Trademark: Vaseline Jar Shape

First Used: 1970

First Registered: 1985

Current Owner: CONOPCO, INC. (Unilever) [1]

Trademark Type: non-traditional trademark; trade dress; shape mark; configuration mark

Primarily Associated With: petroleum jelly [2]

Brief (and likely incomplete) History [3]:

As we learned in our last post, the VASELINE® brand has gone by a variety of generic names in the past, including healing jelly, petroleum jelly, and (originally before the brand was created) “rod wax.” Not entirely surprisingly for a brand first founded in the 1800s, it has also utilized a wide variety and types of product jars. Let’s take a look!

More than a century ago in the early days of the Vaseline brand, the petroleum jelly was packaged in wide-mouth, pomade-style glass jars with cork closures, many of them mouth-blown and embossed with the Chesebrough name and the VASELINE mark. These early jars varied widely in size and shape due to hand production. During the 1890s, Vaseline jars transitioned from hand-blown to early machine-made production, with changes in embossing, finish styles, and glass color, including the introduction of amber glass for certain formulations such as Blue Seal Vaseline. Despite these variations, the basic squat jar form remained consistent, reinforcing consumer familiarity as Vaseline expanded nationwide.

A more significant shift arrived in the early 20th century with the adoption of screw-top, continuous-thread glass jars around the 1900s, replacing corks and marking a move toward more modern sealing technology. These jars, produced primarily by Hazel-Atlas Glass Company, defined the classic Vaseline look for roughly half a century, with incremental updates to embossing and base markings reflecting corporate changes and manufacturing advances rather than wholesale redesigns. Glass remained the standard through the mid-1960s, when Vaseline transitioned to plastic jars in 1965, initially preserving the familiar oval shape before later adopting rectangular and U shaped plastic containers by the late 20th century.

Today, there are two non-traditional trademark registrations protecting the unique product packaging of VASELINE® healing jelly. The Vaseline Oval Shaped Jar shape mark [4] was first introduced in 1970 and includes an oval shape having flattened ends. The Vaseline U Shaped Jar configuration mark [5] was first introduced in 2011 and includes an overall U shape featuring a curved, convex bottom and rounded edges with the wording "VASELINE" displayed between two wave designs on the lid of the jar.