CJ Cologne
Avon (1983)

CJ Cologne by Avon (1983) was created as a collaboration between Avon and what was then the owners of the Jeep brand, American Motors Corporation. One might argue that AMC had been here before, as the company itself was formed by the collaboration and eventual combination of several smaller failing American auto makers being crushed by the dominance of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler. Here we also see Avon struggling in the perfume space, having seen its market share eroded by suburban sprawl across middle-America replacing many of the small town main streets where Avon sellers would blanket pamphlets (or stock within the stores on consignment if they could) with glittery shopping centers or indoor shopping malls fronted by an ocean of parking. No longer did you need to "settle" for Avon if you lived in Nowhereville US, now you could buy designers from the Galleria Mall just outside of it. This made Avon desperate, even if their make-up and skincare were reaching all-time highs in sales, so in a move to "spend it while they got it", they invested in prestige brands that sold in department stores, while also collaborating with celebrities, designers lacking perfume ranges of their own, and the oddball brand license like Jeep; Ferrari and Lamborghini had made a go of selling men's colognes, so why not Jeep?

The result is this fragrance, named after the long-running Jeep model that got the US through WWII. Considering how well Bugatti, Jaguar, and the aforementioned Italian car makers were, a successful Jeep cologne seemed plausible, as the off-roaders were well loved, and appealed to the kind of rugged can-do men who Avon targeted in the working and middle classes. The scent of CJ is really fascinating though, as it is completely detached from the marketing and packaging of the fragrance itself. The claptrap on the box mentioned something about being the scent of adventure, but when you smell CJ Cologne, it is very clearly a mod of something Avon had released in the late 70's or cusp of the 80's, with little to really feel "adventurous" about it. Not to say CJ Cologne isn't good, it's just not outdoorsy at all; and what you get inside the rather smart-looking bottle is a sort of dandy musky lavender and patchouli, a fragrance that calls out classic Guerlains from the turn of the 20th Century for inspiration, namely Guerlain Jicky (1889) or it's masculine make-over Mouchoir de Monsieur (1904). CJ Cologne doesn't have quite the raunch of them, as the animalics are much subtler and nitromusks back-fill the void, but it's an unexpectedly urbane, if antiquated experience even by early 1980's standards.

The stuff made a minor splash, but like most things Avon did, wasn't around for long enough time to make a difference one way or the other; and CJ cologne is cheap enough in the aftermarket even over 40 years on (if you have access to US eBay), that you can spend a little coin for a mini, or a little more coin for a big bottle, to see what I'm talking about for yourself. CJ Cologne is never going to gobsmack any vintage collector enough to cause a hype train on social media and turn it into the next holy grail vintage, but neither is any old Avon, really. If quirky old cheap perfume is your thing, Avon is a goldmine, and CJ is another example of why, being a fun little fragrance that answers the question nobody asked of "what if Fred Astaire worked a factory job instead of becoming celebrity but kept his panache?" I suppose Fred would also need to be driving a Jeep CJ-5 or something to fully fit the fragrance. Cheap thrills aside, Avon really confused me with the choice of releasing a Jeep Renegade cologne decanter about five years before this (a sportier variant of the CJ), but filling it with Trazarra by Avon (1978) cologne instead of Jeep-themed fragrance like this, but not putting CJ cologne in the Jeep-shaped decanter they already had. Oh well, it wouldn't have saved AMC anyway, so it doesn't matter. Thumbs up