I’ve been using Dove soap since I was still watching “He-Man” on TV. Don’t ask me why. It’s just always been there. We all have comfortable purchases, and I’ve always known if I reached for the Dove bar on the shelf at Safeway, I’d know exactly what I was getting.

Until I saw Dove soap for men. Whoa, now. Here was a lesson in marketing, product and package design if I ever saw one. Considering Dove has made this their biggest product launch of 2010, and even pushed it in its own Super Bowl commercial, there had to be something to this. Could the Men+Care line solve the problem of flat sales in the men’s toiletries business?

Heck, how many times do you even get to ask a question like that?

I needed to figure out what you got for a full $1 mark-up from the regular Dove soap. Curiosity got the better of me — being a man, after all. I dropped the extra bill and opened up a package of Men+Care to find out.

It’s no joke: Dove wants you to pay a whole dollar more for a two-pack of Men+Care soap bars, up from their normal “exfoliating” flavor. Surprising? Not at all; the entire campaign has been a “lifestyles” push, not just a new product in its existing line. But what’s interesting is what apparently makes us men tick when it comes to soapy needs.

First of all, we men are tech-heads. We need “patented technology” in our soap. Damn straight: this stuff fights skin dryness (my soap is a beast!), and feels bespoke: note the many manly speckles throughout. The cool, flat gray packaging with the tasteful hot orange spot color does a great job of luring me in. So far, so good.

Now let’s look closer: Dove really went all out with this product push, and it shows right down to the boxy, angular bar. (Compare it to that sissy regular bar, and you instantly know which bar wears the pants around here.) It’s no small thing when a company shells out the money for new soap molds (no, seriously), and I’m sure it raised the cost of the bar itself in the short term. Still, when a quick Google search shows that you can make a bar of soap yourself for around $0.82 per bar in materials cost, I’m sure they had some margin room to play with.

Look at that chiseled soap bar, though. Doesn’t it just bellow “I wash lumberjacks”? In all honesty (and without a trace of irony), I found the tan coloring and typography a genuine lure. Dove has my number. I can’t resist its charm.

Of course, not pictured here is my favorite bit of it all: some of the marketing copy along the backside of the liquid soap variety of Men+Care. Stop me if I’m wrong, but often you hear soap manufacturers lording on about how their “microbubbles” whisk your dead skin away. “Bubbles” is apparently too feminine of a term, though. No bubbles for this soap brand; this time, they’re “micromoisture.”

I’m not sure why the distinction was made either, but I’m sure it’s better for me… and my rough-and-tumble ego.