A Real Review of Dollar Shave Club

A friend sent me a hilarious video on YouTube called “Let’s Talk About #2” from a place called Dollar Shave Club. If you haven’t seen it I highly recommend watching when the kids aren’t looking over your shoulder. 

I remember hearing about DSC a few years ago but didn’t think much of them. But after watching the video I thought, “hey, why not try it out... seems pretty cheap and useful” so I broke out the credit card and ordered the famous $1 razor along with some other items that were pretty reasonably priced.

The humor of the site really sold me over from the “real-world” humorous descriptions to the overall look of the website. These guys are clever to say the least. 

The order came FAST, like, Amazon Prime fast. The packaging felt similar to that famous 'opening experience' you get from opening Apple products. I was expecting some small envelope but they send a coolish-looking box with some messaging printed on the top lid. Included with the products were card descriptions of each product and a new member handbook that even included a membership card for a free drink at "any bar in America!” with an asterisk of *not really. 

Too bad, but clever nonetheless. 

I must admit the build-up to using the product was pretty exciting. I hadn’t even tried it out yet and was sold on this club. But how were the goods?

I hooked up the new handle to the razor, put on their Shave Butter and tried using it. Nothing happened. The blades barely picked anything off. Thinking it must be the blade, I pulled that one off and tried another. Barely anything again.

And then tried tapping the blade to get the Shave Butter off to rinse and the blade fell off the handle. The handle connector is really flimsy. That happened a few times, the blades don’t connect to the handle well at all. 

I tried washing the Shave Butter off and tried using a new blade, but again, barely any whiskers were coming off. 

I broke out the cheap Target brand single disposable blade and it worked just fine. I even tried the Target brand with the new DSC Shave Butter and all worked just fine. 

Highly disappointed with the Dollar Shave Club blades and razor to say the least. Their razor is about as effective as my 5YO’s fake Spiderman Razor he uses in the bathtub.

My 5YO's favorite razor uses Spidey-sense for the closest shave possible.

I do like the Shave Butter, I’ll keep that. But the membership is now cancelled as the blades are a bust. Sorry Dollar Shave Club, you sold me with the videos, humor, brilliant messaging, and even the packaging but in the end... your razor sucked!

Dollar Shave Club video. The bear's performance is top-notch!

UPDATE

Dollar Shaved club sent me the $6 razor in place of the $1 and wow, what a huge difference! It worked pretty well and the blade didn't fall off the handle at all. Dollar Shave Club should axe the $1 razor or maybe keep it around for teens that really want to shave but in reality don't need to. I bet nobody is getting cuts from that thing.

For everybody else, go for the $6 and the Shave Butter which is really like shaving with butter. Just don't taste it.

Things To-Do By 40

My birthday just passed. In addition to my regular annual questions of, “where did the time go?” or “when my Dad was my age, he looked like he was 63” another important thought came to mind now that I’m conformably in my 40’s and get asked occasionally  

 “What should have I done by age 40?”

Well, after deep thought, here’s my advice of things every father and maybe every man should have done by age 40:

1. Create a Will. It’s the responsible thing to do especially if you have kids. 

2. Save for retirement. Thankfully I started at 22 when my first boss told me these very wise and insightful words, “I have no idea what a 401K is, I just know you put money in it and you won’t die poor.”

3. Run a Marathon. Or in my case a ‘more achievable’ 10K. And then on the day-of feel like your doing pretty awesome; making really good time, and then when you start getting tired, you pass the 1 mile marker, and then for the next 60 minutes ask yourself over and over again, “Oh God, I can’t feel my toes/legs/tongue...! Why did I do this?” 

4. Celebrate a milestone birthday in a foreign country. Preferably at a local karaoke bar in Kyoto, Japan singing to the tune Bee-Gee’s “Night Fever."  Just don’t fall asleep at 6PM.

5. Do something really adventurous with your spouse before having kids. In our case, we went to New Zealand for 3 weeks. One major highlight and life changing experience - we went caving with 2 guides and thought we were going to die repelling 9 stories down a giant hole. At the time I told my wife, “if you survive and I don’t, please make sure my tombstone says, “Sacrificed his life saving his young beautiful wife, and ended up falling 9 stories into a giant hole in the New Zealand countryside’.” 

By the way, I still want my tombstone to say that regardless of how I end up dying. 

Help! I Think They May Take Away My Man Card

According to the great thinkers of our time (Darwin, Einstein, Hasselhoff...) the vast majority of men in this world are born with some type of innate natural abilities like fixing a stalled truck in the desert with only chewing gum and the belt around his waist, the ability to install drywall or ceiling fans perfectly without ever having been trained, or even the ability to fly.
And then there are those like me who have no such abilities in that department. But that doesn't stop me on occasion from thinking I do.

The wife went to a convention over the weekend, so after putting my daughter to bed for the night I thought I would do some household repairs I’ve been putting off for about 6 years.

My first job was fixing a running toilet (you know because that hiss can waste up to 487.4 millions of gallons of water- in just one day) I spent 2 hours replacing the entire innards of the toilet with a new “low-flow” system. After about 2 hour of swearing to the toilet gods, they finally listened and I somehow was able to put everything back together.
Feeling very proud of my work, I sat back on the bathroom floor, grunted in cave-man talk, flexed my muscles (kissed each bicep) and smashed a beer can on my forehead yelling "GWAR done GOOD!!!"

Yup, feeling pretty good until I turned the water back on and the toilet started hissing again.
“STUPID TOILET!!!” (Followed by much MUCH more than that…)

I turned the toilet off, made an “Out of Order” sign, and watched a movie.
That's my talent. And flying.