Hai Karate by Leeming, 1967

A collector friend of mine owns an old bottle and after many claims (i used to beg him with insistence) he allowed me to inhale the juice even if just from the glass. It's not enough for a complete review. All i can write is that  perceive a sort of cold, metallic bit anicy strange kind of smell. Something rancid comes to mind which reminds a trait of the initial smell of Salvador Dali Pour Homme but less dark, colder and more herbal. I read that the fragrance becomes powdery at the end of its development. What i can do for the moment is to express a neutral rating.

In 1972, I won a bottle of this so-called "cologne" as a door prize at a dance. I tried it before I went to see a movie. The stench was so overpowering it gave me a severe headache and people sitting next to me kept moving away to another row after a short while. Quite humiliating... True story! September 2011 update: Recently, I brought back home some of my belongings that I had left at my father's place when I took my first apartment in 1978 and I found my old (and virtually unused) bottle of Hai Karate. Oddly enough, I was rather pleasantly surprised. Of course, I would never wear this fragrance now because it is too "barbershoppy". However, I find the scent much less offensive than I originally thought. Maybe it has faded a little bit over the years. Anyway, it does remind me of some good times I had in the 70's. Just for that, I changed my rating from Thumbs down to Neutral.

all of the rancid and nuclear waste comments are dead wrong. This frag is actually pretty soft on the drydown. I actually am in the process of looking for a smell alike.

Got a small plastic bottle of this with a toy electric razor in my Christmas stocking when I was a kid of about 6. Was my first introduction to aftershaves. Invokes fond memories of my childhood when I smell it. Tends to offend the noses these days that have become used to feminine aquatics. I have a reproduction version of this called New Generation Hai Karate and it is spot on to the original, but has very poor longevity on the skin.

Talk about kickin' it old school boy !

The original old school classic...

Folks behind the frag are also trailblazers in advertising the product. People often compare the Hai Karate TV ads (marketing schemes) from the 60's and 70's to today's TV ads of the Axe line.

If this original frag was an ass kicking ninja it would only have one name...

MAN - LI. ! ! ! Wooooo Weeeeee ! ! !

This is a pretty strong scent indeed.

Drydown not as strong after the powdery notes set in.

Only some men can pull this one off. ;)

Soak in it and the scent will karate chop other peoples noses for miles.

HAI YAA ! ! !

Vile, disgusting synthetic creation that should have been aborted before birth.

I couldn't agree more with tvlampboy's thumbnail: "All that is vile and hellish in the world, but captured in a bottle...." and Tropirock's Ephitet "RIP, Hai Karate. Return to the bowels of hell from whence you came."

By all means use it for removing biro ink marks from fabrics but wear rubber gloves, you wouldn't want to get any of this stuff on you.

This has the distinction of undefeated champ for bad 60's/70's colognes. I laughed out loud when I read tvlampboy's thumbnail: "All that is vile and hellish in the world, but captured in a bottle....". I guess that about says it. RIP, Hai Karate. Return to the bowels of hell from whence you came.

I don't think this one is necessarily as bad as people are saying. It's almost thumbs down for me personally because it's anisy (or something along those lines) and powdery, and these are common offenses of scents that I don't like. But aside from that, I find it to be adequate...fairly similar to others from days of yore that survived and became cheapies. Paul Sebastian? Canoe? British Sterling? Maybe the age of my sample's source bottle accounts for this, but it didn't seem strong enough to be offensive, in fact it's significantly weaker than I expected from what I had read here. I would survive wearing this every once in a while.

Okay, well in defence of this scent (seeing it has virtually ALL negative reviews), it was cheap back in the day apparently (I was too young to remember first hand though) and upon smelling it today, it is/was not too dissimilar to Brut but perhaps not quite a strong. Brut is a timeless classic no matter if you may or may not like it, and I find that this, being similar, is a pretty ok (nothing special) scent for the price.

Okay, to pick up a bottle now will cost you a small fortune on eBay and then maybe you could say it's not value for money, but judging it on it's early price and quality of scent, I'm giving it a thumbs up (albeit a borderline middle of the road thumb.)

This toxic waste has torn a hole in the ozone!!