Ever since The Onion's faux-editorial "Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades" came true in real life, it's been clear that the razor industry would just keep adding blades until it was forced to stop. That time has come.

Gillette's newest shaving blockbuster: a one-blade razor that costs 34 cents. In India! Replacement blades cost 11 cents. Which is still twice as much India's current most popular blade. Still, we can all thank the hundreds of millions of poverty-stricken men in the Indian market for being the only force powerful enough to (temporarily) halt Gillette's expansion into numbers of blades that have only been theoretically posited by physicists. Of course, it's all a trap.

"The first job is to bring more consumers into Gillette," says Alberto Carvalho, P&G's vice president of male grooming in emerging markets. "When they start enjoying a better shave, they'll be more open to all solutions."

You can either be open to Gillette's blades, or you can get opened by Gillette's blades. They didn't get 70% of the world razor market by being soft.

[WSJ]