A year ago, the idea was a joke...Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades. (Nevermind the old Saturday Night Live skit about a three-bladed razor back when dual-bladed razors were introduced.)

Would someone tell me how this happened? We were the fucking vanguard of shaving in this country. The Gillette Mach3 was the razor to own. Then the other guy came out with a three-blade razor. Were we scared? Hell, no. Because we hit back with a little thing called the Mach3Turbo. That's three blades and an aloe strip. For moisture. But you know what happened next? Shut up, I'm telling you what happened—the bastards went to four blades. Now we're standing around with our cocks in our hands, selling three blades and a strip. Moisture or no, suddenly we're the chumps. Well, fuck it. We're going to five blades.

Today, "the launch of Fusion is probably the closest thing to a slam-dunk in the intensely competitive consumer-products industry..."

Gillette's Five-Blade Wonder

At first glance, Gillette's Sept. 14 announcement that it plans to start selling the world's first five-bladed razor seems like a classic case of overkill. Gillette already offers men the three-bladed Mach3 system, in both manual and battery-powered versions. And rival Schick offers four blades on its Quattro razor.

Enough already! No more. Please.