AFAB Industrial Services: the Bensalem bottler behind Rush nail polish remover, Maximum Impact and a decade of lawsuits

Who they say they are, and what the record says

AFAB Industrial Services, Inc. is a Pennsylvania corporation in Bensalem, Bucks County, just north of Philadelphia. Its contact page gives the address as “350 Camer Dr., Bensalem, PA 19020”.[1] Its website tells a modest story. “AFAB Industrial was founded in 1995 renting a 4000 sq ft building in Bensalem, PA”, and “AFAB initially started as a cleaning chemical manufacturer; this grew into cosmetics, dietary supplements, chain link fence manufacturing, plastic additives, machine manufacturing and natural plant extraction”.[2] “We are an engineering company first”, it says.[2] In January 2026 the home page still said that “AFAB Industrial is a manufacturing and engineering company in diverse fields”.[3]

Figure 1. The company's own face, January 2026. Chain-link fence and surfactants; no nail polish remover and no aerosols. [3]

What the website does not mention is the line of business that has kept the company in federal court for a decade. AFAB has made Rush-branded bottles for about thirty years. BuzzFeed News reported in 2021 that “in the 1990s Farr licensed the Rush brands from Miller's Great Lakes; he still makes those products, along with several other brands”.[4] Everett Farr III is the company's founder and owner, as the federal court records and the press name him;[5][6] the Los Angeles Times described him in 2025 as “Everett Farr III, a longtime maker of Rush-branded nail polish remover”.[7] What Rush is, and how the bottles came to be sold as cleaners and nail polish remover, is the subject of this site's deep dive on poppers. The owner of the Rush trademarks from 2015 to 2026 has its own dossier.

The company has used other names. When BuzzFeed's reporter visited the factory, Farr “asked that I refer to his company by its former name, SVT, which used to stand for Superior Video Technology”.[4] AFAB's own 2023 complaint in New York gives the corporate history: “SVT Inc. was a stand-alone corporation initially created May 27, 1997”, and “On January 1, 2010 SVT Inc. merged with AFAB Industrial Services, Inc.”[8] It also describes the company's business in general terms: “Since its incorporation in 1995, Plaintiff is and has been a company engaged in the development, manufacture, distribution, marketing, and sale of a variety of consumer products”.[8]

Figure 2. Thirty-seven years of one Bensalem business, drawn for this page from its archived websites, the trademark and patent files and the federal court records. [8]

The archive shows two faces. The first, afabindustrial.com, has changed its emphasis over the years. In 2013 it led with “pharmaceutical intermediaries from its Biopharm Chemical division”.[9] In 2020 its menu read “Chemical Manufacturing, Hemp CBD, Equipment Manufacturing, China Facility, Chain Link Fence Manufacturing”.[10] In 2021 the chemical page said “AFAB manufactures specialty surfactants used in various industrial processes and the oil and gas industry”, and that “AFAB is attentive to regulatory matters and environment concerns in all of its cleaners”.[11] The hemp line had at least one episode in court. In October 2019 AFAB and three partners obtained a temporary restraining order in California letting them retrieve hemp-processing equipment from a facility in Kern County; the case settled within two months.[12]

Figure 3. What the chemical division makes, according to AFAB, October 2021. [11]

The site also describes a factory abroad: “AFAB has exclusively owned a manufacturing facility in China for over 10 years”, and “the factory is located in Dong Guan, China”, making silicone, electronic and plastic items.[13] BuzzFeed's reporter, who saw the site in 2021, summed it up: “the webpage notes only that the company is a manufacturing and engineering business”. Farr's reply was “My website tells the truth”.[4]

Figure 4. The factory in Dongguan, as AFAB described it in 2021. [13]

The second face was videoheadcleaner.com. In its 2015 trademark complaint AFAB told a federal court that the site was its own and filed printouts of it from 2000, 2006 and 2010 as exhibits.[14] The site never named AFAB. In 2000 it was a page for “Moonlite Services, distributor, video head cleaner products, P.O. Box 1562, Bensalem, PA”, selling “Maximum Impact Video Head Cleaner, 4 oz.” among other sizes.[15] By 2011 it was a shop. Next to the Maximum Impact aerosols it listed small bottles under the best-known poppers names in North America, every one as a cleaner: “Rush Cleaner 1oz”, “Locker Room Cleaner 1oz”, “JungleJuice Platinum Cleaner 10cc”, and a house brand, “D&E Cleaner 10cc”.[16] The same list was there in August 2015, with “Amsterdam Cleaner 10cc” still among it.[17] The archive has no working page from the site after 2015.[18]

Figure 5. June 2000. AFAB later told a court this site was its own; the page names only Moonlite Services, at a Bensalem post office box. [15]

Figure 6. February 2011. The same site now sells Rush, Locker Room, Jungle Juice and Amsterdam, every one of them as a cleaner. [16]

What they sell, and what the labels say

Rush, Super Rush and Power-Pak Pellet. These are the bottles in the Pac-West story. AFAB made Rush under licence from the brand's earlier owners and kept making it after Pac-West acquired the marks in 2015. The 2016 settlement between the two allowed it to continue on one condition: AFAB “will continue to identify the AFAB company name and” Bensalem, Pennsylvania, on that packaging.[5] In 2019 Pac-West's own site explained the arrangement to its buyers: “AFAB Industrial Services of Bensalem PA, the manufacturer of Rush Fingernail Polish Remover, is allowed by Pac-West Distributing NV LLC limited use” of the marks.[19] By February 2025 it added that “AFAB pays no royalties to PWD and is not a licensee of PWD”.[20]

The label says nail polish remover. Farr told BuzzFeed the same, more than once: “As far as I'm concerned, I sell nail polish remover.”[4] The reporter watched the line in Bensalem, with bottles passing under “metal straws pumping alkyl nitrites from a large plastic drum”, and reported that “the factory's daily output is roughly 23,000 bottles”.[4] A law review note citing the court record says that “Everett Farr, owner of AFAB, alleged that he controlled 75 percent of the U.S. poppers market”; that is his estimate, and no trade figures exist to test it.[21]

What is in them. The patent office has a document that answers the question for one formula. US patent 7,625,852, filed in 2007 and granted on December 1, 2009, names Farr as one of two inventors of a “nail polish remover containing isobutyl nitrite and butylated linseed oil”.[22] One embodiment contains “about 80% to about 95% by volume isobutyl nitrite”, and the description recommends it on the ground that “isobutyl nitrite has a pleasant and fruity odor”. Claim 1 is wider. It covers any alkyl nitrite solvent with “a hygroscopic stabilizer comprising butylated linseed oil”, and claim 3 names cyclohexyl, cyclopentyl, isopentyl, isopropyl and isohexyl nitrite as alternatives.[22][23] A trademark application for NAILED, filed in 2006 by Farr and a second individual for nail polish remover, was abandoned the next year.[24] Isobutyl nitrite has its own page on this site, isobutyl nitrite.

Figure 7. The 2009 patent's claims. The nail polish remover is mostly isobutyl nitrite. [23]

A patent is a description of an invention, not a record of what a factory fills. BuzzFeed reported that after the federal bans some bottlers, Farr among them, “changed their recipes to make cyclohexyl nitrites”, a compound outside the statute's list.[4] No laboratory analysis of a bottle shown to be AFAB's has been published.

The federal statute uses the patent's word. Section 2057a of title 15 provides that “butyl nitrite shall be considered a banned hazardous product” and that the term “includes n-butyl nitrite, isobutyl nitrite, secondary butyl nitrite, tertiary butyl nitrite, and mixtures containing these chemicals”.[25] The ban has a commercial-purpose exception, quoted with the rest of the statute in the deep dive on not for human consumption labels. Whether a nail polish remover falls inside it is a question no court has decided for AFAB's products.

One labelled bottle. The FDA's June 2021 advisory on poppers named the brands it had seen: “Brand names include Jungle Juice, Extreme Formula, HardWare, Quick Silver, Super RUSH, Super RUSH Nail Polish Remover and Premium Ironhorse, among others”.[26] Super RUSH Nail Polish Remover is AFAB's wording, not Pac-West's. The advisory's photograph shows a yellow Power-Pak Pellet bottle whose label reads WARNING CONTENTS: ISOBUTYL NITRITE, gives directions for artificial nails, and ends with I.C.E. Bensalem, PA.[26] The only other I.C.E. in the records read is the correspondent named on the 2006 NAILED application, at a post office box in Croydon, the next town to Bensalem.[24] No document says what I.C.E. is or who filled that bottle.

Figure 8. The FDA's 2021 photograph. The left-hand bottle names isobutyl nitrite as its contents and, in small print, an I.C.E. of Bensalem, Pennsylvania, AFAB's town. The middle one is Rush nail polish remover. [26]

Maximum Impact. AFAB's one live trademark registration of its own is MAXIMUM IMPACT, filed in 2010 and registered in 2013. It covered “cleaning preparations for audio, video and data recorders” with a claimed “first use Jul. 16, 1997”, as well as body paint, personal lubricant, an herbal supplement and energy drinks; the renewal of 2023 kept only the body paint.[27] The product behind it is an aerosol. The specimen AFAB filed in a 2015 suit is a silver can labelled Premium Head Cleaning Solvent that “contains ethyl chloride (chloroethane)”, and the company's exhibits trace the name to a 1992 sales flyer for “D&E and Maximum Impact Products”.[14] In 2026 a federal judge in New York described Maximum Impact as an ethyl chloride solution in a four-ounce aerosol can, and found as background that the purported aerosol cleaner is well known as a popper.[6] Farr testified at that trial that AFAB stopped selling it at the end of 2019. Only when the judge asked did he explain that AFAB had transferred the right to manufacture it to another company, which was still selling it in 2026.[6] Ethyl chloride has no page on this site.

Figure 9. Maximum Impact as AFAB showed it to a federal court in 2015: a head cleaning solvent that contains ethyl chloride. [14]

Figure 10. The 1992 flyer AFAB filed as evidence of how long it had used the name: aerosols and small brown bottles sold as video head cleaner. [14]

Other names. In 2011 and 2015, videoheadcleaner.com sold D&E and Purple cleaner in 10 cc bottles, and resold Lockerroom Marketing's Canadian brands, Jungle Juice, Amsterdam and Blue Boy, beside Rush, Locker Room, Hardware and Iron Horse.[16][17] A distributor's president testified in 2026 that besides Maximum Impact her company bought a nail polish remover called Jungle Juice and another called Rush from AFAB.[6] The US registrations for the Jungle Juice poppers brands belong to Lockerroom Marketing, not to AFAB; nothing read says who filled the Jungle Juice bottles AFAB sold.

The courts: a decade as plaintiff

AFAB has been a plaintiff more often than a defendant. Seven federal dockets in the public RECAP archive involve it, six of them with its name in the title.[28][29]

Maximum Black, 2015. In August 2015 AFAB sued a Washington State company and several sellers, Eugene Oregon Inc. among them, saying their silver-and-black “Maximum Black” head cleaner copied its Maximum Impact mark and trade dress, which it said it had used on its cleaning solvent since 1989. The case closed in December 2015; the docket does not say how.[14] Eugene Oregon Inc. turns up on the other side of the Rush fight too. Pac-West's site said in 2016 that “our master distributor, Eugene Oregon Inc., does not export any products”.[30]

Pac-West, 2015 to 2025. The fight over Rush is told on the Pac-West page. AFAB's side of it, in brief: in 2015 it petitioned to cancel Pac-West's PWD, Rush and Power-Pak Pellet registrations and opposed Super Rush and Never Fake It.[31] It sued in Philadelphia in December 2015.[29] In the settlement of August 2016 “AFAB/Farr agree never to challenge or take any action to interfere with” Pac-West's use of those marks.[5] The Board files record a “stip. to susp. pend. settl. negotiations” and then “w/draw of opposition”.[32]

Figure 11. Every matter AFAB has brought before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board has been against one company. [31]

In February 2019 AFAB sued again, under the settlement's no-disparagement clause. Its complaint was that Pac-West's warnings about fake bottles from China, and its line that genuine bottles said solvent cleaner and not nail polish remover, told buyers that AFAB's bottles were fakes. In March 2022 the court let that claim go to a jury. It noted AFAB's evidence that a distributor had stopped buying from it for several years after hearing it could no longer sell, and AFAB's own argument that its products are in fact imported from China.[33]

Figure 12. AFAB's own suit, as the court summarised it in 2022: Pac-West's warnings about fakes, it said, were warnings about AFAB. [33]

When Pac-West sued AFAB in turn, AFAB's principal defence was that Pac-West's marks were unenforceable because its bottles were sold in breach of the federal nitrite bans. In May 2023 the court declined to adopt that doctrine, holding that the bans give no private right of action, and in June it refused AFAB's request for an immediate appeal.[34][35] AFAB filed the same argument with the Trademark Board in July 2023 and withdrew it on March 5, 2025: “w/draw of pet. for cancellation”.[36] The argument that a rival's poppers are unlawful came from a company whose owner holds a patent for a nail polish remover that is mostly isobutyl nitrite.[22]

Figure 13. June 2023. The court records AFAB's argument that its rival's bottles break the nitrite bans, and refuses an early appeal. [35]

A Manhattan shop, 2023 to 2026. In April 2023 AFAB sued Little Chelsea, Inc., a men's clothing and adult store in Chelsea, for selling counterfeit Maximum Impact.[8] The background, as the court later set it out, is a death. In May 2019 a customer of the store was found unconscious with a Maximum Impact canister beside him and died several days later; in 2021 his widower sued the store and AFAB for wrongful death in New York state court. AFAB's case was that the canisters were fakes.[6]

The trial was due to start on January 28, 2025. The day before, AFAB's lawyer wrote to the judge about “certain developments relating to his client's company” and asked for a stay, which was granted.[37] Ruling on fees in September 2026, the court recorded that the trial had been delayed by a government investigation into AFAB, and that AFAB could not control its timing.[38] No document read says which agency, or what the investigation concerns.

Figure 14. January 28, 2025, the morning the New York trial was due to start. It was stayed for five months. [37]

The bench trial took four days in February 2026, and the judgment of March 2 went against AFAB. The court found that AFAB had not shown the canisters were counterfeit, and that the store had bought its Maximum Impact only from two authorized AFAB distributors that bought only from AFAB.[6] AFAB's case rested on Farr's testimony, and the court did not find him credible on key points. He testified that he learned of the product's potential for misuse only after a 2015 California wrongful-death suit, and that he had since added a foul-smelling chemical to the cans to deter inhalation. The court found that account contradicted by the record: the registration grouped the aerosol with lubricant, body paint and energy pills, the distributors sold mainly to sex shops, and sales stayed strong after 2016.[6] In a footnote it noted that BuzzFeed's 2021 article had photographed Farr holding a bottle of Rush in each hand, while stating that it relied on nothing in the article.[6] In September 2026 it denied the store's request for fees, finding that AFAB's suit, though it failed, was not frivolous.[38]

Figure 15. March 2026. After a four-day trial, the judge explains why she did not believe AFAB's owner on the points that mattered. [6]

Allegations: who says what, why, and what we could check

• That AFAB copied Pac-West's trade dress and broke the 2016 settlement. Pac-West's claim, in its 2019 suit; a competitor's claim in litigation. Part of it survived to 2023; how the case ended is not in the archived dockets. See the Pac-West page.[5]
• That the store and AFAB are responsible for a man's death in 2019. The widower's claim, in a New York state suit filed in 2021, as the federal court described it. The federal court made no finding on it, and its outcome is not in any document read.[6]
• That a criminal investigation of AFAB delayed the New York trial. The store's argument when it sought fees; the court referred to a government investigation and did not describe it.[38] No charge, warning letter or forfeiture naming AFAB was found in the federal dockets searched.[28]
• That Pac-West's warnings about fakes disparaged AFAB, and that its bottles are unlawful. AFAB's claims, made as a competitor. The first was left for a jury in 2022; the second was rejected in 2023 and withdrawn at the Trademark Board in 2025.[33][34][36]
• That the canisters found in the 2019 death were counterfeit. AFAB's claim, resting on its owner's testimony. The New York court found it not proved.[6]

What buyers report

AFAB sells to distributors, not to the public, and its bottles carry the brand names of others. Searches of the Reddit archive in r/poppers and r/askgaybros on 2026-10-11 for Bensalem, nail polish remover, Super Rush and Rush Original found no thread that names AFAB, S.V.T. or Maximum Impact's maker. The buyer accounts of Rush bottles quoted on the Pac-West page do not say which company filled them.

Lab results

None. Neither of AFAB's websites published an analysis of any product in the archived pages read, and at the 2026 trial AFAB could not produce a single genuine Maximum Impact canister that had been in commerce.[6] The only statements of contents are the labels and the patent: ethyl chloride on the Maximum Impact can, isobutyl nitrite on one FDA-photographed bottle marked Bensalem, and isobutyl nitrite or other alkyl nitrites in the patent.[14][26][22]

Regulatory and legal

The FDA's 2021 advisory names Super RUSH Nail Polish Remover among poppers brands; it names no company.[26] In March 2025, the week after the FDA searched a rival bottler in Texas (see the poppers deep dive), Farr told the Los Angeles Times “this is not my first rodeo”, and said “I manufacture a completely legal product.”[7] The government investigation recorded by the New York court in 2025 and 2026 is unidentified.[38] The court cases are set out above.

Still open

• The government investigation. Which agency, what it concerns and whether it is closed are not in any document read.
• The wrongful-death suits. The 2021 New York state suit and the 2015 California suit Farr described were not found in a searchable index; their outcomes are unknown.
• Pennsylvania's record. AFAB's and S.V.T. Inc.'s state filings (officers, dates, status) were not read.
• I.C.E. What it is, and who filled the Power-Pak Pellet bottle in the FDA's photograph.
• What is in the bottles. No analysis of a product shown to be AFAB's has been published.
• How the Pac-West cases ended. The archived dockets stop in October 2023.

If you have bought a bottle that says AFAB, S.V.T. or Bensalem on the label, rate it below or comment on the thread at the foot of this page.

Changes

• 2026-10-12: first published.

References

1. afabindustrial.com contact page, archived 2015-08-10 — Wayback Machine
2. afabindustrial.com company page, archived 2021-10-27 — Wayback Machine
3. afabindustrial.com home page, archived 2026-01-15 — Wayback Machine
4. This Man Does Not Make Poppers — David Mack, BuzzFeed News, 2021-07-27
5. Pac-West Distributing NV LLC v. AFAB Industrial Services, Inc., No. 19-3584, memorandum (Doc. 40, 2020-08-04) — US District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania
6. AFAB v. Little Chelsea, S.D.N.Y. No. 23-cv-03095, opinion and order after bench trial (Doc. 145, 2026-03-02) — US District Court, Southern District of New York
7. FDA crackdown on poppers prompts rush on popular gay party drug — Sonja Sharp, Los Angeles Times, syndicated by Yahoo News, 2025-03-21
8. AFAB Industrial Services, Inc. v. Little Chelsea, Inc., S.D.N.Y. No. 1:23-cv-03095, complaint (Doc. 1, 2023-04-13) — US District Court, Southern District of New York
9. afabindustrial.com home page, archived 2013-04-19 — Wayback Machine
10. afabindustrial.com home page, archived 2020-06-22 — Wayback Machine
11. afabindustrial.com chemical manufacturing page, archived 2021-10-27 — Wayback Machine
12. AFAB Industrial Services, Inc. et al. v. Apothio, LLC et al., E.D. Cal. No. 1:19-cv-01355, temporary restraining order (Doc. 16, 2019-10-04) — US District Court, Eastern District of California
13. afabindustrial.com China facility page, archived 2021-10-27 — Wayback Machine
14. AFAB Industrial Services, Inc. v. Enigma Technologies, Inc. et al., E.D. Pa. No. 2:15-cv-04675, complaint with exhibits (Doc. 1, 2015-08-17), scanned — US District Court, E.D. Pa., RECAP via the Internet Archive
15. videoheadcleaner.com home page, archived 2000-06-03 — Wayback Machine
16. videoheadcleaner.com shop, archived 2011-02-03 — Wayback Machine
17. videoheadcleaner.com shop, archived 2015-08-22 — Wayback Machine
18. Wayback Machine capture index for videoheadcleaner.com — Internet Archive
19. neverfakeit.com (Pac-West) home page, archived 2019-04-19 — Wayback Machine
20. neverfakeit.com (Pac-West) home page, archived 2025-02-06 — Wayback Machine
21. Sex, Drugs, Innovation, Law: Regulating the Legality of 'Poppers' — Lawrence Myung and William P. Kasper, California Law Review vol. 112, August 2024
22. US Patent 7,625,852 B2, Nail polish remover (filed 2007-06-06, granted 2009-12-01) — Google Patents
23. US Patent 7,625,852 B2, full text PDF — US Patent and Trademark Office, via Google Patents
24. USPTO TSDR status: NAILED, application 78905679 (nail polish remover, filed 2006, abandoned 2007), read 2026-10-11 — US Patent and Trademark Office
25. 15 U.S. Code § 2057a. Banning of butyl nitrite — Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School
26. FDA Advises Consumers Not to Purchase or Use Nitrite "Poppers" — US Food and Drug Administration, 2021-06-24
27. USPTO TSDR status: MAXIMUM IMPACT, registration 4309475 (filed 2010, registered 2013), read 2026-10-11 — US Patent and Trademark Office
28. Federal dockets naming AFAB in the RECAP archive, searched through the Internet Archive's usfederalcourts collection, 2026-10-11 — Internet Archive
29. Farr v. Pac-West Distributing NV LLC, E.D. Pa. No. 2:16-cv-00175, docket (RECAP) — Free Law Project RECAP, mirrored by the Internet Archive
30. neverfakeit.com (Pac-West) home page, archived 2016-10-03 — Wayback Machine
31. TTABVUE search: proceedings naming AFAB Industrial, read 2026-10-11 — USPTO Trademark Trial and Appeal Board
32. TTABVUE, Opposition No. 91224268, AFAB Industrial Services, Inc. v. Pac-West Distributing NV LLC (Never Fake It, 2015-2016) — USPTO Trademark Trial and Appeal Board
33. AFAB Industrial Services, Inc. v. Pac-West Distributing NV LLC, E.D. Pa. No. 19-566, memorandum on summary judgment (Doc. 79, 2022-03-10), scanned — US District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania
34. Pac-West v. AFAB, No. 19-3584, memorandum on the counterclaims (Doc. 155, 2023-05-22), scanned — US District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania
35. Pac-West v. AFAB, No. 19-3584, memorandum denying certification for interlocutory appeal (Doc. 167, 2023-06-13), scanned — US District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania
36. TTABVUE, Cancellation No. 92082914, AFAB Industrial Services, Inc. v. Pac-West Distributing NV LLC (2023-2025) — USPTO Trademark Trial and Appeal Board
37. AFAB v. Little Chelsea, S.D.N.Y. No. 23-cv-03095, order staying the action (Doc. 107, 2025-01-28) — US District Court, Southern District of New York
38. AFAB v. Little Chelsea, S.D.N.Y. No. 23-cv-03095, opinion and order on attorney's fees (Doc. 164, 2026-09-11) — US District Court, Southern District of New York