Wow has Avon's Wild Country been watered down over the years

All I can say is wow. Someone with a fetish for collecting Avon bottles donate a bunch of 70s era Avon bottles new in box to a local thrift store. While I don't use much of anything from Avon (I did like Everafter but it is discontinued and past the collectible bottle era), I do like Wild Country and they just so happened to have an old sealed bottle of it so for $1 I bought it. All I can say is wow. This was cologne concentration, not aftershave and man is it powerful. I recently bought a modern bottle and that stuff is weak in comparison, in fact I happened to be wearing it today. I've had better sillage from the Wild Country deoderant and talc. While it would take a good few sprays of the new stuff to get any sort of longevity, I put a few dabs of this on my wrist and it was like modern Wild Country times 10. Luckily the black glass bottle seems to have done a fairly good job of preserving it by keeping the light out. Its the same stuff only way stronger.

I've noticed this a lot with more budget colonges, or once expensive ones that became budget, through reformulation or cheapening they've gotten weaker. I'm sure the ingredients cost more now, and you can actually feel that the older stuff has more in it just by the skin feel.

Royal Copenhagen is the same, a spray or two of the old stuff is golden, you need a heavy dose of the 8oz bottle to get it to last, same with the big oz Pierre Cardin, I practically have to soak myself in that, but I remember testing it in smaller bottles years ago at TJ Maxx and a spray or two was quite strong. Circa early 80s Stetson Aftershave is almost as strong as the current cologne.

The modern Wild Country, while it smells exactly the same, I put on this morning, quite a bit because it doesn't last very long, and had to reapply by mid afternoon before I went out. Consequently a simple dab of the old cologne, to see if it was still good would obviously last as long as quite a few spritzes of the new stuff. I guess I won't complain because at least they haven't harmed the smell, and the stuff is dirt cheap. Such a nice barbershop type smell, it is comforting to wear on occasion. I can almost guarantee this 3.25oz bottle will outlast 2 modern ones though.

Thankfully due to collectible bottles there seems to be a decent amount of vintage product floating around in this case. Just most of it is aftershave. I have a feeling this cologne variant will hold up over the cousre of the day like I wish the current version would.

The scent itself hasn't changed, it is just weaker, unlike some where reformulations mess it up, just a bit watered down. Evaporation in the bottle of the old stuff was minimal enough that it wouldn't cause that substantial a difference in concentration. The old stuff is stronger and lasts longer. If you apply enough of the new stuff it lasts long enough, the old stuff just requires less. Not that big a deal, but wow, side by side them and its amazing. I mainly bought it to save a few bucks on an already cheap cologne, wasn't expecting that much a difference.

I've used the deoderant before and it seems to carry on longer than the cologne itself for whatever reason possibly the binders or whatever they use in it. The vintage version of the cologne just lasts longer and is stronger. I was merely quite surprised at the observation, I was expecting more of the same and only expecting to save a few dollars, but that bottle will likely last much longer because of this. I'd probably guess it is simple economy, you can't make a ton on a budget cologne if you're using a lot of oils. I paid $8 or $9 for the last bottle of new Wild Country. It would be interesting to know if country to country differences make one version stronger or weaker.

Well the Avon donations continue, this time it was aftershave concentrations of Wild Country, Spicy, Oland and Tai Winds. They had two of each of the Spicy, Oland and Tai Winds, I had smelled Oland before and liked it so it was a blind buy. Based on the conditions of the boxes (crisp and new) this stuff was stored well. The vintage Wild Country aftershave is IMHO the exact proportion of the current cologne. Exact same smell and longevity. I actually finished the last of an almost empty bottle of current Wild Country this morning so I was able to get a fairly good comparison.

If I knew it was stored well I'd buy vintage Wild Country as opposed to the current stuff just for the added longevity especially in the cologne variant. There are a few bottles left which I might just go back and buy simply because its so much cheaper than buying the current stuff (which is cheap to begin with). I'm guessing that had Spicy (which reminds me vaguely of the old version of Old Spice), Oland and Tai Winds been continued on to today they'd survive in a concentration much like these aftershaves.

In case anyone is interested, I can't place Oland. Tai Winds reminds me a lot of Mennen's Trouble which was a nice scent.

There are way too many still around for them to have any real value. I mean I have at least a dozen full vintage ones here in boxes and it seems every few weeks I run across one or two more. Still its an interesting way to sample discontinued scents. Some of them aren't bad at all.