I can’t believe it. There on the bottom shelf of the local CVS, new, striking packaging for Old Spice aftershave and cologne catches my eye. Till now, I’ve been a fan of what W&K and P&G have been doing to resurrect this old product’s image and appeal.
“Till now” being the operative phrase here.
I kneel down, grab a glowing red box with the oversized old-school script up the side. The kind of shimmering red that Valentine’s Day heart-shaped candy boxes don. Opening it up, I’m alarmed to see a red stopper capping off the bottle of aftershave inside. RED. What the hell? Any man worth his salt knows that Old Spice stoppers come in two flavors: Metal, if the bottle’s from waaaay back when, or gray. Not red. GRAY. I am immediately uncomfortable.
Sliding the bottle out, my anxiety morphs into a blend of shock and shame as I discover that Old Spice has ditched its iconic cream-colored glass for – yep, you guessed it – plastic. Fucking plastic. While the classic buoy shape of the bottle remains, I feel as though I’m holding an entirely foreign object in my hand. Even Aqua Velva still uses glass.
Adding insult to injury are the new, shoddily-screened graphics on the bottle. Ink bleeds and smudges abound. The colors chosen are horrifying. The size, weight and placement of text, script and logo are all just slightly off. But ultimately, these are not what disappoint me.
What really bothers me is that there in my hand finally comes the proof that, truly, nothing is sacred. Not even for what for years had been a cheap drugstore aftershave in a classic little bottle. Albeit Old Spice is at the same time a most recognizable name, recognizable smell, and dare I say it – recognizable institution. Along the lines of Murray’s Original pomade or Williams shaving soap. It endures because the stuff just works and carries with it the affordability and lack of pretense that makes it accessible to anyone. And that brings up another point – I see that Old Spice ain’t quite as cheap as it used to be…
Let’s re-cap: Shitty, cheap packaging, no more cool glass bottle, no more gray stopper, poorly-executed labeling AND a higher price to boot. Dearly departed grandfathers across the nation are spinning in their graves at this very moment.
The whole damn thing just makes me feel defeated. But maybe that’s just me. After all, my very favorite material things in life are classics. They have mojo. They just work right. They’re there when I need them, they deliver consistently and never fail to bring a smile to my face. Ultimately, they simply got it right in the first place. Old Spice in a glass buoy bottle was one of those things to me – it was reliable and consistent in appearance, performance and emotional connection, and likely reminded countless folks of a time when every man knew how to wrench on a car, fix the furnace, grill to perfection and host a swingin’ party. In making the switch to plastic, P&G has effectively robbed the Old Spice experience of a great deal of that charm and soul, and I have to wonder how badly the cost savings that surely fueled the decision will be offset by long-time loyalists casting this modern incarnation aside. In the meantime, all I can do is admire the spent glass bottles of OS I have collected, trying to imagine a time when people didn’t try to fix things that were far from broken to begin with.
(Commence whistling, said the Captain to the Boatswain)
-Brent
2 Comments
July 8, 2008 at 2:06 am
Dawg, I hear you. At least you can find it. I went to three drugstores and a Safeway today and nobody had this stuff. Searches at drugstore.com and the like for “old spice aftershave” come up with about 29 different kinds of deodorant and maybe some aftershave at the bottom. It’s a sad day for this slice of Americana, soon to be ditched, apparently, because there’s no room on Walgreen’s shelf for this.
November 28, 2008 at 9:36 am
Check out this advert. It’s for Old Spice “lime”. I actually wish they still made it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yOrHvQFNzk
-D.