Feathered roach clips. Gloria Vanderbilt jeans. Hot pink denim.
But Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific® shampoo is the one thing on your late 70s and 80s wish list that you won't ever find in thrift shops. In fact, you won't find it anywhere in the world - except for the Philippines.
Who cares, you ask? A rabid cult following of shampoo-crazed women roaming the Internet and duking it out with each other on ebay.
Jergens launched Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific® in 1974. It was mysteriously discontinued in the late 80s, much to the continued, prolonged, and loud chagrin of its devotees.
What's the big deal?
Men loved this shampoo. Like some perfumes, it seemed to travel on a mysterious channel running straight from the olfactory processor to the gonads. It was a little spicy, a little flowery - it was the madonna and the whore of shampoos. And it lasted - from the bus ride to school, to the bus ride back. No hapless boys ever found their intense morning attraction waning on the way home. No, no. Au contraire.
And Remember Tiger Beat magazine? Remember the interview with David Cassidy saying he loved the smell of a girl's hair washed with Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific®?
If you don't, many do. And they're the same women combing the Web in search of this miraculous substance, writing pleading letters to Vibelle Manufacturing Corporation in the Philippines (they bought the discontinued formula from Jergens, fueling speculation that the death of Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific® in America was an FDA matter), and kvetching about the new Filipino bottles with a floral design. (The original came in an unforgettable purple bottle with the whole, gloriously long, rainbow colored name in the rounded capital letters so popular with graphic designers at the time, and set off by quotation marks.)
So, Why Did Jergens Discontinue It?
This remains a mystery. Some believe that the formula for Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific® involved one or more of the following: occult substances such as eye of newt and tongue of bat, the harvesting of which now falls under the rubric of animal cruelty, fetal tissue, crack cocaine, formaldehyde (this is actually true), whale sperm, radioactive minx glands, or advanced alien technology. The only thing that's certain is that Jergens ain't telling. They send out extremely cryptic and weird messages to those who inquire as to its whereabouts.
Where Can I Get My Own?
Gird your virtual loins, and get into the massive North American smackdown over the few precious bottles floating around up here. That or find a friend in the Philippines willing to do some bartering.
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