WULAD's Konsumer Korner

While there's some truth to the rumor that your friendly webnorhood WULAD may be hanging up the ol' bloggin' shoes soon, I didn't want to leave you without sharing my thoughts on an issue that is among the most pressing of contemporary concerns... I'm speaking, of course, of the newly-introduced Gillette Fusion™™ razor.

Wregular WULAD Wreaders will know that I have been a fierce advocate for Gillette's fine Mach 3 Turbo™™ since its introduction several years ago (supplanting my previous allegiance to the original Mach 3™™, which, compared to the Turbo, felt like dragging a three-week old dead armadillo across one's face). So after sticking with my beloved Turbo through such flashes in the pan as Shick's Quattro (more like Nottro!) and Gillette's own M3 Power line (forgive me for passing on the chance to see what vibrating blades could do to my Adonis-like visage) I had similarly high hopes when the sultans of shave rolled out this newest addition to their storied personal grooming line.

Let me first say that I was impressed by the audacity of Gillette's new product, which it humbly calls "the Future of Shaving"; after all, the company's next move had already been preemptively parodied in the Onion ("Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades")--an appreciation of which I'd like to think is responsible for the just-because-we-can addition of a sixth, useless blade on the back of the new razor. (I imagine some Gillette peon humbly suggesting to his boss that the way to beat the Onion at their own game was to out-blade even their humorous hyperbolic version. "Six blades... McTavish--you're a genius!")

So with my new-found respect for Gillette's marketing savvy and a nifty Mets-friendly color scheme just in time for Opening Day, I finally picked up my new (non-vibrating) Fusion, expecting to be transported to a world of hitherto-unimagined shaving pleasure. The verdict is: it's not that great.

Unfortunately, it seems that there is a point of diminishing returns in the blade-adding equation; the Fusion wasn't bad, but it seemed to lack the flexibility and ruggedly-masculine-jaw-hugging ability of the Turbo. (Twice I even nicked myself in the lip-corner area, requiring the dreaded toilet paper wad.) The Fuck-You-Onion sixth blade was not effective at trimming sideburns like in the commercial, although it worked OK for those hard-to-reach upper-lip/lower-nostril border whiskers.

Believe me, I gave Fusion a chance; for several days I even shaved one side of my face with it and the other with the Turbo--and the Turbo side was stroked by more adoring fans every time. I wanted that orange-and-blue beauty to be better; but sometimes, you just have to follow the ancient Confucian axiom: "He Who Shaves With More than Three Blades is Wasting His $12.99."

WULAD KONSUMER KORNER GRADE: B-

A Note to Readers of the Animal-Rights Persuasion: It might be suggested by some that I, as a forward-thinking bleeding-heart liberal, should boycott the Gillette Corporation due to their fondness for Dr. Mengele-like laboratories filled with a variety of cyborg rabbits and monkeys with supercomputers grafted on to their brain-stems, who will likely overthrow their evil white-coated masters someday, subjugate the pitiful humans and unleash a brutal campaign of terror upon the human race which will make their earlier torment seem like a Dutch Rub. I'm sensitive to these concerns, but c'mon--it's my face, man.