Due to the fact that we couldn't find an official production/materials list... we looked towards the retailers and online selling sites which list the materials as:

• Opaque and transparent coloured:
  • plastic
  • paint
  • ceramic curler rods
     
• Interior electrical components:
  • copper
  • metal
  • wiring

(“Electric Hair Roller (Curler) Set.” SSAC Collections, 2025).
 

Invention of Hot Curlers

Although thermal hair curlers date back as far as 1930, the innovation was formally credited to an African-American inventor, Solomon Harper. It took until the mid-20th century, for radio dealer Bybjerg Pedersen, from Denmark to produce the first electric hot-hair curler, also known as the “Carmen Curler” (Time Magazine, 1968).

His only market consisted of his wife, and other wives with no means for a salon ‘do’.

This new hair-setter was manufactured and designed both for efficiency and ease, while achieving salon quality curls in less time than it takes to ‘fry an egg’. When the red dots on top of the hair-setter turn off, the curls are ready to be lifted and placed in hair. The curlers cool down with an internal slow cooling liquid that allows the owner to keep the curlers at an optimal temperature (Time Magazine, 1968). 

By the time of the factory’s peak-production year, 1969, Pedersen had decided to sell. A large company Clairol swooped in and made the radio-dealer an offer he couldn’t refuse: 250,000 kroner and a new name: ‘Carmen Clairol’ (Wenande, Christian, 2016).
 

The Samson-Dominion Model

When it came to Samson Dominion, by the end of the 1960s, it was likely that most homes in Canada contained at least one of their products.

Samson-Dominion would sell a similar variety of electrical appliances and products across Canada, and sold in the US under only the name ‘Dominion’ as seen by the different labels on the front and bottom of the hair-setters (among other slight colour differences) (The UTS alumni magazine, 2012).



Designed by Glenn Moffatt after graduating from an Industrial Design program in April 1967, this very hair-setter is by far his most successful project, manufacturing and selling between 2 and 3 million units for Samson-Dominion, before being taken off store shelves.
 

 
The Marketed Models Came in a:

• Ten-Ten - In Teal  
• Ten-Fifteen - In Orange
• Twenty-Twenty - In Avacado Green