When you walk into a supermarket and are confronted by a confusing array of shampoos, conditioners, mousses, waxes and gels it’s hard to imagine any person living in the “developed world” could remember a time when they didn’t exist but I do, almost.
As I child I think we always had Sunsilk Shampoo though I know Mum used Halo because that attracted bees which meant I had to extract them from her permed hair! It didn’t matter if your hair was oily, dry, thick or fine there was just the one type of shampoo. When I went to stay with my auntie for holidays though there was no shampoo and we just lathered up soap in our hands then massaged it into our hair. Certainly for me there was no silky-soft feel to it for a while after that but it was only about a weekly occurrence. Mum used to rinse our hair in lemon juice which she said made it shiny but recently I’ve been wondering about that. Was she really trying to make us blonder?
I don’t think we ever had “baby shampoo” so it was definitely a case of keeping your eyes screwed tightly shut until every bit was rinsed out, shampoo in the eyes stings! We didn’t have a shower until I was in my teens so we washed our hair in the bath and slid down under the water to rinse it off. The final rinse was the lemon juice one.
The first dandruff shampoo wasn’t invented until 1963 and you could tell who had the problem because of telltale white flakes on their shoulders, I can’t remember the last time I saw that.
Musings of a Retiring Person 
I remember “White Rain” shampoo, and “Breck”. While we are on the topic of hair care, I remember my sisters and I giving each other a “Toni” perm. It was a recipe for disaster, but somehow we managed to get some curl going on without destroying our hair!
That made me smile, I remember doing the same thing and being mortified when I saw the frizz but luckily it was OK when I set it on big rollers 🙂
I remember Sunshine Soap – hard yellow bars (pre age 8). Can’t remember when we first used shampoo, or what kind.
Yes, Sunshine Soap bars are familiar to me, though I can’t remember how many “cakes” were in a bar, I can still picture the break lines.