capitals

The article, based on a wide range of sources, characterizes the Russian market of artificial feeding products in the second half of the 19th — early 20th centuries. Attention is drawn to the fact that the main consumers of these products were representatives of two extremely different categories of children (the poorest and the most affluent). This circumstance contributed to the capture of the domestic market by foreign manufacturers. Only specialists of children’s institutions could prepare the milk formulas proposed by European inventors on their own, in accordance with an extremely complex recipe, and the expensive instant “patent product” was affordable only for wealthy families. It was the latter category of consumers that was targeted by a large-scale advertising campaign, conducted by foreign companies, promising mothers a full guarantee of baby food quality and the incredible ease of its home preparation. Responsible parents, not believing in the quality of either the dairy products sold in the capital or domestic mixtures, preferred to pay huge amounts of money for diluted starch or crushed crackers.