As some of you might already know, the double edged blade we know and love today is not strictly speaking a Gillette invention. The whole Probak-Gillette story is complicated – as I’ve touched on six years ago and others have explained way better than me – but the long and the short is that AutoStrop Safety Razor (who owned the Probak brand) got ahead of Gillette Safety Razor Company in a patent war over slotted blades, and then negotiated a deal which saw them both being bought out by Gillette and taking over the Gillette board. As I said, it is complicated. But somewhere in the middle of it all, after the patents were filed but before Gaisman ended up in control of Gillette, Probak put out an advertisement suggesting that you – as a shaver – should be the judge of what blades were the better.

AutoStrop seems to have had some odd marketing going on in the early part of the last century, like the animated display we looked at two years ago. But even that is peanuts compared to the freaky wooden doll they advertised that they were using fore advertisements.

When you say post card, you usually think of something vivid and touristy that you’ll mail of to distant relatives when you’re on vacation. But a post card is – when you come down to it – just a piece of thick paper or thin cardboard that you write upon and send in the mail with no envelope. No one ever said it had to include the words “wish you were here” on the back.