Hai Karate!



Those two words bring you back to the magical time of the late sixties/early seventies, where men were men and women put up with it. You remember that guy that was in his late twenties, but cruised around in his mom's Fairmont looking at the highschool girls? He wore Hai Karate. The janitor at the YMCA that had a cigarette perpetually hanging from the corner of his mouth, and a transistor radio in his back pocket? Hai Karate. The guy with the crooked mustache, black bellbottoms, slicked back hair, and cream colored turtleneck? You guessed it, another Hai Karate man.



The only person in my family that used it was my great-grandfather, who was no doubt taken in by the notorious commercials of the time that featured a stereotypical nerd kissing his girlfriend, who viciously turns on him and starts tearing his clothes off. Another featured a guy walking down the street and one by one a group of women form behind him, until he has to use his innate martial arts skills to defend himself from the throng of sexed-up women. Hey, come to think of it, not much different from the Axe ads of today!



Original commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAnU9zT87j4



The bottle came packaged with an instruction manual on how to fend off the hordes of phermonally stimulated gals:







Ahhh, the sixties. Nothing like an aftershave that instructs you in the fine art of pimp slappin' a girl that just wants to get a taste of your manhood. Actually, when it comes to lust between the sexes, Hai Karate may have been on to something. It was put out by Pfizer, who got out of the cologne business and nowadays distribute VIAGRA!!!!





So, exactly how horrible is Hai Karate? We've all heard stories about how pungent it is, and most of us are loathe to admit that we used it when we were younger.



To start off, I wore a different blend of Hai Karate each day of the week. Some were better than others, but none of them are spectacular. The different fragrances went like this:



Sunday: Hai Karate original

Monday: Hai Karate Musk

Tuesday: Hai Karate Oriental Lime

Wednesday: Hai Karate Oriental Spice

Thursday: Hai Karate original (1980's reformulation)

Friday: High Karate Gamesman

Saturday: Oriental Lime (again)

Sunday: Oriental Spice (again)



Here's my personal observations of how the week went:



Hai Karate Original-Sunday



A general note about all of the different Hai Karate aftershaves: NONE of them should have been called A/S, these things are more of a cologne, and a strong cologne at that. If you splash this stuff on like A/S, you'll reek all day. I learned this the hard way.



So my initial impression of the original- EEwww! This stuff is raunchy! Imagine Mennen Skin Bracer with mothballs and fat hairy man sweat thrown in for good measure. Like an idiot, I used it anyway. In the course of my day I had three women turn their nose up when they walked past me. But as if that wasn't funny enough, the stuff got stronger as I went through my day. By the time my GF got home the whole house smelled like HK. I'm not going to tell you what she said I smelled like, but it was something so filthy that even I was offended.





HK Musk-Monday





Right out of the bottle, the musk wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Spicy and bold, sort of a strong Jovan scent with (dare I say it?) hints of Tabac. Having not learned my lesson the previous day, on went the liberal splash of my aftershave of the day.



Not as bad as the previous day, but after an hour or two a phenomena that I like to call the "Mothball Effect" starts taking place. All of the spicy musk begins to evaporate and you're left with the smell of mothballs. Yep, nothing spells dirty old man more than mothballs n' musk.



Back into the dark recesses of my cabinet with ye, Hai Karate Musk.



HK Oriental Lime-Tuesday



My Tuesday morning was a shaveless one, so I dabbed a very small amount of the Oriental Lime on. First impression out of the bottle was "Holy crap! This Jade East knock off ain't half bad!" That was before the weird looks I got from the people at work. Once again, the Mothball Effect came into play, and for what little I used, good God it was strong.



Sidenote: after smelling the Oriental Lime in its full glory, I came to the realization that this was the type of HK that my Grandfather used. He was in his seventies then, and it perfectly suited him. For someone my age, it smells like I've been working at a rest home and have "ointment" all over my skin that won't wash off.



HK Oriental Spice-Wednesday



This smelled the best out of the bottle over all the previous HK's I'd sampled, so I used this as a genuine AS. It was much more pronounced on my skin than it was in the bottle, but not unpleasant. I actually received a compliment from a girl at a store, so I figured it couldn't be that bad.



The Oriental Spice smells a lot like Skin Bracer Cooling Spice. I happen to really like the Mennen scent, and this seemed very similar to it, just MUCH stronger. A zesty, spicy blend that's not unlike the original (Schulton) Old Spice, but with more of a musky base. It lasted all day and it reached the "Mothball Effect" very late in the day. I figured I'd try it out later as a cologne and see if I could tame that old man smell.





HK Original (eighties version)-Thursday



The later reformulation of Hai Karate came out in 1979. It was closer to the earlier Gamesman (see below) than the original, "Classic" version. As such, it's basically a cheap Brut knock-off that has a more subdued, mellower "Old Man Smell". This was better than the original blend, but not good enough to make me want to use it again.





HK Gamesman-Friday



Hai Karate's answer to Brut. Like the classic Faberge scent, this is supposed to be the manliest of all the Hai Karate fragrances. If this is what a man is supposed to smell like, I'd rather smell like a sissy mary panty-waste.



Brut and mothballs. Not much left to add. Oh, my girlfriend said the bathroom smelled like an Asian whorehouse after I was done.





HK Oriental Lime-Saturday (second use)



I used this as an AS today, to see if I still liked it. I hated it.



NEEEEEEEXT!!!!





HK Oriental Spice-Sunday



Tried this one again for the second time, and used it as a cologne instead of the AS.



Guess what? It's not bad. This is the only one I'm going to keep in my shave den. Even then, it will be used as a cologne, as to avoid the dreaded Mothball Effect.





Quick notes about other Hai Karate products I sampled through the week:



Hai Karate Cologne: even stronger than the AS. Stay away!

Hai Karate Talc: Smells like mildewed roach powder.

Hai Karate Soap on a rope: Gave me a rash.

Hai Karate shave cream: Smells like Brut, no lather.

Hai Karate deodorant: Smells good, too dry to use.





So, after a week of being Karaticized, all I can say is that "Yes, I'm glad it's all over." It's definitely not as bad as some people make it out to be- of course, there's a lot of guys that use Mennen Green Skin Bracer which to me is just as bad as Hai Karate, except it doesn't last as long. This may be a case of YMMV- but all I can say is out of one week, I had nine negative comments and two positives, and both of those from the Oriental Spice.



From the "self defense manual":

Use too much Hai Karate and your girl, or even your own wife, can get a passionate grip on you.

That statement is entirely true; after a week of stinking up the house my "girl" was ready to "get a grip" on me, and throw me down a flight of stairs. (I just hope she doesn't tell "my own wife", as I'm sure she'd be furious!!!!)





Hai Karate should probably be remembered just as the fad that it was. In the wake of the monumental success of Hai Karate, all the other fragrance houses came out with their own "Asian" themed fragrance (for the best of them, see my cologne review of Pinaud YU.



The advertising is what people remember most about Hai Karate. I think that Axe, Tag, and all the other body spray houses hit the history books when they came up with their prospective marketing campaigns.



I can sum up my experiences with Hai Karate with a line taken right from their instruction sheet:



HAI KARATE: Be careful how you use it!

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Rob

Discussion thread here:

http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthr...919#post956919

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Rob

The only thing I liked about it was the name.

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The Silver Fox