Mach3 Power: Death Machine

AJ4A is not in the business of personal hygiene product reviews, but since I am somewhat of a razor aficionado and because I nearly decapitated myself this morning I'll make a brief statement about Gillette's new Mach 3 Power razor. Now, if you're into advertising like I am, you're probably aware that there's nothing more hilarious in American consumerism right now than the razor wars. In the old days you'd buy a shaving razor which contained, surprisingly, a razor blade in it. Somewhere along the line they added the comfort strip, but for the most part, razors were just razors. Then Gillette broke the mold with the Sensor, adding another razor blade to their cartridges and instantly conning the American public into thinking "the more razor blades touching my face at the same time, the better". But even at that early stage of the evolution, some were already mocking the razor blade space race. My dad told me that Saturday Night Live was doing fake commercials featuring ridiculous razors that had 3 or even 4 blades. Ah the absurdity. You pretty much know where it went from there. Each year came the new models as Schick and Gillette battled for the hearts and minds of America's men. Although Schick never really threatened to take over the lead, I'll admit that my buddy Josh and I did make the switch to Schick in college when they came out with the diamond cutter. I don't remember its real name, but Schick came out with this piece of hardware, we thought it was a joke, but its razor blades were coated in carbon. You know, diamond. So we called it the diamond cutter after wrestler Diamond Dallas Paige's finishing move and, well, it turns out they weren't joking. Our sallow young faces were not ready for the diamond cutter, and after a couple of days of looking I'd been shaving with a dinner knife, I was back on the wagon with Gillette. Aside from the Mach3 Turbo and the Mach3 Champion edition (somebody got drunk before a Gillette meeting and suggested they paint the Mach 3 handle red and call it the "Champion Edition"-you should have seen the commercials, and yes of course I bought one) nobody really made any significant developments in R&D until this year. Yes Schick came out with the Quattro (4 blades), but all that did was establish the point of diminishing marginal returns when it came to number of razors people will tolerate in their shaver. Three blades: The Best a Man Can Get. Four blades: You Cannot Be Serious. So that was the Quattro. Which brings me up to today. The Power. It seemed like we were embarking on a glorious new era. "Of course!" I thought. "This is the next evolution, how could it have taken this long to be discovered?" Just reading Gillette's web page made me want to leave work early. All kinds of new "power" rhetoric: "power strokes", "powerglide blades", "micro-power"- even a power green handle design. It looked like the thing ran on weapons-grade plutonium. Then there was this link on the site for awe-struck consumers like myself: "How to Use the M3 Power". How to use? I have to take a class just to operate it? I'd better just buy the razor.

Now that I've wasted the whole column just on background, I'll cut to the chase with the review. Here's the thing about the M3 Power: It's a regular Mach3 razor that vibrates back and forth. The website says that the M3 Power sends pulses to your face, causing the hair to stand up on end so that it's shaved closer without irritating. A nice idea, and it works terrifically in the commercial, but as it turns out, when you hook up three razor blades to a motor so that they're moving back and forth in a saw-like motion, then drag them across your skin repeatedly, you end up bleeding. I'm sorry, but the thing just doesn't work. That's the review. It kicks your ass for the 3 minutes you're shaving, then kicks your ass for the rest of the day as you fume about having spent $18 on a torture-device razor instead of Baja Fresh and three gallons of gas. And it doesn't even shave closer than the old razor with less strokes, like they promise. Advertising owns me, thank you Gillette.