Back in August, I chucked the remainder of my European Old Spice Original aftershave and refilled the bottle with the new American formula by P&G. My thinking was that I would run out of vintage Shulton by mid-fall, and by that time I wanted the newer formula to be sitting in glass for three or four months, so it would be mellowed and ready for use when I transferred it to the milk glass vintage bottle.
The three months went by with me thinking the transfer would be seamless, but would be marked by a distinct difference in the two formulas. I figured the change from the smooth vanilla powder of vintage to the crisp, clove-laden P&G formula would be stark. Yesterday I transferred the liquid from the European Original glass bottle to the newly-emptied Shulton bottle, and topped it off with about a quarter of a four-ounce plastic spray I purchased at Walmart. I filled the Shulton bottle up to the top, stuck the little grey stopper into it, and let it sit overnight.
When I came back to it today, I braced myself for a disappointing change. I'd grown used to the vintage formula, and wasn't really looking forward to switching back to the stronger "butch" formula P&G sells today. At noon I showered, changed, and splashed the vintage bottle's new contents into my palms, rubbing the liquid across my neck and chest. To my surprise, I found it smelled a lot like the vintage cologne! I stopped and sniffed the bottle, then added a bit more splashed it across my arms. Another few sniffs later, I realized something had happened to the formula.
Either it changed a bit in glass, or it leeched whatever oils were clinging to the Shulton bottle and blended them into the new formula, but somehow the new stuff smells soft and powdery and sweet, with a distinctly musky vanilla note, much like vintage. Perhaps it's a combination of the time spent stored in glass and the vintage oils caked into the Shulton bottle, but the overall smell is very, very close to the Shulton formula. I don't get the sharp spicy accents that I usually get from the plastic spray bottle, I don't get the slight plastic undertone, and there's no harsh clove. Honestly, if I didn't know better, I might not notice any change from the 1970s formula to the new stuff.
My advice to any guy who buys vintage Shulton on eBay is this: buy a glass bottle and decant the plastic spray formula of OS "Classic" into it, and let it sit in the glass for however long it takes you to use the vintage juice. When your vintage is empty, transfer the cologne from the glass to the Shulton bottle, let it sit in there a day or two, and see if there's a big difference in the scent. You may find that the new formula has somehow morphed into something very, very close to the vintage.