In 1990, Procter & Gamble acquired Old Spice to the tune of $300 million, and immediately made changes to its products. At first, they seemed undecided on which changes they wanted to make—things like the stopper color, the exact contours of the new racing yacht insignia, the moniker of "original" versus "classic"—but they eventually settled on a look that wasn't drastically different from what Shulton had been using for 53 years. After 1992, the stopper went from white back to grey, and the milk glass bottles remained in production. Old Spice was still very much Old Spice.
With that said, I notice some key changes which clearly signal P&G's efforts to downgrade the product. First, the bottles. Shulton's bottles were creamy glass that was of the creamy color; P&G's are clear glass that are given a somewhat shoddy coating of creamy finish on the outer layer. There are vertical streaks visible on the neck of my 1993 bottle, pictured above, evidence that the finish didn't dry as evenly as it should have. Of course, this isn't really a big deal, per say, as glass is glass, and fragrance is always better in glass than plastic. But that little cost-cutting thing is noticeable, which is a shame.
Second, the fragrance is given an industry designator: "Original." Lest you be confused by the myriad other Old Spice fragrances crowding the shelves, P&G felt it necessary to announce that they were making the "original" fragrance by printing "original" everywhere. Why they felt this was necessary is anyone's guess, but mine is that they wanted to assure customers that the new ownership hadn't changed anything. I find this type of marketing to reek of insecurity, and wonder what the conversations were like in closed-door meetings. "Hey, we really need to lean into the idea that what we're selling is the real deal." "Yes, you're right, but how do we do that after we've changed the graphic on the bottle?" "I got it! Let's call it 'Original' and print that word everywhere. Shulton never felt the need to do that, and nobody questioned their products, so we should totally change the packaging in this obvious way!"
Lastly, P&G reformulated Old Spice into something very close to what is in bottles today. The early nineties formula is nearly identical to the current formula, except it's a touch spicier on top and a slight bit louder in concentration, projecting further and for an hour or two longer. The citrus and kitchen spice opening accord has a bit of fizzy texture that the current stuff simply lacks (although when atomized, the current formula is pretty darn close). Nineties Old Spice is the progenitor to the plastic bottle stuff on shelves today, and for better or worse, it smells 90% similar to what you're buying in 2025. This is P&G's take on the fragrance, where the vanilla is scaled back, the carnation and clovey spices are butched up, and the powder kicks in early. It's good, and it's recognizably Old Spice, but it's markedly different from the musky vanilla of the 1950s and '60s. Old Spice lost a lot of its sweetness, and gained a more pronounced floral facade.
Like Brut, Old Spice has been through countless variations and reformulations over the decades, so it's difficult to say when the packaging shown here changed to something else. I know the racing yacht eventually got more colorful, and on the box it got even bolder than what's on my 1993 box. And of course, there are vintages of the plastic bottle, starting with the "sideways text" version and ending with the fugly patch graphic.
I'm sure there's some Old Spice fanatic out there somewhere who will find this article and write me with something like, "How can you spew such ignominious garble?" My answer: I'm pretty good at it, actually.
