Take it off, take it off . . . the market: A farewell to an advertising icon

“Take it off . . . take it all off.”

Readers of a certain age will instantly recognize those words as one of the most successful branding slogans ever — right up there with “Where’s the Beef?” and “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.”

From the mid-1960s through the early 1970s, Noxema Medicated Shaving Cream was the #1 product of its kind. This was in part thanks to a series of TV commercials featuring sultry blonde women, starting with former Miss Sweden Gunilla Knutsson, breathily urging guys to take off all their, uh, facial hair.

The best-remembered of the TV spots is probably the one that featured Charlie’s Angel-to-be Farrah Fawcett encouraging NFL superstar Joe Namath to get his face in shape while “The Stripper,” an early ’60s instrumental hit by bandleader David Rose, bumped and ground on the soundtrack.

I was no doubt impressed by the commercials but, in all honesty, I adopted Noxema as my brand because of teen-aged acne. Nothing worked better for me than shaving with Noxema — not Clearasil, not Phisoderm, not Comet.

My brand loyalty has been pretty unshakable. Not only do I shave with Noxema, I sometimes wash my whole face with it.

Imagine then my disappointment when I stopped at a neighborhood Walgreens recently and discovered the drug store chain no longer carried Noxema. They had Foamy and Edge and Barbasol and several expensive boutique shaving cream brands, but no Noxema.

Imagine my even greater disappointment when I looked up Noxema Shaving Cream online and discovered it has been discontinued and can only be purchased like a 1950s Topps baseball card or some other antique collectible.

The last time I bought it at Walgreen it cost me about $5.

On sites like Amazon and eBay, 11-ounce cans of Noxema are now on sale for as much as $130.

Apart from making me feel like an antique myself, the disappearance of Noxema from American shelves leaves me with a shaving dilemma. I’ve tried other brands, but I’ve never found another that both does its job well and smells good to my wife.

According to the website BrandLandUSA.com, Noxema is still being manufactured and retailed in some European countries.

So I guess I have two options: become an expatriate or grow a beard.