I first heard the term on tv’s Married With Children. Al Bundy insults a fat woman he is car pooling with, and she asks him if comes to work smelling of “high karate” every day.
I have never heard anyone I know using the term. In fact I have never heard anyone using the term where I live period. I have two slang dictionaries that don’t have the term. It also isn’t in my regular dictionary.
What does it mean? And while we’re at it, does anyone know where it originated?
It was the name of an aftershave that was sold in the 70’s. Besides being very cheap, it had really bad TV comericals.
What Rick said. Also, I believe the name is spelled Hai Karate .
Yeah, it’s “Hai Karate”. It came with self-defense instructions so the men wearing it could defend themselves from the women who would attack them because they smelled so good. Which I’m sure happened all the time.
There’s a really bad realvideo copy of a Hai Karate commercial at: http://www.tvparty.com/vaultcomsex.html
Hai Karate was one of the worst aftershaves ever, it had extremely camp comercials, and was linking in with the Kung Fu film mania of the 70’s. In case you didn’t know hai means yes in Japanese. I was bought some by my mum many years ago, I have never forgiven her 
In high school, I actually used this stuff.
Hmmmm. Maybe that would explain my lack of success with the fairer gender.
Lord I remember my mom buying me some of that too. Then I got older. By then, thankfully, the really classy high school students such as moi’ could show our distinction by pouring on about half a cup of ‘Brut’
Bwa-hahahahaha… What Algernon and BMalion wrote. What every suave and debonair 15 year old was wearing at the time. 
Apparently the makers named in so because it worked on women the same way a kick to the teeth would.
BMalion - I agree that Brut was the choice of the elite, but ‘Jade East’ was the stuff to wear to impress the ladies.
Bubba
All this recollection of cheesy aftershave/cologne commercials makes me want to say…
‘Can you Canoe?’
C - Come on Over
A - Alone
N - Now
O - Ohhhhh
E - Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera
Cheesiest. Commercial. Ever.
I had a bottle of Hai Karate. I never wore it.
I discovered that it had enough alcohol in it to run my model airplane.
In fact the plane ran great. Stunk up the neighborhood and there seemed to be more flies around afterward.
What about English Leather? Too effete for you stud muffins?
i don’t recall it being all that inexpensive, tho. FTR, does anyone remember any of the expensive ones from that epoch?
in re: twickster: the english leather thing (for me) lasted till 1975-when the ugly girls were laughing and saying “who’s wearing the english leather? is it handsomeharry?..hahahahaha!”
Exuent English Leather
Enter:British Sterling
My uncle wore Hai Karate. It helped him attract all five of his wives. :eek:
Doesn’t anyone wear Old Spice anymore?
Come to think of it, no one has bought me Enjoli in ages! Thank god for that!
This thread amuses me in that I just saw an old rerun of Dharma and Greg that was all about Hai Karate.
All my men wear English Leather . . . Or they wear nothing at all.