The Double Edge Shaving Apocalypse of 1970

[pdieten]

+3! Also more ‘modern.’ (And more $ for Gillette.) Great marketing won the day!!

Yeah, but marketing can only go so far to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse, or else we'd have all been using Techmatics. The Trac II had the advantage of actually being easier to use while giving shaves of generally acceptable quality. It just doesn't matter that a DE wielded by careful hands can give a shave of better quality than a cartridge when 90% of guys don't need that better quality shave or care about putting in the effort to get it.

And let's not forget how big the disposables got to be in the '70s too. Gillette was having a bad time by the mid '80s because their disposables were doing so much better than their system razors. Disposables meant your whole razor was always clean and fresh too, you didn't have a grimy lather- and dust-covered handle in the drawer.

 

[Cino]

Cartridges provide easier, mindless shaves which is half the problem. There is no skill involved. No skill means no fun. I don't care what you do in life, if it doesn't require skill it will not provide joy. I never enjoyed shaving with cartridges; it was just a chore.

The other half of the problem for me comes when I skip days. If I went more than two days without shaving, cartridges became pure torture. They pulled and tugged to the point where I feared shaving. I still fear cartridges for that reason. With a nice high gap DE I can go days between shaves and still get a comfortable, close shave.

Bonus problem: after a few shaves those cartridges look nasty.

 

[honeybadger79]

By my recollection, the Wilkinson Bonded was the first cart in the USA. I started out w a SuperSpeed in 1973 but switched over to the Wilky that same year. Seemed cool to my 15 year old brain.

was the Wilkinson Bonded razor any good? I have one sealed in a blue can and was wondering if I should open it up to try it.

 

[Quaznoid]

It shaved well. As a 15 year old with little experience, I thought it was easier to use than my SuperSpeed and gave good results.

 

[ctr]

Marketing may not have had as much to do with the switch as people believe. Most folks didn't watch television more than an hour per day. Advertising exposure was primarily thru local newspapers, store displays, magazines, or billboards. Expensive channels.

The internet didn't exist and the big and expensive TV campaigns didn't really take off until the 1980's with the Atra campaign.

 

[Mr. Shavington]

Long time lurker here and my first post, but I actually know the man who invented the twin blade cartridge razor. He was my neighbour a few years ago. He is long retired now but he had a successful career in the marketing department of Wilkinson Sword.

He told me that this was purely a marketing initiative. Their job was to sell razor blades and by convincing the public that they should buy two blades instead of one they could double their sales - after all, two razors go blunt just as quickly as one. The whole advertising pitch that two blades shave closer than one, and you only need half as many passes was never true and never the point for the manufacturer. But of course you all know that because you get equally effective shaves with one blade.

After our conversation if started me thinking about the current trend of vibrating cartridge razors with a battery. That never made sense to me either. So I started wondering whether it was somehow just another marketing ruse to sell more batteries. And, with just a small amount of research, guess which company I discovered owns Duracell batteries?

Isn’t capitalism wonderful?

 

[luvmysuper]

Marketing may not have had as much to do with the switch as people believe. Most folks didn't watch television more than an hour per day. Advertising exposure was primarily thru local newspapers, store displays, magazines, or billboards. Expensive channels.

The internet didn't exist and the big and expensive TV campaigns didn't really take off until the 1980's with the Atra campaign.

Even so, Gillette had a huge TV marketing campaign on Television as early as the 1950's and DE commercials ran through the 60's with celebrities touting the effectiveness of Gillette razors/blades.
In the 70's they were pushing the TracII and Atra on TV as well.
Certainly didn't have the big audience that they would have today with everyone constantly glued to the boob tube, but still, quite a lot for the day.

 

[honeybadger79]

It shaved well. As a 15 year old with little experience, I thought it was easier to use than my SuperSpeed and gave good results.

thanks! Maybe I’ll break that blue tube open and give it a whirl!

 

[BigJ]

Long time lurker here and my first post, but I actually know the man who invented the twin blade cartridge razor. He was my neighbour a few years ago. He is long retired now but he had a successful career in the marketing department of Wilkinson Sword.

He told me that this was purely a marketing initiative. Their job was to sell razor blades and by convincing the public that they should buy two blades instead of one they could double their sales - after all, two razors go blunt just as quickly as one. The whole advertising pitch that two blades shave closer than one, and you only need half as many passes was never true and never the point for the manufacturer. But of course you all know that because you get equally effective shaves with one blade.

After our conversation if started me thinking about the current trend of vibrating cartridge razors with a battery. That never made sense to me either. So I started wondering whether it was somehow just another marketing ruse to sell more batteries. And, with just a small amount of research, guess which company I discovered owns Duracell batteries?

Isn’t capitalism wonderful?

Great story! Thanks for the information!!

 

[KQY61]

Hi,

Apollo. Anything those guys did, everyone wanted to do. Like the huge spike in Corvette sales. Apollo astronauts drove Corvettes.

And the Techmatic band razor. Touted as having been made for the astronauts. Sold like crazy. But, wasn't very good. The Trac-II was the replacement. That worked a whole lot better.

Now, I don't recall any ads touting the T-2 as being for the astronauts, but I think the idea carried over. Apollo carried on until December 1972 when the last ship set sail for the moon. And then they carried on for a while longer with the beginnings of the Apollo Applications Program. Skylab and then the linkup with the Russians. Then, AAP was stopped in favor of the shuttle program leaving the second Skylab hanging from wires. And, that was mostly the same astronauts.

The real apocalypse didn't come until the 1980s when all the double edged blades disappeared. First from the grocery stores and then the drug stores. And the soaps went next followed by the creams. By 1988 I was using farm-made shaving soap and blades from the surgical supply store.

Stan