Monday, August 10, 2009

Mandom!

What is Mandom? Mandom is power. Mandom is desire. Mandom is all. It's like the spice from "Dune."



Mandom was a cologne from Japan in the 70's created by The Mandom Corporation, formerly known as the Tancho Corporation. According to the always-reliable and never wrong Wikipedia, The Mandom Corporation also has it's fingers in many other fascinating pies such as "life and nonlife insurance; staffing; and general services, such as building maintenance and operation, back-office, and environmental maintenance." Well, diversity is key to survival these days.

And in a stroke of genius, they hired a pre-"Death Wish" Charles Bronson to star in a series of commercials for the manly scent in the early 70's. These commercials are, quite simply, art in it's purest form. Cozy vignettes of culture and erudite ease are interspersed with pistols - always a winning technique.



As you can see in the commercials, the key to Mandom is coat your entire torso with it, almost as if showering. You must also spin the cap off, then toss it away as if you are far too important and powerful to be concerning with things like misplaced cologne caps. Now you are living life the Mandom way.

Later in the 70's The Mandom Corporation unleashed a line of high-end men's products called "Gatsby." Awesome. I don't think Bronson was the face of this line, which is probably a good thing. A brand called Gatsby requires a celebrity that's perceived as being a tad more - well, there's no nice way to put this - drunken. Someone like Peter O' Toole or Oliver Reed.

Thanks to the mysterious and powerful Ouzo / comic-book importer known as The Drivas for the heads up.