Consumer Alert: Avacor and Folliguard Products

Article by HairlossTalk.com

September 23, 2002
A new breed of snake oil treatments is on the market today, including names such as Avacor, Hair Advantage, and most recently... Folliguard. The peculiar thing about these treatments is that they use a play on words to make the sale, mixing both legitimate ingredients, pointless ingredients, and a hefty price tag...So you turn on the radio one day and hear about a revolutionary new treatment "Clinically Proven" and "FDA Approved" for treating hair loss. Guess what? They're not lying. What they fail to tell you is that the product contains Loniten, which is just another name for Minoxidil - and if you want it, you're going to have to pay over $100 for a single month's worth. Minoxidil - something you can get at Costco for $15 per month. That is why these companies are so dangerous.

This alert is focused primarily on a product named Folliguard. Yet another treatment touting FDA approval and clinical proof, but deceiving the public by not admitting its just a very expensive bottle of Rogaine.

We here at HairlossTalk have received *so many* inquiries about Avacor, Folliguard, and Hair Advantage that we thought it was time the facts were revealed. This article just released by ABC News and Good Morning America covers the Folliguard issue quite well.



Folliguard or Fooliguard?

Though it was described in a television commercial as "the revolutionary new breakthrough scientifically formulated to stop excessive hair loss and re-grow new hair," more than one person has been completely unimpressed with the results. Folliguard avoided all comments...

"Didn't work," Krainok told Good Morning America. "Nothing."

Balding men are the traditional target market for the $1 billion a year hair growing business that is bursting with products promising to give back what nature has taken away. But 40 percent of the 60 million Americans experiencing hair loss are women, and now they, too, have become a target market for products that promise to treat baldness.

FolliGuard, a new hair formula that costs $359 for a three-month supply, is proving to be an equal opportunity letdown, customers told Good Morning America. After an investigation, GMA learned that the only ingredient in the formula that is proven to work on balding is an ingredient that can be purchased a lot cheaper at the drugstore. Plus, dissatisfied customers were having problems getting their money back.

'Good Hair Day' Quest

FolliGuard is marketed to both sexes on TV and radio, and in publications that have mostly female readers.

Kim Farrand was worried about her thinning hair, fearing that she would become one of 24 million women who experience some degree of female pattern baldness.

"I would never find a boyfriend if I was half bald," Farrand said. "It's hard enough to find one as it is when I'm educated and independent and nice and I've got to have a good hair day going along with that."

She paid more than $200 for FolliGuard's guaranteed system of vitamins, shampoo, herbal tablets, and a "topical activator," but said she felt let down by the results. After using FolliGuard, she says her hair did not get thicker as she had hoped.

"As a matter of fact it seemed to be falling out," Farrand said.

Company Declines Comment

Despite repeated requests for a television interview, no one at Jungle MD, the Biddeford, Maine-based company that sells FolliGuard would talk on camera to Good Morning America about the "revolutionary hair growing formula." Jungle MD president Chris Austin did not return calls or respond to a letter, and when a correspondent and crew visited company offices, someone called the police to have them thrown off the premises.

GMA producers ordered a three-month supply of FolliGuard Extra from Jungle MD, for $359. When the product arrived, they saw that one of the main ingredients of the "...scientifically advanced ...revolutionary new formula..." was minoxidil, the same over-the-counter drug found in Rogaine, a baldness treatment product which has been around for years.

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