Six-foot soapy Uncle Sam head slips into museum

WASHINGTON -- A six-foot head of Uncle Sam was carved in soap Wednesday inside the main entrance of the National Museum of American History.

The sculpture was commissioned by Proctor & Gamble Co. as it made a donation of 120 years worth of Ivory soap advertisements to an effort by the museum to compile a record of U.S. ad history.

Sculptor Gary Lawrence Sussman labored for seven hours, achieving an image akin to Uncle Sam's stern "I want you" from the World War I recruiting poster by James Montgomery Flagg.

But Sussman lopped off most of Uncle Sam's trademark top hat, dubbing it "too cartoonish."

Afterward, the floor outside the museum's old-fashioned ice cream parlor was littered with slippery gray waste from the 6,000 pounds of soap used to create the sculpture.

Procter & Gamble is giving the museum more than 5,000 ads dating to Ivory soap's first campaign, an $11,000 buy in 1882. The current advertising budget of the firm, which markets 300 brands in more than 140 countries, is over 200 times that much, according to company archivist Ed Rider.