Are you a gamer? Do you need to shave? Are you tired of subjecting your face to the sub-par hacking of razors made for people who’d rather watch television or play some cards? Then you need to get the Gillette Fusion Power Gamer, the new razor that may just be the most mind-blowingly stupid crossover product ever conceived.
You’ve no doubt seen ads for the Gillette Fusion razor featuring appearances by Tiger Woods, Roger Federer and Derek Jeter, in which they smack their respective balls around and then kid each other with awkward camaraderie and forced machismo at the end. But men who play real sports, with their chiseled features, sculpted physiques and manly comfort with communal shower nudity can be intimidating to those of us who mash buttons for fun, their athletic prowess and ease with the ladies leaving us uncomfortably self-conscious as we look down at our pale skin and nacho cheese-stained t-shirts.
But now, Gillette has extended a hand to the pallid and the flabby, recognizing that even those of us who don’t have a compulsive fixation with balls need some way to scrape the crud off our faces every now and then. Thus we have the Gillette Fusion Power Gamer Razor, a new five-bladed monstrosity that will shave gamers, and apparently only gamers, closer than any other razor on the planet.
What makes the Gillette Fusion Power Gamer different from other razors, like for instance the Gillette Fusion? It seems to have a slightly different color scheme, featuring gray accents instead of blue. The “loading” countdown timer on the Gillette Fusion Gamer website is shaped like a game controller rather than a big blue “G.” Perhaps the most important difference, though, is that instead of being shilled by Tiger Woods, Roger Federer and Derek Jeter, the campaign for the Gillette Fusion Power Game features videogame-style digital representations of Tiger Woods, Roger Federer and Derek Jeter.
You think I’m making this up, don’t you? But every word is true. Go here and look if you don’t believe me. This is actually a product that someone at Gillette decided would be a sure-fire hit: A razor for gamers. How do you justify that? How the hell do you even conceive of such a thing? What’s next, a Gillette blade for people who use mass transit? Maybe a new kind of shaving cream for men who prefer boxers? I know, how about Gillette: Remembrance, the hot new fragrance for men who can’t remember where they left their goddamn keys.
Despite the hype, some early adopters have expressed concern over the technology at work in new razors; one poster claimed the battery indicator light on his Fusion Power Gamer began flashing red after only a few uses, signifying a general hardware failure, while others have raised questions about backwards compatibility with earlier Gillette models. The Amazon customer review forum have also been inundated with Schick Quattro fanboys who claim the new Fusion Power Gamer is just “two Mach 3s duct-taped together.”
The videogaming world at large seems unanimous in its disbelief over this truly stupefying product; Kotaku brought it to my attention with a “cutting edge” report while Penny Arcade has once again managed to sum things up nicely in a mere two panels. And since we’re having a laugh at Gillette’s expense anyway, let me also recommend this prescient gem from The Onion, undeniable proof that when it comes to the shaving industry, the truth isn’t just stranger than fiction, sometimes it is fiction.
