It's why I still wear Hai Karate.
Posted on 06/28/2006 11:10:04 AM PDT by presidio9
Spray, delay, and walk away." "Grooming Guru" Kyan Douglas can be overheard dishing this advice to the (formerly) clueless men on TV's makeover show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." He knows a little cologne goes a long way.
Mike Church wishes his directions were more widely heeded. "People my age, they'll drench it on," the 19-year-old Express Men employee says recently during his shift at Mishawaka's University Park Mall. "It'll just give you a headache."
Church doesn't let the poor choices of his peers prevent him from doing it right.
He and all three of his brothers, ages 14, 13 and 12, wear Axe brand body sprays, he says. Mike Church likes "Touch."
"I'm not really into the Old Spice thing," he says. "That's more my dad's generation." I think my grandpa wore that."
Church and his brothers are part of a new generation of masculine primping, ushered in in part by shows like "Queer Eye." Although Douglas doesn't suggest his clients try "Tsunami" body spray, or any of the other eight scents by Axe, the company won't be needing his help. Unilever's Axe is now the best-selling body spray. According to Yahoo! Finance, the British-based company had sales of nearly $74.7 billion in 2005, cosmetics and hygiene earning the most at 27 percent.
And Axe's Web site offers its own application advice: "Do not spray ... in eyes, over open flames, near female correctional facilities or sorority events."
It is "The Axe Effect," or "the internationally recognized name for the increased attention Axe-wearing males receive from eager, and attractive, female pursuers," that calls for the warning.
For its marketing campaign, Axe was named 2006 Clio Advertiser of the Year. The award-winning TV spots generally follow an average-looking lad onto an elevator or to some other venue, at which point he is overwhelmed by attention from eager, attractive female pursuers.
The Web site shows young women giving sultry looks. One caption reads: "I'll come back to your room, but I'm not taking my high heels off."
Forgetting everything you've learned about women's liberation, a cost-benefit analysis to purchasing Axe products, ($4.99 for 4 ounces of the body spray compared to $29.50 for an ounce of Abercrombie and Fitch's "Fierce"), is a no- brainer.
"Oh, it works," 19-year-old UP Mall shopper Kyle Steinke says. "Too well."
He and his South Bend housemates, Dustin Beckham, 19, and Robert Tharp, 18, wear Axe and believe it has positively affected their romantic lives. Church and others at the UP Mall that day were more skeptical of Axe's amorous-making claims.
"All my friends wear it," says Justin Hughes, 13, of Niles. "TAG stinks like BO."(TAG is Gillette's similarly priced body spray.) Justin's girlfriend finds The Axe Effect amusing. Taylor Gordon, 14, has been dating her Ring Lardner Middle School classmate for two weeks now and scoffs at the suggestion that her apparent interest in Justin is merely a byproduct of a guy product.
Nevertheless, "I love it," she says, holding Justin's presumably Axe-d arm.
OK, so these kids may be hip to tongue-in-cheek advertising. But James McKenna, chair of the anthropology department at Notre Dame, says the $4 billion industry may be onto something -- that it's not the "Orion" body spray that is good or bad for sexual success, but the thinking that makes it so. Sort of like spray-on confidence.
"If young guys have a psychological edge and believe they will be more successful (romantically), my guess is they will be," he says.
Who axed them?......
Shade of musk oil! EWWWWWW!
Let's call it what it is, male perfume. I have a hard time wearing it, but I'll do it when I'm going out with my wife, when she insists. And yes, she likes Axe. She says she likes the scent.
Axe me about ebonics.
They start dating young at Ring Lardner
I've been around some of my older son's friends.
They're apparently working under the 'if a little is good, the whole damned can ought to work great' premise.
I get the feeling if I lit a cigar around them, they'd go up like a leaking gaspipe.
The most successful aphrodisiac is the smell of money...
It's why I still wear Hai Karate.
that stuff reeks! it's an asthma attack waiting to happen
so it's banned from our house. our son keeps it in his car!
on the brighter side, it is refreshing to see that boy take
an interest in personal hygiene ... seriously lacking in
those awkward pre-teen middle years.
Axe yo' mama 'bout ebonics!........
But she swears she loves it and it lets me get (ahem) closer....so I've been wearing it!
Reminds me of the Hi Karate ads from the '60's.
I walked into the gym locker room the other night and almost got knocked off my feet by the most disturbing smell. Two young guys (maybe seniors in high school) were just stuffing their gym clothes into their bags, and one of them was spraying himself with some of this gunk. His friend kept telling him, "Cut that out! It's obnoxious!" But the first kid would not stop before the whole room smelled like a chemical plant explosion. I am wondering if either of them had taken a shower. I suspect not.
It probly is Hai Karate, but with some cheapass additive. I swear, the 'good' laundry soap is gone and now it's all made in Mexico from goat chips or something. Phew!
Someone should "axe" them if they are peter puffers.
...while I sharpen my ask.
They are dating in 6th grade at my daughter's school. It's a big deal.
However I know one certain girl who won't be dating that young.
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