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Imagine a world without online shopping or instant downloads—a time when ordering new products meant clipping coupons and mailing order forms. In the 1970s and 1980s, this was the norm. Mail-order was mainstream, and eager customers routinely filled out printed slips from magazines or newspapers, added a check or money order, and sent them off via snail mail. Weeks later, their goods would arrive at the doorstep. Everything from free samples of perfumes to the latest gadgets could be obtained this way, and yes, even poppers.
Back then, if you wanted a bottle of “liquid aroma” to spice up your night, you might have to send a letter to a P.O. box and patiently wait for your package to arrive. It was a slower era, but it had its own charm and discretion. For many, mailing a coupon provided a veil of privacy; an essential factor for products like poppers, which were marketed with coded language and promised discreet delivery. No Amazon Prime, no same-day shipping, but the anticipation was part of the excitement. Those were the days!
Poppers were not always party essentials. Originally, amyl nitrite was a prescription treatment for angina (chest pain) and came in glass ampoules that you would crush to inhale (hence the “pop” that inspired the nickname). By the 1960s, however, medicine moved on to new drugs (like nitroglycerin tablets) and amyl nitrite’s medical market dried up. But demand did not disappear—it simply found a new home. Some savvy entrepreneurs noticed that people (especially gay men) were already using these vapors recreationally for their heady rush and relaxation of inhibitions. Sensing an opportunity, two enterprising gay men stepped up to give poppers a second life as a commercial product.
The first was Clifford Hassing, a California medical student who in 1971 concocted a new formula (butyl nitrite) and branded it “Locker Room,” named after its distinctive musky smell. Just a few years later, in 1976, W. Jay Freezer founded Pacific Western Distributing (PWD) in San Francisco and introduced “Rush,” a bold new isobutyl nitrite blend. Freezer cleverly worked around U.S. FDA rules; since the FDA had made amyl nitrite prescription-only by 1969, he simply tweaked the chemistry to an unregulated version and labeled Rush as “liquid incense,” not a drug. Nothing illegal about selling a room fragrance, right? This marketing loophole allowed poppers to be sold openly without a prescription, even though everyone knew what they were really for. Other early brands followed this trend with innocent-sounding uses on the label (VHS head-cleaner, leather cleaner, etc.), all to stay technically within the law.
Fig. 1: Vintage Locker Room ad, one of the first poppers brands to turn a medical product into a nightlife icon.
Hassing and Freezer effectively kick-started the poppers industry, and their timing was perfect. The late ‘70s disco and gay club scene was exploding, and poppers were the ideal party kick. Freezer, especially, was a natural showman and salesman. He did not just bottle a product; he sold a sensation. In interviews, he would boast about cornering the market, claiming PWD’s Rush accounted for “at least 60% of the total market after only a year in business,” with retail sales around $20 million. (Those figures were likely inflated, but they show how fast poppers caught on.) Freezer even told the Wall Street Journal that “if supermarket customers want the product, I do not see why it could not eventually be sold there,”—a cheeky statement in 1977 that showed just how mainstream he imagined poppers could become.
Without social media or widespread TV ads, how did poppers companies get the word out? Print media, especially the nascent LGBTQ press, was their playground. They blanketed gay newspapers and magazines with eye-catching ads that not only sold the product but also sold a fantasy. As one historian noted, if you flip through archives of 1970s gay weeklies, it is obvious poppers were part of queer culture long before the digital age: personal ads even used code words like “AROMA” to hint at poppers, and right nearby you would find classifieds offering mail-order poppers.
Some publications ran glorious full-page spreads from poppers manufacturers featuring Tom of Finland–inspired artwork: shirtless cartoon men with bulging muscles, covered in leather or denim, often in suggestive scenarios like pumping gas, riding motorcycles, or boxing in a ring. The message was tongue-in-cheek but clear: sniffing a bottle of Rush or Bolt could turn you into an instant Adonis.
These advertisements dripped with the macho, hyper-masculine aesthetic that defined one strain of gay culture in the ’70s. The imagery promised purity, power, potency: a rush of strength and sex appeal in every inhale. It was brilliant marketing. By associating their products with confident, muscular “alpha” men, poppers makers tapped into a powerful fantasy for consumers. An article in Xtra magazine put it brilliantly: the ads convinced hundreds of thousands of gay men that poppers were an integral part of gay identity–nothing could be butcher or sexier than to inhale these fumes. All this for a product that, in reality, smelled like nail polish remover and came in a tiny brown bottle! The creative marketing worked: by the late 1970s, one study estimated over 5 million Americans were using poppers and the industry was grossing tens of millions of dollars a year.
Fig. 2 and 3: Poppers ads leaned hard into the macho fantasy, leather, muscles, and bold taglines that celebrated it without apology.
What were some of the big brands and where did they advertise? In addition to Rush and Locker Room, there was Bolt, RAM, Hardware, Quicksilver, Thunderbolt, Crypt Tonight, and more–each with its own macho branding. These could be found in the pages of popular gay magazines and papers of the era. Drummer, a San Francisco-based leather lifestyle magazine, is a prime example. Drummer issues from the late ’70s were filled with poppers ads (often on the inside front cover or back cover, prime real estate) featuring art by famous gay illustrators like Rex. The Advocate, the country’s leading gay news magazine, also accepted poppers advertising; in fact, in the early ’80s one manufacturer bragged in a letter to the Advocate that he was “the largest advertiser in the gay press” thanks to his poppers business. Even more adult-oriented magazines like Honcho, Mandate, Blueboy, and Playgirl (which had a significant gay male readership) carried poppers ads. Wherever gay men looked in their media, poppers were there, glowing with bold promises and sexy imagery.
Fig. 4 and 5: Rush mail-order coupons. Note the references to porn magazines – including straight titles – which shows how widely these ads reached gay readership.
These ads often included mail-order forms or coupon details. Readers could fill in their name and address, check off the products they wanted, and mail it with payment to an address (often a simple P.O. box for discretion). For example, a Drummer reader in 1978 could send away for a bottle of Rush by mailing an order form to PWD in San Francisco, confident that a plain package with his “aroma” would arrive soon. As long as the marketing avoided explicit drug or sex language, authorities turned a blind eye. The result was a flourishing mail-order business. In fact, Drummer’s founding publisher John Embry once admitted he started the magazine largely to boost his mail-order sales, which included erotic objects and likely poppers as well. Mail-order was the lifeblood of poppers distribution; it allowed enthusiasts in rural areas to get their Rush without traveling to a big-city leather shop.
Fig. 6 and 7: “Wink-wink” copywriting meets classic mail-order flair, a teasing promise, a small coupon, and a lasting legacy. Poppers were clearly here to stay.
Looking back at these vintage poppers ads is both amusing and inspiring. The cheeky cartoon art, the “wink-wink” copywriting, and the whole ritual of ordering by post feel like artifacts of a bygone era. Yet, in many ways, what we do today is not so different. We continue the tradition: delivering high-quality poppers (and an even wider selection of brands) right to your door, with fast, discreet shipping and billing just as our predecessors promised. Sure, we might not have a Tom of Finland drawing of a muscle-bound gas station attendant in our ads, but we trade that for the convenience of a modern website and the ability for you to get your favorite poppers in days rather than weeks, regardless of where you live. The essence remains the same: offering a quick, euphoric escape in a bottle, safely and privately.
Those pioneering 70s ads show that from the very beginning, poppers were marketed as more than just a product: they were selling a feeling and a sense of community. We aim to do the same. In the end, whether you mailed a coupon from a magazine in 1978 or click “Add to Cart” in 2025, you are joining in a legacy of adventure and pleasurable adventures that poppers have always represented. And who knows, maybe one day we will even create our own mascot or “Captain Poppers” superhero to carry on the tradition! Until then, we will keep doing what the poppers pioneers of yesteryear did: offering you a great little brown (or alu) bottle of joy, with a blast (from the past) in every sniff.
