Regimen & Responsibilty

Regimen & Responsibility

Between 1956 and 1963 overweight Americans spent $16 million to buy 4,000,000 boxes of pink, green and yellow Regimen tablets, convinced by a massive advertising campaign that the tablets could help them lose as much as 28 pounds in 28 days without dieting. Last week, after a 13-week trial in a Brooklyn courtroom, a federal jury found the producer, Manhattan's Drug Research Corp., its president and its advertising agency guilty of conspiring to defraud the public. The judgment against the ad agency--Kastor, Hilton, Chesley, Clifford & Atherton, Inc.--was the first ever made against an agency for promoting a fraudulent product. The decision could result in fines and imprisonment for Drug Research's president and fines against the ad agency on 41 separate counts.

Kastor, Hilton's ads, the Government had charged, featured a "doctored" laboratory report that cited false weight losses, used as "before" and "after" examples TV models who had crash-dieted away pounds supposedly pared off by Regimen. The agency ignored Federal Trade Commission complaints that Regimen, which sold at $3 and $5 for a box that cost as little as 300 to make, was ineffective as a weight reducer without dieting.

Kastor, Hilton protested that the decision "thrusts upon advertising agencies new and costly responsibilities," announced that it would appeal the verdict. Norman B. Norman, president of Norman, Craig & Kummel Inc., spoke for many admen when he said that ad agencies "don't consider our chore to be policemen" over their clients' claims. Norman also said, however, that "there is no defense for this kind of advertising," added that it "is simply not true" that most clients want to deceive the public.

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