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The new razor from King of Shaves, the Azor has clean lines and sleek styling that young men who care about the look of the stuff on their bathroom shelves will love. The sort of young gun who might have a constant stream of nubile conquests casting a critical eye over the contents of their male grooming kits in a morning.
So, who better to review this upstart competitor to Gillette's Mach 3 razor range than Crofty: middle aged, bearded with one partner of 22 years.
It would be wrong however, to assume that I am a stranger to a razor; whilst I am bearded, I am not completely hirsute and therefore a good razor to apply accurately at carefully designated facial landmarks is essential. And the Azor more than fits the bill. The blade width is the same as a Mach 3 yet the actual blade case itself is slighty narrower making for an easier passage around my rugged countenance; and it's light enough to not feel like you are shaving with a 110v hand drill - unlike some of the newer Gillette offerings.
What I love most though about this razor, is the combination of its good looks with simple innovation. Why does something that is simply intended to remove hair from your face have to have technology that requires batteries and springs when Turkish barbers can achieve it with one simple sharp blade? And this is what makes the Azor an ace: it is simple.
It looks good because of its dedication to function - not in spite of it. Every element is designed to do something, from the innovative fork design to the non - clogging head (nattily titled 'open architecture' - but we know what non - clogging means!).
Here's another thing: faces are not flat. Obvious I know, but it took years for razor manufacturers to realise that a hinged blade would work better around facial contours. But, blade units with hinges and springs are very expensive, Gillette's Mach 3 in Boots today are £11.48 for 8, but if, like the clever King of Shave Azor, you put a simple hinge in the actual razor the price of blades is less: £9.49 for 8.
Just to be sure though, and in the interests of impartial web journalism, I asked the two younger male members of the Crofty Clan to try it out. Usually you are lucky to get a morning grunt from them both; but after leaving the Azor on the bathroom shelf as if it were mine, I knew it would only be moments before they tried it out.
Sure enough only hours later the trap was sprung. Here are the unsolicited testimonials of our two young bucks:
"That new razor of yours is cool dad, it's really easy to shave with." and
"I'm having that razor of yours dad, you'll have to get another."
Finally, and by way of a post script, I think these Endurium coated blades might actually live up to their promise of lasting longer. I found the Azor on the side of the bath the other day - and you know what that means - the blade, so far seems to have lost non of its edge.
Well done Will King I say!
I watched the fabulous Life on Mars last night; it really has to be the best and most entertaining drama on TV at the moment. This week I nearly fell off my chair when I saw my favourite children's TV programme of all time lampooned in a drug-enhanced hallucinogenic experience featuring DCI Gene Hunt, as citizen of Camberwick Green, beating up a nonce. But that wasn't the only high point in the programme, the series has also been notable for the accuracy of it's depiction of the 1970s, right down to the products that were popular.
As you know from previous posts, I'm a fan of advertising, particularly the psychology; so I was delighted last night to see, on the office shelf of Gene Hunt, a bottle of the classic male fragrance Hai Karate. What tickled me was the memory of the advertisements, not just for Hai Karate, but for Denim - the other classic fragrance - both guaranteeing sexual conquest to the man wearing the fragrance. And there we have the great advertising truth: no matter how slick or technologically adept we have become at producing advertising material, the ad-men still appeal to those basest instincts, pushing the buttons deep inside us that we don't always know are there.
Sex, as it always has done, sells. Consequently the bedroom shelves of my testosterone driven sons and their mates contain Lynx. Equally I know that by adding the label 'sex' into this post I will receive far more hits than normal - sorry if you've come here under false pretences.
I like to watch TV advertisements; I like it almost as much as I enjoy the programmes they interrupt; I like trying to work out the target audiences and influencing factors that advertisers use. For instance, the other evening an advertisement baffled me. Why would anyone want a product that reduced the appearance of scars? Yet unsolicited testimonials praised the efficacy of Bio-Oil.
"What?" I incredulously railed at the TV set, "My scars are fading quickly enough as it is; twenty six stitches and clips, at this rate, I'll have nothing to show-off when I finally get back to work."
Clearly, men were not the target audience for this product; men would have bought it immediately if the blurb had read: 'Bio-Oil, make your scars tell your suffering.' Or perhaps 'Bio-Oil, because you've suffered', that would have had men queuing out of the door at Boots; they could have sold off a stall outside the local Accident and Emergency department.
Another favourite of mine at the moment is the advertisement that makes constipation look like a lifestyle choice. In the advertisment for DulcoEase a group of well dressed, comfortably off ladies-who-lunch, are shown enjoying a lifestyle that many aspire to thanks solely to the ablility of the product to make it easier for them to...well, you know.
With no apparent strain, the advertisers have stolen what used to be sketch material for gritty northern comics and made it look unseemly to snigger at toileting. You can picture the sort of thing:
A dowdily dressed woman hesitantly approaches the busy pharmacy counter and, having built up her courage, whispers something to the assistant who, in a broad northern voice, shouts to the pharmacist in the rear:
"Mr Barker, lady here says she can't go, 'ave we anything to 'elp 'er"
The pharmacist mutters something back which the assistant repeats:
"'e says is it 'ard or soft?"
The woman, having now committed herself to a course of action, persists; you can imagine the rest.
But now constipation is out of the closet, we can march up to the chemist's counter with pride and declaim our difficult passage in the full knowledge that people will admire us for it.
