UnD3R0aTh

merziac

Pretty old, pretty cool, BSO, bottom of the line, proceed with caution.

T-Mar

Sunstar is a Japanese company best known for their oral care products but they started out in 1932 making inner tube patch glue for bicycles using innovative collaspible tubes, made from metal foil. Post war, they started marketing toothpaste by putting it into a larger version of the tubes used for their inner tube glue. While toothpaster had been around for a long time, tooth powders were more popular, Sunstar's tootpaste tubes facilitated the dispensing of the toothpaste and consequently it became very popular. So, bicycles led to the popularization of toothpaste. Now you can amaze you friends with an obscure piece of trivia.

They eventually moved from manufactruring inner tube glue to bicycle parts, then to bicycles. They are still involved in the bicycle industry, marketing e-bikes. Besides bicycles and oral care, they have diversified into a number of fields including beauty products, health foods, automotive and electronics adhesive, motorcycle parts and automotive parts.

The subject bicycle appears to be fairly representive of a boom era, entry level, Japanese bicycle, though Sunstar bicycles go back to at least the late 1950s. Attached is a cover page from a Sunstar catalogue of that period. If you look closely in the lower left hand cormer you'll see a red symbol comprising a ring (sun) with a superimposed star. This is the same symbol that appears on the head badge of the subject bicycle.


Edit: Based on further (Wikipedia) research, collaspible metal foil tubes were being used for toothpaste as early as 1899 and were based on paint tubes invented in 1841. So, maybe my source was refering primarily to the Asian/Japanese market.