There are so many ways to show your love of cars. Of course, you can buy the vehicles you want, but you can also assemble a library of CEO biographies, fill your drawers with Mustang T-shirts, hang up Lamborghini and Ferrari posters, and buy Shelby-licensed Bulova watches. Back in the day, you could even buy Avon fragrances in car-shaped bottles.
1955 Ford Thunderbird aftershave
If it seems as if Avon has been around your whole life, that’s because it has. Its origins date back to 1886, when traveling book salesman David H. McConnell was offering perfume samples to his female customers. He soon found that the fragrances were more popular than the books, so he established the California Perfume Company. In 1939, CPC became known as Avon. Over time, Avon branched out to make a variety of products, from skincare serums and jewelry to makeup and clothing. According to collectibles expert Barbara Crews, Avon’s manufactured collectible items “didn’t start to become popular until the early 1960s when Avon began producing a line of novelty containers for its perfumes and colognes.”
A quick search of eBay or Etsy shows that many of those fragrance or aftershave containers were shaped like old cars. Check out this assortment that includes a “1964” Ford Mustang, 1948 Chrysler Town Country, and 1968 Porsche 911 (one of the cars in the group has a Goodwill sticker that labels it as “Bric-A-Brac”).
Avon also made a ’33 Pierce-Arrow full of “Wild Country” aftershave:
It looks as Avon made ceramic cars without any fragrance in them at all, such as the 1937 Cord 812 in the lead image and this 1931 Auburn Boattail Speedster below.
I haven’t bought a new model car in a long time, but given how different these Avon cars are and how low their prices are, I may just get some to display at my office.
Do you remember these Avon decanters and collectibles from decades ago? Do you still have any of them? Tell us in the Comments section below.
