What Happened to Maybelline's Cake Mascara? | The Little Red Box in Every Woman's Purse

For decades, mascara did not come in a plastic tube with a built-in wand. It came as a small cake of color in a little red box, with a tiny brush, a mirror in the lid, and a ritual every woman had to learn by hand. This video explores what happened to Maybelline’s cake mascara, from Mabel Williams’ homemade mixture of Vaseline and coal dust to Tom Lyle Williams building Maybelline, the rise of the ten-cent drugstore mascara box, the “spit black” application ritual, and the gold mascara tube that eventually made the little red box disappear.