Mr. Rilch bought a bunch of holiday scents. He thinks it’s wonderful. I, on the other hand, find the combination of pine candle, bayberry potpourri, and apple-cinnamon plug-into-the-wall-socket air freshener to be strikingly similar to Aqua Velva.
Oh, does this take me back. My dad used AV from the seventies onwards*, and the scent is inextricably linked with my childhood, and later my adolescence, when my household duties included cleaning my parents’ bathroom: the whole place reeked of it. Oh, and the Brylcreem! I strongly suspect that the reason I put up with a certain college SO for as long as I did was that he also used Brylcreem.
Now, the commericals. Of course they had the jingle that’s in the thread title. But did they also have the scenario of the guy trying to slap himself awake and missing repeatedly, only succeeding after he’s put AV on his palm, then saying, “Thanks, I needed that”? Or was that another product? I do know that they sponsored “To Tell the Truth”, which we watched. So now I’m thinking, “Our celebrity panelists…”
*In the early '90s, my mom finally convinced him to switch to another brand because she was simply choking on AV. I don’t remember the name, but it’s one of the ones associated with cowboys.
Aqua Velva! Aqua Velva!
My mom still searches it out in drug stores for my dad. The smell of it makes me think of getting ready for church on Sunday mornings, or going out to dinner with my parents when I was little.
Let us now praise cheap Swinging Sixties aftershave ads!
Hai Karate - a guy slaps some on and sex-crazed women would attack! The commercial would fade out with him katate-chopping his way to freedom.
English Leather: Brit bitch-goddess laying in front of a fire purrs “all my men wear English Leather, or they wear nothing at all.”
Mon Triomphe: Naked Frenchman talks to the camera - talks like a total bimbo, but because he’s French and mesomorphic, you know he’s supposed to be catnip to women.
Old Spice: Rugged sea captain strolls down to the warf, wafting fragrance undilluted by the blowing noreaster, the female fisherfolk poleaxed with desire as he passes by.
Sorry, I can’t remember if Brut had a sexual-revolutionary ad campaign. Perhaps it involved a young swain attracting women and fruit flies as well.
And I’ll leave it to anyone else who may be interested to recall the women’s fragrance ads of the era (such as Jean Nate - a spritz of which put the woman astride a thudering racehorse - oh the symbolism!)
Don’t forget Jade East! I don’t remember the ads – just the pretty boy smell.
I think you’re supposed to be yucked out by the scent your father wears. That’s a healthy sign. But when you’re very old and digging through an old trunk in the attic and find one of his old handkerchiefs, you may be surprisingly comforted by the scent.
I used to know a woman who had a fetish for men who drove Swedish cars; especially if the cars were painted a certain shade of blue. She said, “There’s something about an aqua Volvo man.”
Weren’t those Aqua Velva commercials done by Lainie Kazan when she was young and hot? I remember Barbara Feldon was the English Leather girl, in her pre-99 days.
I can happily say that there are certain wimminfolk that still melt over Old Spice. I used to use Old Spice aftershave and I got more compliments on that. Even a couple dates. They seemed to dig the old-fashioned aspect of it.
You forgot to whisle the “Old Spice” theme. That was the best part of the whole commercial.
I recall Erma Bombeck writing a column about men’s cologne and mentioning Tom Selleck getting out of the shower and spalshing Stetson on himself so hard that it knocked all the hair off his chest.
