Or most of it, anyway.

A couple of times in recent days, while watching baseball, I think I saw that Sydney Sweeney ad that has caused some controversy. I wasn’t impressed. Of course, I don’t know who Sydney Sweeney is, other than someone who does this sort of thing.

It makes sense that it’s women (from what I’ve seen — that was the first story that came up when I Googled it) who are upset about the ad, because it doesn’t seem anything that would stir a man’s blood. Nothing like THE hot ad, the one embedded above. Oh, maybe boys as young as I was at the time find Ms. Sweeney as attractive as the incomparable Gunilla Knutsson, but what do they know?

That was the hottest thing to the emerge into shocked polite society since Herb Alpert and the guys put out their Whipped Cream & Other Delights album in 1965. Not that the kids who are impressed by Ms. Sweeney would know about that, either.

(Note that I didn’t show you the later version of the Noxzema ad that included Joe Namath, because I will never forgive that insolent braggart or the Jets for what they did on January 12, 1969. That was the day I gave up on football forever. I have zero respect for any sport in which something like that could happen. But I’ve told you that before.)

That’s not what I sat down to write about. It’s just that seeing the silly current sports-gambling ad (they call it “sports-trading” but I’m just trying to give it a term I sort of understand) made me think of something that had been on my mind. Something I’m actually sort of indignant about.

Anyway, I used Noxzema Medicated Comfort Shave for decades. The kind that smelled good, the kind with the menthol. Then, being a father trying to support five kids on a newspaperman’s pay, I switched to Barbasol. It was decidedly cheaper, and did the job. Just didn’t smell as good.

Recently, it occurred to me that it would be nice to, just once, get a can of the Noxzema, just for old time’s sake. Just an idle thought. The next few times I was walking down the shaving aisle at CVS or Walmart, I glanced down to see just how much more the Noxzema cost.

I didn’t see any, anywhere. Not out in Meat World.

So I looked online. Ah, there’s a can! And it does cost a bit more: $399.00. (Honest, I swear I saw that, on Amazon. I thought I had screenshot it, but now I can’t find it on my computer, or on Amazon, either. But here’s a can for almost $200…)

I saw it elsewhere for twice this much…

You can get it for less (and yes, there are quite a few below $100. But still…), but you tend to be buying it from a collector on someplace like eBay. So the price doesn’t compare well to, say, what you used to pay at Eckerd.

OK, so I’m sorry I can’t just run out and by a can for nostalgic purposes. But do you know what really gets me? Here we are living in the internet age, and all (not really all, but pretty much everything most people think to look up) is now at our fingertips, and I can’t find out exactly whether or when or why the product was discontinued.

It’s yet another case of a business trying to creep away and not let the consuming public know that it, the business, is letting them down.

Stuff like that really ticks me off.

I have no plans to run for Congress, and you know I don’t think candidates should make promises, but if I were the sort to do those things, I’d be tempted to promise to outlaw that sort of sneaking away. Maybe put forward a bill requiring that anyone who has had national success with a product should spend at least one percent of the amount spent on promoting the product initially, just to tell people it was going away. Just one loud announcement would do, so that people could find the announcement on the Web henceforth. So that they don’t waste time searching for it.

You know I don’t think much of AI, but even AI shouldn’t have to be this vague:

Noxzema shave cream was phased out and discontinued in the U.S. market over a gradual period spanning the late 1990s through the 2000s and 2010s…

Don’t worry, libertarian friends out there. I wouldn’t really put that burden on businesses. I’d just be tempted. And I know it would never, ever pass. But I just wish people would make it clear, so that I have a chance to run out and buy a couple of cans before the price is multiplied by tens or hundreds…