NOS Walgreens Super + Platinum

[5savages]

I cam across 5 packs of these yesterday. At $1 per pack, and being platinum, I had to buy them in case they were something special. Anyone ever heard or used them?

From looking around the interwebs, and using the "Vydax" coating as a hint, these appear to be made around 1974 by American Safety Razor.

I'd test them out right away, but I'm in the midst of some other razor testing. I'll probably try these toward the end of the month.

 

[mblakele]

I agree that they are probably ASR, and ca. 1973 also sounds plausible. Vydax was trademarked in 1960, but platinum and other hardness coatings did not appear until ca. 1967.

Recently there was some discussion of similar blades at http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/377379-Sears-Roebuck-Super-Platinum. The Sears-Roebuck blades, probably made by PermaSharp ca. 1973, also featured Vydax. The Albertsons blades, possibly made by Wilkinson-Sword and certainly made a bit later, did not mention Vydax. Neither of those used quite the same blade package as yours, and yours look typical of ASR.

 

[5savages]

I got the 1974 date from an old newspaper advertisement found online here:
http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/13018797/

You have to have a subscription to actually see the advertisement, but in the field below the picture it includes the text:

PACK OF 10 SUPER PLUS PLATINUM Walgreens corrode-resistant double edged ra- ^^ p A zor blades with "• o * Vydax coating.

The gibberish being the effects of OCR during the scan.

In retrospect, my statement regarding ASR is speculation. I can't find anything that would lead me to believe it's true.

 

[Early Morning]

To add a little mystery, the patent for blade dispenser was originally assigned to Club Razor Corp of Newark, alternatively known as Club Razor & blade. It's a great little dispenser because they added little thin sheets of what appear to be wax paper between each blade. I believe Club Razor was probably bought out by either ASR or Perma-Sharp--I suspect it may have been the latter.

 

[mblakele]

Club razor, eh? Would those bits of wax paper be visible in these Walgreens blades? Does patent US3052374 appear on the blade pack or packaging?

The PermaSharp/UFI blade dispenser was not quite the same, so my hunch for these blades is either ASR or Club itself. That patent was applied for in 1959 and issued 1962, around the same time Schick was also designing new dispensers. I think the Gillette slider pack was seen as an important competitive advantage, so serious entrants to the DE blade market needed something similar.

Club Razor seems to have started up in the late 1930s. They bid on or supplied Marlin blades ca. 1955: http://books.google.com/books?id=a9XL74ykUykC&pg=PA88. They had this in common with PermaSharp and several other companies.

Club seems to have gotten into tax trouble in 1968, which might have led to deeper problems. According to a Simon & Schuster directory the company was still around ca. 1974: http://books.google.com/books?id=-kAUAQAAMAAJ. That suggests that these Walgreens blades might be Club blades. Or they could still be ASR blades, especially if ASR licensed the patent. Sometimes companies sell off their valuable assets without actually selling the company, then quietly wind up their books and close down.

 

[Mitsimonsta]

They are just the standard Personna Super Platinum blades inside. I have the same dispenser but in a different branding on the card. These were the standard go-to rebrand blade for drugstores and supermarkets in the 70's and '80s... and mostly before the Gillette cartridges hit. You will note no actual brand printed on the blade, it's just a very generic 'Super Platinum' designation.

There has been a minor few changes over the years, but they are generally the same blade minus different coatings etc. Production moved from the US to Israel quite a few years ago.

These blades are known as 'Israeli Personnas' - can also buy as 'Crystals'. The modern ones are paper wrapped, and look like this:

You can note the same generic 'Super Platinum' printing on the paper wrapper.

The Crystals are exactly the same inside, you can get from WCS and other vendors:

 

[Early Morning]

Club razor, eh? Would those bits of wax paper be visible in these Walgreens blades? Does patent US3052374 appear on the blade pack or packaging?

The PermaSharp/UFI blade dispenser was not quite the same, so my hunch for these blades is either ASR or Club itself. That patent was applied for in 1959 and issued 1962, around the same time Schick was also designing new dispensers. I think the Gillette slider pack was seen as an important competitive advantage, so serious entrants to the DE blade market needed something similar.

Club Razor seems to have started up in the late 1930s. They bid on or supplied Marlin blades ca. 1955: http://books.google.com/books?id=a9XL74ykUykC&pg=PA88. They had this in common with PermaSharp and several other companies.

Club seems to have gotten into tax trouble in 1968, which might have led to deeper problems. According to a Simon & Schuster directory the company was still around ca. 1974: http://books.google.com/books?id=-kAUAQAAMAAJ. That suggests that these Walgreens blades might be Club blades. Or they could still be ASR blades, especially if ASR licensed the patent. Sometimes companies sell off their valuable assets without actually selling the company, then quietly wind up their books and close down.

The wax paper I mentioned is not visible from the outside, but it is visible if one turns a dispenser to the side and looks at an angle. I have the same blade in different packaging (White Front), and I feel certain that the dispenser is the same and that they came from the same place. Mine say patent pending. There are a few possibilities here. One is perhaps that the UFI site was involved in repackaging blades for other companies. Perhaps, ASR was buying dispensers from Club Razor. I did not know that Club Razor was still around circa 1974. Maybe, we will have this all figured soon enough.






Note the zip code on the packaging. This does not match any Interstate Department Store address that I can find. However, it does match UF Industries'/Perma-Sharp’s old zip.

They are just the standard Personna Super Platinum blades inside. I have the same dispenser but in a different branding on the card. These were the standard go-to rebrand blade for drugstores and supermarkets in the 70's and '80s... and mostly before the Gillette cartridges hit. You will note no actual brand printed on the blade, it's just a very generic 'Super Platinum' designation.

There has been a minor few changes over the years, but they are generally the same blade minus different coatings etc. Production moved from the US to Israel quite a few years ago. <<snippet>>

They certainly could be since the patent number is the same as the one found on the Israeli Crystal (3071856). I may take better pictures of the ones I have in a day or two and post those. I do consider them to be a rendition of the Crystal, but there are some doubts in my mind as to whether ASR really started the brand. I am questioning the origin of the earliest renditions, how they were packaged, and by whom.

For those interested, these blades are not easy to shave with. Maybe some are ok, but the ones I have are among the most challenging blades I have ever used--vicious blades that are about as smooth as the edges of broken glass.

 

[mblakele]

That patent US3071856 is a Gillette patent, filed in 1959 and published in 1963. Gillette was last to market with coated stainless blades, but they had earlier applied for the patent, and everyone else had to license it. That does not mean Gillette made any of these blades, just that their patent was licensed by whoever did make them.

The Sears-Roebuck and Albertsons blades are both pretty good for me, but not great. I find them smooth enough, but a bit dull. Still, with good prep they do the job.

 

[5savages]

These Walgreens blades do have the Pat 3071856 on the blade and they have the wax paper between blades. Early Morning, they look just like your White Front blades. I'll post a couple more pictures when I get a chance.

 

[5savages]

I slide out one blade so I could take pictures of it. It's now in my NEW, waiting to be used later this month.

In these pictures you can see the unique shape of the case, and the paper between each blade.

 

[mblakele]

Thanks for posting those photos. There is nothing like that inside my packs from Sears-Roebuck (PermaSharp/UFI ca. 1973) nor Albertsons (after ca. 1975, probably UFI/Wilkinson-Sword). Both packages just have a stack of blades, set in a drawer that slides out of the outer package. The Sears blades have US3071856 but the Albertsons do not. That may mean the Albertsons blades were made after 1980, when the patent should have expired. However those blades were made in England, so the patent number might have been omitted by mistake.

To recap some history from http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/377379-Sears-Roebuck-Super-Platinum: PermaSharp or Perma Sharp was around since at least 1955, with subsidiaries in Australia and Israel. The company changed its name to UF Industries aka UFI in 1972. Wilkinson acquired UFI in 1976, and got into some union trouble for importing UK blades rather than operating the blade factory.

All that fits in with the Sears and Albertsons blades, but I was struggling to get the Walgreens and White Front blades into the PermaSharp/UFI/Wilkinson picture until I added a few more bits.

US3502203 is the ASR patent for the slider pack that they still use. It was filed in 1968 and issued in 1970. Now, we know that hardness coatings like platinum and chrome first appeared ca. 1967. I speculate that ASR would have switched to their new slider pack design as quickly as possible: Gillette and Schick already had mature designs for their packs. If so this more or less rules out ASR for Club-style packs with "Platinum+" blades.

If I look closer at my Sears blades and these Walgreens blades, it seems to me that the markings are subtly different. The Walgreens blades have a full italic "SUPER+" while on the Sears blades the "+" is regular. Walgreens has all-caps PLATINUM while Sears has mixed-case Platinum. On the bottom, the arrows and letters are also subtly different. That could be due to small tweaks over the years.

Finally I found a Perma Sharp patent US3543918 from 1970, which is about the right time. It claims a metal inner tray, and mine are 100% plastic. However the design is otherwise pretty similar, and this patent is good evidence that Perma Sharp was working on their own packaging designs.

Putting this together, I think the Club-style packs are older UFI products, ca. 1967-72. PermaSharp/UFI licensed the Club Razor blade pack patent, or perhaps bought it outright. But either the license cost too much, or the packs were expensive to manufacture, or both. So ca. 1972 they replaced it with the simpler and cheaper Sears-style pack, reducing costs. They stuck with this design through their acquisition by Wilkinson-Sword in 1976. So all of these blades are PermaSharp/UFI, but from slightly different periods.

What do you gents think? Does this fit with the evidence we have? Do you see any loose threads?

 

[mblakele]

Today I tripped over this photo of a Club-style blade pack with 19 blades and a Sears-Roebuck label. It seems to have the US3071856 marking, and Made in USA. I think the "Platinum" is mixed-case rather than all-caps. That is, these look closer to the ca. 1973 Sears blade markings. That tends to support the idea that PermaSharp/UFI made both styles of blade pack. So these might be a little later than the Walgreens/White Front blades in the Club-style pack, and a little earlier than the ca. 1973 Sears blades in the plastic tray package. Maybe ca. 1971? Earlier I found a google books copy of the 1971 Sears-Roebuck catalog offering 38 blades as a two-year supply.

 

[Early Morning]

Gents, thanks for your input on this.

Good analysis, mblakele. ASR was already using the newer dispenser when they began packaging blades for K-mart sometime during the early-to-mid 1970s. In this post, an older variation of the Platinum Chrome is pictured beneath a couple of rows of the typical ASR dispensers. Upon zooming in (Ctrl + scroll), the word platinum is just clear enough to suggest it might be written in the same style font as seen on the Sears blades (Club Razor dispenser) that mblakele posted.

Walgreens also sold Century razor blades. There is a BIN on Ebay for these blades which includes photographs of the packaging.* I have a later version of Century with the same graphic layout, except they state that they are from UFI right on the packaging. Mine are called Super + Chromium while the older variety are stainless-steel blades w/high chromium. The older version comes in the same hanger display with strange perforation marks on the back. These perforation marks are also visible in the picture of the Super + Platinum blades that 5savages posted, and they are also found on display hangers for the Sheffield Super Stainless (i.e., Perma-Sharp). Looks like this is a good way to identify some of the Perma-Sharp blades.

Going back to this period in the 1950s when Perma-Sharp was one of the companies selling blades to Marlin, there may have been a business relationship between Blu-Strike and Perma-Sharp of Lanarkshire, Scotland. In an earlier post, deoxy4 mentioned that he shaved with some of these blades, and he stated Blu-Strike and Perma-Sharp’s addresses were printed on the blade wrapper. All of this seems to tie in.

*Update: The Zip Code listed on the back is 07102. This corresponds with the former address for Club Razor & Blade Manufacturing Corp of 32-36 Green Street, Newark, NJ 07102. Interesting, this suggests to me that some of the packaging equipment that Perma-Sharp MFG Corp later used may have come from the same facility. The Century Super Stainless-steel blades may date from the early-to-mid 60s.

 

[Early Morning]

The Walgreen and White Front blades are probably Club Razor blades. I think Perma-Sharp acquired at least one of their brands (Century). This makes sense given the time frame.

 

[5savages]

I finally tried one in my Gillette NEW for three shaves. Interesting outcome.

The first shave was very smooth, but let me with many weepers and not a very close shave.

The next two shaves the blade tugged like crazy, but left very little irritation and gave me a great shave.

I tossed the blade, but I think I could have used it a few more times if I had to, but with the tugging I had, why bother. Next time I use one I'll give some more attention to prep and see how it does.