Baby aspirin absolutely was created for babies. Modern doctors are mostly too young to remember that 81mg aspirin was commonly given to babies before the discovery in the 1980s that it was associated with Reye Syndrome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reye_syndrome

You don't want to now, but they did. I remember taking aspirin as a child. Johnsons Baby Aspirin - it dissolved in your mouth and had a slight orange flavor.

Oddly enough, my mom never wanted us to associate medicines with candy, so my brothers and I were given a portion of an adult pill and told to chew it up. Aspirin was bitter, but Tylenol was worse.

Brutal, but effective I suppose. Hopefully she never had to give you anything time released! You do not want to chew them if you plan for them to work in their properly metered delivery.

Fun fact, OxyContin was deemed "impossible to become addicted to" because it incorporated a time-released design that everyone just started chewing up anyway.

Good point, I hadn't thought of that. "Back in my day," there were no time release medicines that I'm aware of. When caring for kids of my own, the kiddie medicines were mostly liquids.

My son hated liquid medicines and quickly learned to be able to take pills instead. It's honestly so convenient that way though.

I remember enjoying those as a kid - I even chewed a few without my parents knowing! In the early 80s, a lot of over-the-counter medication bottles still had minimal to no child-proofing.

Child-proofing or any safety, really. It wasn't until the Chicago Tylenol Murders[1] that they put tamper evident packaging into use.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders

That was one incident that impacted just about every single item you find in the supermarket or drug store.

Before that, nobody bothered with inner peel-away caps. Now everything has it. Ketchup has it.

It's kind of mind boggling to me that it took until 1982 for that change to be made. It also makes me wonder how many more poisonings might have slipped under the radar for the same reason...

St. Joseph's Aspirin for Children

That’s it!

Low dose aspirin used to be directly marketed like a candy by St Joseph and Bauer. Baby aspirin absolutely used to refer to its intended use for babies.

Aspirin still has pediatric dosing guidelines because there are a few cases in inpatient medicine where it is indicated.