The Price of a Clean Life

Have you checked out the cost of household cleaning supplies lately? If not, you might be in for a shock. They are going up. And up. Takes a lot these days to have a clean life. 

“Mr. Clean,” the bald, muscular, earring-bedazzled and immaculately dressed icon of all things shiny and scrubbed turns 61 this year. Since 1958, America has become accustomed to seeing him show up in commercials helping someone make things spic-and-span with his patented formula. And in these 60-some years, he hasn’t aged much. He wears a white shirt, has white eyebrows, his arms are folded. He looks like a very clean bouncer at a nightclub — not a male version of a charwoman.

On the face of it, this is odd — a bald guy telling a woman how to clean house. Reimagining this with today’s sensibilities in mind, it might make more sense for Ms. Clean to show up in the kitchen and share some tips with the woman of the house. Or, have Mr. Clean appear out of nowhere to rescue Mr. Husband from some incomprehensible mess on the kitchen floor.

Anyway — Mr. Clean’s solvent was originally created as an alternative to the caustic fluids that had...