Cruising eBay I stumbled across something so charming to me that I had to buy it, and that led me straight down a rabbit hole on the Internet for a couple of hours about exactly who Surrey was and how they relate to today's Van Der Hagen.
The box was full and shrinkwrapped when I bought it, I had it emptied and the brush soaking in shampoo when I took the pictures. Don't you love the shaving facts on the back of the box? That's the most adorkably earnest list of reasons for traditional wet shaving I've ever seen. It made me smile.
There are a few of these kits around still in the box, some showing Surrey's address in Minnesota and others like this one in Austin. When Surrey went public in 1997, they were described in their SB-2 as a company that started in 1972 and re-incorporated in Texas in 1981, with John Van Der Hagen as a principal of the company. The dates make sense with this packaging; it does not have a UPC bar code and the packing imagery certainly screams 1970s. Kits that appear to be from the 1980s have more elegant light blue packaging without the corny list of saving facts and contained milk-glass mugs with images of cars printed in blue. Some of those kits have a company address in Austin and others show it being up the road in Leander. The last Surrey kits have the familiar green-marbled-border packaging and an address in Leander.
Surrey's public filings showed it as a maker of private-label soap products along with the small shaving soap business, and the business news of the time described it as having a couple of hundred employees. But there were issues with overexpansion and insufficient revenues to pay back their construction loans or provide returns to the stockholders. In 2001 the whole operation collapsed and was sold off to a California business that made shower poufs (the colorful plastic mesh cloud things that you've seen if you share a bathroom with a woman.) The facilities in Leander were foreclosed on in 2003. But in an interview with Mantic, the Van Der Hagens describe how their current operation started in the same year. Apparently they managed to reacquire their shaving soap operations and restarted business back up in Liberty Hill as a private family company. They first appeared on the internet in 2004 offering the same Surrey branded products they had before the crash, but by 2006 was selling them under their own name instead of the Surrey name. And that's how we have Van Der Hagen now.
Anyway, the shave. The mug is pretty small - it just held that puck of deluxe soap with no room to spare and will hold a puck of today's VDH Deluxe, but won't hold a VDH Luxury soap. Not much room to swirl the brush to build lather either. But I managed it. The soap lathered up well and smelled good. The box does not include the list of ingredients. The brush is the same boar brush that Van Der Hagen sold until very recently, assembled in house. It took a nice long bath last night and got its hair combed to pull out any loose strands. When I lathered with it today it didn't lose a single hair, which was a pleasant surprise - these have a reputation as shedders, which is the reason I got rid of my identical 2010 VDH boar after six months of use in favor of the EJ badger brush. Couldn't take the shedding anymore. But the VDH shaving kit in 2010 is what got me started with traditional wet shaving and I appreciated it for that.
The soap's glide and cushion were decent, not amazing, but functional. I understand they've reformulated the deluxe soap a bit over the years and the new stuff is better. The razor and blade performed to their usual excellent standards. And to make the shave complete I picked up that NOS bottle of Avon Wild Country at the antique store for $4. The decanter is called "Wild West", from 1977, and was supposed to evoke the cartridge for an Old West lawman's revolver. There wasn't anything wrong with the aftershave; to me it smells like Coty Stetson and it did the job it was expected to do. Good face feel.
I enjoyed it, anyway.
The box was full and shrinkwrapped when I bought it, I had it emptied and the brush soaking in shampoo when I took the pictures. Don't you love the shaving facts on the back of the box? That's the most adorkably earnest list of reasons for traditional wet shaving I've ever seen. It made me smile.
There are a few of these kits around still in the box, some showing Surrey's address in Minnesota and others like this one in Austin. When Surrey went public in 1997, they were described in their SB-2 as a company that started in 1972 and re-incorporated in Texas in 1981, with John Van Der Hagen as a principal of the company. The dates make sense with this packaging; it does not have a UPC bar code and the packing imagery certainly screams 1970s. Kits that appear to be from the 1980s have more elegant light blue packaging without the corny list of saving facts and contained milk-glass mugs with images of cars printed in blue. Some of those kits have a company address in Austin and others show it being up the road in Leander. The last Surrey kits have the familiar green-marbled-border packaging and an address in Leander.
Surrey's public filings showed it as a maker of private-label soap products along with the small shaving soap business, and the business news of the time described it as having a couple of hundred employees. But there were issues with overexpansion and insufficient revenues to pay back their construction loans or provide returns to the stockholders. In 2001 the whole operation collapsed and was sold off to a California business that made shower poufs (the colorful plastic mesh cloud things that you've seen if you share a bathroom with a woman.) The facilities in Leander were foreclosed on in 2003. But in an interview with Mantic, the Van Der Hagens describe how their current operation started in the same year. Apparently they managed to reacquire their shaving soap operations and restarted business back up in Liberty Hill as a private family company. They first appeared on the internet in 2004 offering the same Surrey branded products they had before the crash, but by 2006 was selling them under their own name instead of the Surrey name. And that's how we have Van Der Hagen now.
Anyway, the shave. The mug is pretty small - it just held that puck of deluxe soap with no room to spare and will hold a puck of today's VDH Deluxe, but won't hold a VDH Luxury soap. Not much room to swirl the brush to build lather either. But I managed it. The soap lathered up well and smelled good. The box does not include the list of ingredients. The brush is the same boar brush that Van Der Hagen sold until very recently, assembled in house. It took a nice long bath last night and got its hair combed to pull out any loose strands. When I lathered with it today it didn't lose a single hair, which was a pleasant surprise - these have a reputation as shedders, which is the reason I got rid of my identical 2010 VDH boar after six months of use in favor of the EJ badger brush. Couldn't take the shedding anymore. But the VDH shaving kit in 2010 is what got me started with traditional wet shaving and I appreciated it for that.
The soap's glide and cushion were decent, not amazing, but functional. I understand they've reformulated the deluxe soap a bit over the years and the new stuff is better. The razor and blade performed to their usual excellent standards. And to make the shave complete I picked up that NOS bottle of Avon Wild Country at the antique store for $4. The decanter is called "Wild West", from 1977, and was supposed to evoke the cartridge for an Old West lawman's revolver. There wasn't anything wrong with the aftershave; to me it smells like Coty Stetson and it did the job it was expected to do. Good face feel.
I enjoyed it, anyway.
