seller. They became part of a giant company that expanded into Chef Boyardee, infant formulas, penicillin, Antabuse and a lot more. They had key roles in polio and smallpox medicine.

When Pfizer bought the caboodle in 2009 for $68 billion, there were annual revenues of $28 billion on the books.

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