End Gamer Stubble Today

Gillette releases 'gamer' razor in landmark moment of empowerment.

By John Gillooly on 3 March, 2009

We’ve seen some pretty left-field attempts at marketing to gamers in recent years. Usually, it happens with some sort of horrible food or drink that promises to exponentially increase your levels of in-game awesomeness. But Gillette has entered a brave, new world in the states, with the creation of the Gillette Fusion Power Gamer razor.

Insert the obligatory jokes about neck-beard trimmers and zit navigation technology. Penny Arcade manages to sum up the WTF factor behind this product brilliantly. There is definitely a level of befuddlement as to just what differentiates gamer stubble enough to make it need a separate product line for its management.

Delve around the Gillette website a bit and it becomes obvious that the main thing differentiating the Fusion Power Gamer from the Fusion Power is, well, the word ‘gamer’. The website has digital versions of sports people endorsing the product – we had expected maybe a Jonathan ‘Fatal1ty’ Wendell or a Leroy Jenkins in there trimming the fuzz. The razor does have a ‘microchip’ in it to optimise vibration, but that is about as close to the gaming world as it comes.

In reality, this seems to just be a marketing reach around between EA Sports and Gillette. Buy one of these Gamer razors and get ten bucks off a game. If this goes well, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Lady Gamer line that comes with a voucher for The Sims. Maybe they could include a free in-game razor that ups one’s character’s charisma (I’m assuming that’s a stat, it’s not worth actually playing The Sims to check (It’s a skill you learn by talking to yourself in the mirror. –ed)) for a few weeks. Refills would be available from the EA store at a low price of US$10, thus completing the synergy between the two companies.

At least we can finally say that the gamer tag has broken out from the realm of food products scientifically guaranteed to increase pwnage. Of course, that means it has entered the realm of a semi-meaningless tag attached to random products in a vain hope that a sense of belonging drives one to purchase.

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