Nivea For Men Active3

I’m usually wary of trying FANCY PRODUCTS FOR MEN but I see a dermatologist regularly for skin cancer check ups, and when he saw my pores a few years ago once we had my rampant melanin tamped down he asked what I wash with, and I said “I just use a bar of Irish Spring for everything.” Then he grunted at me and told Diana about some things I could try, maybe some things that wouldn’t dry my skin out so much that it cracks. That’s how we eventually ended up at Nivea Active3.

I’ve used this for a few weeks now, and it is pretty good. I have weird / sensitive skin that has always been part dry and part oily so I don’t usually like to use most types of shaving cream: my complex manscape makes most shaving creams unusable as they end up irritating my face-business. This stuff functions very well as a moderately man-smelling shower soap, a shampoo for when you are lazy / depressed / hungover-and-know-you-aren’t-leaving-the-house-so-can’t-be-bothered-to-use-shampoo, and as a soap solution for shaving your face.

So this works, and I was going to make a funny review about how my dad used to wear tons of Drakkar Noir and hang out in a bathrobe and that this would have saved him time and effort, or how using your wife’s Dove Ultra Moisturizing Shower Gel is what Caspar Weinberger warned us about, or maybe about how AXE shower products are awful and dry out your skin and make you smell like the Senior Pledge Brother in I Eata Pi at DBU or something. But when I went hunting for images or commercials about this product, my whole narrative arc changed.

In the main TV ad for Active3, Nivea shows you a guy who starts out with scruff, hops in the shower, and through the magic of Active3, comes out looking and ostensibly smelling great. The point of the ad is about how useful Active3 is – you can shampoo with it, wash with it, and even shave with it. The guy, now out of the shower and staring at his newly-shorn self in the mirror, ALMOST PUTS SOME ON HIS TOOTHBRUSH BECAUSE IT DOES SO MANY THINGS ROFL LOL. The guy shaves his face in the commercial, and also his chest. I know there have to be some guys who shave their chests all the time, but that seemed like a weird thing to target in a 30 second ad.

As I was looking for the commercial (which you can see at Nivea’s website for Active3), I found this:

So the guy shaves up everything you can see in the main national TV ad, but Nivea goes one step further by giving you a SIX PART man tutorial about HOW TO SHAVE EVERYTHING:

The best part of the whole deal is when the narrator says “…unless you happen to enjoy razor burns” and the actor looks up, as if to say “Ho ho! We know that isn’t true. What sort of real man likes razor burns on his banger and mash? Harrumph!”

I don’t know why I think of that guy as having a voice you would normally find on a dude in an 1800′s London tavern, but there you have it.

This extensive project tells me that the market Nivea is targeting must at least have a considerable planned share for the guy that regularly gets in the shower and shaves everything. I don’t do that, and I don’t think I know anyone who does, so the whole tutorial seems odd.

That does not change the fact that Active3 is a badass product at a totally reasonable price. Any issues I had with dry or oily skin have cleared up since I started using it, it is good for my hair, I smell nice, and my neck doesn’t feel all raw as hell after I shave with it. That’s all I want out of a shower experience, and so this product is all the shower soap / gel / shampoo / manscaping agent I need. It is, in fact, probably more powerful than my needs actually dictate. The fact that Nivea was so confident in its applicability as soap / shampoo / shaving soap that they made a six part series about how to shave everything with it indicates, at least to me, that maybe I’m using a nuclear weapon where a handgun would suffice, shower-wise – but I’m never going back.

Nivea For Men Active3 gets a 5 out of 5.