Cutting it fine

Do you remember your first time? It’s got to be a defining moment in the unavoidable journey from a boy to a man. I had my father’s watchful eye over my shoulder as I stared into the mirror and scraped away the thin line of bumfluff from my upper lip. We were on a family camping trip and I had an illegal beer round the campfire that night feeling very proud of myself, even if it was probably a month before I had to repeat the process. I do distinctly remember my father commenting that we were so lucky these days and they had come a long way since the minora blades of his youth, where you were taking your own life into your hands every morning infront of a foggy mirror.

Back then the weapon of choice was the Gillette Sensor Excel, it had two spring loaded blades and somehow only the really huge zits got hacked. The Schick range was very similar, but had these wire protector grills (and used shark cage diving to prove how good they were). Option three was Bic disposables – in the classic ballpoint pen plastic orange. Bizarrely, it was often cheaper to buy a whole kit than the 3pack of replacement blades (well nothing’s changed there).

The other plan of course was to go the full hog and get a fancy electric razor, Philips and Braun being a cut above the rest. Men are of course an easy-going crowd, everyone was pretty happy with the status quo. Some guy at Gillete labs then made a better spring action blade. It appears the marketing crowd from Oral B Dental had just joined the group, and decided that a savage revolution was in order.



Yip, throw another blade on the thing - two is clearly not enough. In the rich history of toothbrush marketing, a slight difference was advertised as a massive breakthrough. The brainbox nerds had found enough space to fit another blade, and now our shaver was equivalent to something traveling three times the speed of sound. Mach 3 steadily converted some souls who were probably quite happy with their Sensor Excels or Schicks. They are aware of this, and still produce the backdated stuff. Naturally Schick came back with a three bladed affair. Were they happy with this? no sir, later they added a fourth blade, enter the Schick Quattro. In between all of this, Duel decided they wanted a slice of the pie and launched their own range too.

I got lost after that; battery powered manual razors(huh?), microfins, indicator strips, flexible heads and different handles all seemed to be marginal upgrades on previous products and didn’t really justify the massive launch campaigns. Were we surprised to see the next obvious move(well five blades is one more than four) from Gillette? What's next? It's got to be the six-up razor, the straight six. I can already see them running to Herschelle after his massive World Cup over in the Caribbean with six sixes, better still his hairstyle would clearly fit their PR profile.



I've taken a little artistic license here, but I’d really like someone to empty the supermarket racks and objectively test-drive all these models on some prime stubble for the man in the street, because you sure can’t trust the marketing that comes with them.