Shaving isn’t hard. In fact, shaving is easy enough for a child to do with a “New Gem”. You can get it for a mere 2 US dollars. Provided you can go back, oh, a hundred and twenty years to order one. The razor wielding child was, I suspect, sold separately.

The razor the child wields in the ad looks very much like a 1901 “New Gem”, as described by Waits on page 429 of his compendium. The little tin box that held the razor looks similar to the 1901 too.

The New Gem was a wedge razor. Instead of the thin, replicable blades used by later GEMs, it used a blade that was – in effect – a short stub section of straight razor. On the upside, you would never have to buy another blade. On the downside, you would have to sharpen and hone it regularly.

And it was this requirement that lead to GEM also selling stropping machines, and kits that included stropping machines and extra blades. You would have to come up with more than two bucks though.

GEM used the imagery of a father and child in their advertisements for quite a few years. t They seem to have realized that a razor wielding child was not the best idea though.