When Hairy Met Harry....

Can you ever have too much intel on the men’s shaving products market?  OK, all together now, you MP faithful:  “NO!”

Today’s post reviews two shaving products offered by Harry’s.  (The company also uses H’ as a symbol of its identity.)  Both the Foaming Shave Gel and the After Shave Lotion are very good products, and their price tags are more reasonable than competing options that are equally well made and well presented.

The Foaming Shave Gel is more than a high quality product for me.  It’s also a walk down memory lane.  Let me explain.  When I came of shaving age (no year mentioned), gels were all the rage.  Gillette et al. were promoting them as snazzy, highly engineered shaving lubricants that left your father’s old Barbasol can in the dust.  And it was true – gels seemed to get under the skin better and raise the whiskers up higher to be mowed down by the blades.  Not to mention that it was just flat-out cool how gels spontaneously combusted into foam on your face.  Metamorphosis is always intriguing.

So I loved shaving gels and used them for years.  But once I drank the animal rights and welfare Kool-Aid as a young adult, no more cold gellin’ for me.  Gels were in the domain of the ginormous and ignominious companies, not the quirky independent producers that eschewed animal testing.  I was left gel-less and jealous.

Now along comes Harry’s Foaming Shave Gel, which is not tested on animals!  This gel has all the same action as the ones I used to love, plus a cooling quality that begins when you apply it and lasts throughout your shave.  The aluminum container is modern and stylish too – the canister has a simple, masculine metallic Hunter Green background with “less is more” sans serif white printing and a plastic maroon dispensing unit and cap.  It’ll fit neatly and unassumingly into your medicine cabinet.  My only minor gripe is one that applies to all shave gels I’ve ever used, i.e., it’s hard to control the exact amount of product you dispense, sort of like trying to top off the gas tank.

The H’ After Shave Lotion is as good a product as the shave gel, if not better.  Like a growing number of other current post-shave solutions, it’s thick and rich, resembling a face cream more than a traditional aftershave lotion.  It’s mild and soothing, alleviating any cuts, nicks and scrapes.  Zero astringency or alcohol sting – you could use Harry’s After Shave Lotion as your daily moisturizer if you wanted to.

The relatively low price points on these two products will come as a welcome surprise -- $8 for 4 oz. of the Foaming Shave Gel and $10 for an equal amount of the After Shave Lotion.  As an added bonus, Harry’s donates 1% of its sales to not-for-profit organizations.  City Year is its current partner.  Righteous bucks, dude!  So pick up some Harry’s today; it’s good shaving for the greater good.  What could be gooder?

by ManPossible