Brace yourself: Aqua Velva, other retro grooming products try a comeback

ORLANDO, Fla. — Bell-bottoms are in stores once more, the Izod Lacoste shirt (and its famous crocodilian logo) has returned. Even "The Manchurian Candidate" is back.

And now — drum roll, please — it's Aqua Velva's turn.

That's right. The blue aftershave once hawked by Pete Rose, the 1970s poster boy for good grooming, is staging a comeback.

Before you laugh, consider this. In corporate America, there's a movement afoot to buy old, tired brands of the 1960s and relaunch them. Already, Vitalis, the hair tonic popular in the 1950s and 1960s, has come out with a new line of products, including shampoo and mousses. And the same company that bought Vitalis, Helen of Troy, recently acquired Brut, a cologne whose popularity peaked in the '70s.

Similarly, Old Spice has created a successful line of deodorants. And now another company is planning to give Aqua Velva and Brylcreem a makeover.

Suddenly, everyone wants a piece of the booming men's grooming market.

But with no plans to reformulate Aqua Velva, can there be a future for what a wag once described as "the toiletry of choice for used-car salesmen"?

The makers of Aqua Velva hope so. They've even sponsored a contest, a search for "Today's Aqua Velva Man."

Aqua Velva "has been on the market forever, 50-plus years," says Michael Wendroff, vice president of personal-care marketing for Combe Inc. The company bought Aqua Velva, Brylcreem and Lectric Shave, 18 months ago.

"We knew we had a brand that was well-known and had a terrific scent. It just hadn't been marketed in years."

No kidding. Many guys under the age of 35 have never heard of Aqua Velva.

So the executives at Combe, which also owns Grecian Formula and Just for Men Haircolor, have launched an ad campaign that's playing in theaters showing PG-13-rated and R-rated movies, a group that ranges from "The Bourne Supremacy" to "Fahrenheit 9/11."

"Our target is really the 30-year-old guy who respects himself enough to want to stay in shape and stay attractive," Wendroff says.

After four weeks of ads, business is up 30 percent, he says.

Of course, everything is relative.

Aqua Velva shows up 36th in the category of shaving lotions/colognes and talcs, according to Information Resources, a consumer-products tracking company in Chicago.

Numbers aside, Wendroff acknowledges that his greatest challenge is education: Many young men don't know what an aftershave is. Today's products go by such soothing monikers as "balm" and "lotion." They're designed to be gentle, not "bracing" — aka stinging — like their predecessors.

From a marketing standpoint, this distinction is no slam-dunk.

Today, "it's easier for Austin Powers to come back than a '60s brand," says Erik Gordon, a marketing professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Even more troubling for Aqua Velva and other aftershave makers is younger generations' disregard for a close shave.

"If you go into a drugstore," Gordon says, "you'll see that there are shavers that leave it at the stubble level." Actors such as Don Johnson in "Miami Vice" are credited with starting that look.

Once endorsed by Norman Rockwell, Aqua Velva remained popular in the 1950s and '60s. But by the 1970s, when facial hair became much more acceptable, aftershaves went by the wayside.

And by the 1980s, young men were too designer conscious to return to the days of Old Spice and Aqua Velva.

"They're a lot more sophisticated," Gordon says. "They're more likely to be using something that says Ralph Lauren than some dorky old stuff that your father used."

Polling the cool crowd

To see what Aqua Velva is up against, it's time for a trip to a drugstore and a college campus.

At Walgreen's, the expensive colognes are locked behind glass doors. But in the shaving section, on a shelf below cans and cans of Barbasol shaving cream, there's a shelf full of aftershaves and long-forgotten colognes. The shelf is a retro wonder that brings back memories of black-and-white television: Brut — in two sizes! Eight varieties of Old Spice. English Leather, Jade East and British Sterling.

And one bottle of Aqua Velva.

Beneath these fossils of men's fragrances are spray bottles filled with BODman Fragrance Body Spray, which comes equipped with a Windex style sprayer and in such manly modern scents as "Tekno," and "Really Ripped Abs."

At the University of Central Florida, where few students have heard of Aqua Velva, it gets mixed reviews.

"Aqua Velva's so old," says Scott Corliss, 23, a flight instructor hanging out on campus with his girlfriend, a graduate student. "It's like Old Spice. You don't see 20-year-olds wearing Old Spice. You see 60-year-olds wearing Old Spice."

He already uses Nivea After Shave Balm. "I like this because it was more of a lotion and it moisturizes my skin," Corliss says, "so I don't get as much razor burn."

Across campus, Thu Nguyen says Aqua Velva's fragrance is "familiar." But nowadays, Calvin Klein cologne is his style, and he doesn't use an aftershave. "I don't feel the need for it," says Nguyen, a student who fits solidly into Aqua Velva's hoped-for thirtysomething demographic.

Aqua Velva could make a comeback, though, says Todd Du Bosq, 25, a physics graduate student. But he sets one condition — "if it's marketed well."

Can little dab do it again?

Next on Wendroff's list of comebacks is Brylcreem.

Once labeled "greasy kid stuff" by its competition, Brylcreem — and its rivals, Vitalis and Wild Root — faded from popular use in the 1970s, when the dry look came in and men stopped slicking back their hair.

But times have changed again, says Wendroff, and if men who use hair gel would try a little dab of Brylcreem, they might like it.

"It was used by James Dean, Elvis, all sorts of people. You could get that look if you used more than a dab," says Wendroff. "But if you only used a dab, it gives you a light hold while holding a shine. It doesn't give you the sticky hard hold of a hair gel or spray."

Gordon says if the company can find hip celebrities to promote its '60s products, it might stand a chance of reviving them. But with Brylcreem, he has his doubts. "Who are you going to get as your spokesmen? Lenny and Squiggy from 'Laverne & Shirley'?" says Gordon.

If the naysayers are correct, Wendroff still has one option: the retro route.

At Hometown Favorites, a mail-order company that stocks hard-to-find items, owner Colleen Chapin rarely gets orders for Aqua Velva, but she keeps a few bottles in stock.

"We don't get many requests for it," Chapin say. "But we do a retro Father's Day basket that we call 'Father Knows Best' " — a gift pack that includes Brylcreem, Aqua Velva and Sen-Sen breath mints. "It's so retro, you've got to have it."