The Mens Underwear Blog

We don’t know what it is but white briefs look perfect with dark colored jeans whether they be black as in the picture above or with blue jeans.  It’s a totally traditional look but still sexy and wholesome and somehow mysterious.  To see a pair of jeans and white briefs left casually by their owner on the floor of a bedroom or the gym just speaks of American style: casual, carefree, intimate, everyday and a little bit naughty.  Most men and boys have been taught to hide their white briefs inside their jeans when they get undressed as if it’s being immodest to have someone see them.  Well maybe it is immodest but it’s fun to display your wears so to speak and truly no one is harmed by it.  From Tom Cruise in the film Risky Business to David Beckham in a current print ad to Michael Jackson’s white Calvin Klein Briefs being shown in the tabloids—briefs are made to be shown off with jeans!  So show your colors or your whites to the world.

With the boxer rebellion, and by that I don’t mean the revolution in China, but the trend toward giving up tight underpants in favor of the ballooning flannel of boxer shorts, the prejorative term “tightie whitey”  assigned white briefs to the waist can (I know its spelled waste but I can’t help it).   Tightie whitey was used to put down any guy or boy who wore white briefs.  This is all changing again and guys are increasingly wearing white briefs and bragging about it as some kind of badge of authentic nerddome or an individualistic expression of their right to wear whatever the heck they want to wear.  Manufacturers have noticed and frigging Hanes has begun reissuing white waistbands with their basic white brief as an alternative to the gray– a nodd to the tighty whitey revolution gathering steam.   Remember you heard it here.  Be prepared for manufacturers to come up with whole new lines of white briefs to capture the inner nerd in all of us. Women may even come along and start appreciating their guys getting out of the sagging boxer to something a little more sexy.  Women had begun to steal the white brief from men and call it the boy brief but will come back to the boy brief phenomena another time.

Lets face it the Australians don’t care.  You have to check out www.aussiebum.com for their pink flamingo briefs.  Australians are simply unafraid when it comes to making underwear and the more beautiful, bright and outlandish the better.   Above is a picture of a guy in flamingo boxer briefs but go hang out at the aussiebum website and catch their  flamingo briefs, wildest pink briefs you have every seen.  Comfortable wide black waistband. Congratulations aussiebum you get five stars out of five for color and design.  We are stocking up on aussiebum and ginch gonch for the great tall thin guy wears wild briefs review to see how they really fit!

If you want brightly colored, multicolored multi design spandex enhanced briefs, you have to try Ginch Gonch.  Don’t deprive yourself.  They are beautiful and for a skinny body fairly comfortable we are told and they are being sold everywhere.  http://www.freshpair.com.

If you want comfortable no matter what your shape, you do www.tigerunderwearstore.com blue dash briefs.   Heavy set guys, tall big guys, normal 34 inch waist guys,  even teenage boys seem to like them.   Now we’ve discovered that Tiger Briefs get lonely for their owners.  We found this video on youtube.com where a boy’s Tiger Briefs come to life and find him.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po9zMI9jf6E&feature=channel_page

If you have any other fun brief video links let us know.  Keep them tasteful please.

Boy’s briefs once a basic source of comfort and civilization for boys have transformed into action hero underpants this past decade due to the advances in clothing technology allowing highly decorative fun images to be placed on underwear.  This development responds to Film and Television marketing of comic strip characters through a myriad of children’s products.  This marketing blitz of boys has not resulted in high quality briefs—the whole emphasis being on appearance and entertainment, not on fit, comfort or durability.  Most printed briefs for boys are made of low quality 100% cotton, with leg bands that lose their grip quickly if they ever had any in the first and the very cheapest of waistbands.  The bright colors tend to obscure all of this from parents and boys don’t know any better when the waistband curls or the legs open up.  Parents are the only ones who can start demanding better quality for their money.

We want to focus on quality at www.themensunderwearblog so that means looking at boy’s white basic briefs.  We have to start out with a qualification because our first advertiser www.tigerunderwearstore hands down has the best quality boys briefs on the market.  The other manufacturers are far back in the pack, but if price is all important, they will be a better choice.

Hanes boy’s briefs now sport a gray waistband, which is a bit softer than the old white waistband with HANES printed on it.  It is definite improvement over the cheap elastic used in their character printed briefs.  We don’t understand why Hanes doesn’t use the same elastic but color it.  We hope they will consider their young customers comfort.  But otherwise the pants part of the brief is the same old thing, functional but with leg openings that give out quickly and low quality cotton.

Fruit of the Loom to their credit has not fooled around much with their lowest cost white brief for boys.  Their logo waistband is iconic for tighty whities for boys.  But they suffer from all the problems of quality.

Jockey is a cut above FOL and Hanes but is three times the price.  The cotton is softer, the cut more forgiving—after all they are jockey shorts! Calvin Klein holds the upper tier of boy’s underwear marketing and finally replaced their very flimsy waistband with a softer, larger band.  http://www.calvinklein.com/family/index.jsp?categoryId=3249683. Yet CK what is with the low quality cotton! Calvins are more expensive than Jockey and Jockey is higher quality cotton and fit.

BVD seems to have almost disappeared from the boy’s underwear market.  They used to be a fair alternative to Hanes but it is hard to find them in the major chain stores.  And it appears J.C. Penney, the foremost high quality, low price maker of boy’s briefs, has stopped making them all together or at least they don’t carry the double gray-stripped briefs on their website www.jcpenney.com.

The ending of J.C. Penney’s boy’s briefs is the perfect lead in to reviewing the Tiger Brief from www.tigerunderwearstore.com because the Tiger brief is better quality than any boy’s brief we have seen on the market, way above Hanes, FOTL or BVD and clearly above Jockey—and it is reminiscent of J.C. Penney briefs from the 60’s.   Tiger makes full rise briefs which means they are comfortable.  They make single back which is what everyone else makes but they also make the double seat or double back brief which beats anything we have seen in comfort and softness in high quality 100% cotton or in 50% Poly Cotton blend material.  The waistband reminds us of the J.C. Penney and Wards waistband of old—non rolling, durable and iconic.  They have a blue dash waistband for 100% cotton and a red dash waistband for their poly/cotton blend.

Their website www.tigerunderwearstore.com says they have a four panel brief called a trainer for boys but I was not able to review this brief.  They are saying it can be used for boys (or men for that matter) who are incontinent and want to wear normal looking underpants to bed at night even though they might have accidents.  Mothers and fathers of boys let us know how these work for your boys.  All I know is its damned embarrassing for a 12-year-old boy if has to wear paper pants when he sleeps over with his buddies. 

The primary downside of Tigers may be their price.  I think we have come to look on boy’s underpants as a throw away item and Tiger briefs will outlast the kid.  Also we are surprised that www.tigerunderwearstore.com has not made cartoon character briefs for small boys.  The primary market for boy’s underwear is with boys who want to see their favorite action or cartoon hero such as Teenage Ninja Turtles or Sponge Bob or Bob the Builder on their briefs.  Tiger, consider plastering these cartoon guys all over your incredible superior product.

So what’s so important about the waistband on briefs?  Why should we care?  Lets face it this guy in his blue jeans wants us to see his white brief waistband.  Waistbands are now a fashion statement. Famous people want their fans to see their waistbands.  A la David Beckham soccer great  who shows us his white waistband.   Women find this very sexy and a lot of men also. 

Things have totally changed in the underwear world since the 1930’s when you would fasten your boxers with snaps or buttons.  Underwear slid down your hips and drooped as in droopy or they were so tight you couldn’t wear them at all.  Bottom line– your underwear didn’t fit right.  Getting them just right so they were comfortable did not happen very often— until during WWII when latex was harvested from rubber trees for elastic.  It could be said with historical inaccuracy that WWII was fought so the Japanese wouldn’t hold on to Malaysia where the rubber trees are and thus deprive Americans of well fitting briefs.  Latex–that’s what most brief waistbands are made of today, though increasingly spandex, lyra and other man made stretchies are coming on board in the more expensive lines of briefs.

At first elastic was kind of light cream colored on the first briefs in the 30′s then J. C. Penney, Sears and Wards began putting colored lines on the elastic and this was the beginning of wild elastic colors.

This traditional red dash waistband is history repeating itself from the the 1960′s when J.C. Penney made these dashes famous and www.tigerunderwearstore.com recently reissued them in poly cotton briefs.  This elastic is so strong and durable that these 1960′s briefs can still be found on Ebay with intact elastic, but if you don’t want true vintage then give Tigers a try. www.tigerunderwearstore.com claims their red (above) and blue dash waistband  (below) are faithful replicas of these old department store brands.  You see these briefs all over youtube.com.  Let us know what you thing.

It used to be that boys and mens briefs waistbands were a normal sight, then boys begin to wear boxers and now we see boxer waistbands and frequently boxer butts.   But brief makers have struck back with bolder and fancier white brief waistbands usually with their names across the elastic in block letters such as the recent Hanes waistband.  

Classic Jockey logo waistband in gray or black led the pack for many years in subtle visible branding of their briefs,  then they joined the rest and began putting their logo on as big and bold as possible.  Check out his fabric wrapped Jockey waistband.

This is where Jockey combined great marketing, bold styling with a very functional and most comfortable waistband.  If by chance you are allergic to the latex in elastic, try one of these Jockey fabric wrapped waistbands which will protect your flanks from the elastic.

Now back to history.  J.C. Penney made this double blue dash waistband for its boy’s briefs during the 1990′s.

and who can forget these dotted stripes from BVD before they also began writing their name on the elastic.

2 Exist blew everyone away with their clever brand name that kept you staring at the briefs to see what it was saying.

Brief waistbands are functional/essential but fun, sexy, and even just a little naughty. Didn’t that girl in your class giggle and tell you– your underpants are showing!  So have fun, make her happy,  show off your band to the world!  It won’t be time waisted omg! Puns will be severely pun-ished on this log. And that’s not stretching the truth either!