Men’s grooming keeps proving it isn’t a one-brand category. In the last eight months, a football quarterback turned a 2018 press-conference catchphrase into a six-product personal-care line, a wrestler-turned-actor’s $10 skincare brand finally tackled acne, and a five-year-old DTC skincare startup walked into Nordstrom stores for the first time. None of it is hype — each launch has a real price tag and a retail shelf to back it up.
1. Every Man Jack x Baker Mayfield Collection — $8.49 per product
Every Man Jack built a line around NFL quarterback Baker Mayfield’s 2018 “Clemson, we’re coming” line turned personal motto, “effort over image.” The Every Man Jack x Baker Mayfield Collection launched at Target on September 9, 2026, with six products: a Hydrating Body Wash and a Sweat-Control Antiperspirant, each sold in three scents. Every item is priced at $8.49, keeping the brand’s longtime value positioning intact even with an athlete’s name on the label.
The collection isn’t just a licensing deal. Every Man Jack is donating $1 per product sold, up to $100,000, to the Baker & Emily Mayfield Foundation, which Mayfield and his wife run to support families of children with serious illnesses. It’s the kind of real, checkable detail that separates a genuine cause-marketing tie-in from a celebrity sticker slapped on an existing bottle — the foundation’s giving cap and the per-product donation amount are both public numbers, not vague “a portion of proceeds” language.
The launch also lands in the middle of a broader Every Man Jack relaunch this year, which repositioned the brand’s packaging around recyclable PET bottles and the same “effort over image” messaging. For a brand that’s spent two decades as the budget alternative to Axe and Old Spice, pairing with an athlete known for grinding his way into the NFL as an undersized walk-on quarterback is a coherent story, not just a famous face.
2. Caldera + Lab The Great — $110
Caldera + Lab spent its first five years as a direct-to-consumer-only men’s skincare brand before making its first major retail move: landing on shelves and online at Nordstrom in 2026. Founder and CEO Jared Pobre has said the expansion is about meeting customers where they already shop, not abandoning the DTC model that built the company into one of the fastest-growing brands in prestige men’s skincare — Beauty Matter reported the brand scaled to roughly $40 million in revenue.
The product anchoring that growth is The Great, a $110 anti-aging serum that’s become the brand’s flagship alongside a companion moisturizer called The Hydro Layer, both part of the company’s push into what it calls advanced exosome-adjacent skincare technology — a newer class of skin-signaling ingredients that’s been showing up across prestige skincare as brands look past retinoids and peptides for their next marketing hook.
$110 is a real jump from drugstore men’s skincare, and Caldera + Lab isn’t shy about the premium positioning — its four core products span roughly $45 to $250. But the Nordstrom move is the more interesting signal than the price: department stores have historically treated men’s skincare as an afterthought shelf next to cologne, and a DTC brand getting enough traction to be invited into that space in-store, not just online, says something about how fast the premium men’s category has actually grown.
3. PAPATUI Acne Collection — $9.99 per product
Dwayne Johnson’s personal-care brand PAPATUI launched in 2024 with a simple pitch: skin, hair and body care for men, nothing over $10. In 2026 the brand finally went after a problem it had skipped at launch — acne on thicker, oilier men’s skin — with its first dedicated acne collection, sold nationwide at Target. The line includes an acne-fighting facial cleanser, pimple patches, and an acne-fighting body spray built for back and chest breakouts, a category most acne lines ignore entirely in favor of face-only formulas. Every product is $9.99, matching the pricing promise Johnson made at PAPATUI’s launch.
The body spray is the most distinctive item of the three. Men’s acne treatment has historically been almost entirely facial — benzoyl peroxide washes, salicylic acid toners, spot treatments — while “bacne” and chest breakouts, which are common with sweat and gym use, get far less dedicated formulation. A $9.99 spray aimed specifically at that use case is a narrow, practical bet rather than a generic “for men” relabeling of a unisex product.
PAPATUI has drawn some skepticism from reviewers who’ve questioned whether a sub-$10 price point can deliver real actives at effective concentrations, and that’s a fair thing to watch rather than take on faith. But the brand’s bet — that most men want “good enough” skincare at drugstore prices with a famous name attached, rather than a $110 serum — is a genuinely different strategy from Caldera + Lab’s, and it’s worth knowing both exist before assuming the category only moves in one direction.
The takeaway
Three different launches, three different bets on what men will actually pay for: a $8.49 cause-marketing collection riding an athlete’s real charitable foundation, a $110 premium serum riding a DTC brand’s first walk into department-store retail, and a $9.99 acne line riding a decade of audience trust built by one of the most famous men in the world. None of them require guesswork about whether they’re real — the prices, the retailers, and the dollar figures behind them are all checkable today.
