To the makers of men's consumer products::

The BBQ Pit
1

Okay lets’s get something perfectly fucking clear. You are making products for men, outside of the advertising double-speak world commonly known as guys. We don’t want ‘new and exciting’, we don’t want ’ reformulation’, we don’t want ‘enhanced’, ‘revolutionary’, ‘appeasinger packaging’,or ’ more whatever’. That is why our grandfathers used Old Spice until the day they died. That is why our fathers are still wearing one belt and one style of under shirt since 1962. Make a goddamn product, and make it right, and we will be more loyal than a blind, deaf, one legged dog. Don’t throw us a curve ball we only find out about while in the fucking aisle. We’re not women, we’re got gay, and we’re not European. We’re just guys.

Why in the hell has the wasteband and cut of my tighty-whities changed 4 timed in the past 5 years? I made the executive decision to go with that style long ago. I don’t like Butch and Sundance hanging out mid thigh. They prefer a nice snug home, and that’s what I want to give them. Your dumb-ass changes arn’t fooling anyone. Anybody who is in position to see me in my drawers, has already accepted the peril to their sanity. A fancy new blue racing stripe on a blimp doesn’t make it a fucking f-16. My fat has graciously settled in areas so as to minimize the impact of your seems, so changing the cut only creates annoying as hell chafing.

And why do you son of a bitch piss monkeys keep changing my deodorant? Every time I go to get a new stick you have a new package I don’t recognize and assinine and pointless new scents. First of all I don’t want a scent after all. As I said I am a guy. My pits shouldn’t smell like a fucking lilac bush. If someone wants the smell of lilacs, they would get off their ass and plant a damn tree, rather than go nose foraging my pit glands. It’s a functional product, not a decorative one. However all the unscented is always bought up by the first dude’s there so I am stuck with an arm groin perfume decision between autumn meadow, winter meadow, summer meadow, spring meadow, clean sport, exhiliratiing sport, power sport, fresh sport, summer sport, winter sport, autumn sport, spring sport, and X-treme sport. And If by some miracle I happen to pick one that doesn’t make me smell like I had a cheap whore on head lock , it will be immediatly be removed and replaced with ‘Existential Augusta evening with a melancholy phrenologist’ scent. The fucking unscented is always gone, don’t you have data werehouse analyst pointing that out to you that’s what we all really want.

I realize the queer eye show had decent ratings for a while. Yes, 20 guys pretended to give a shit while the cameras were on them, but for Christ sake, none of the rest of us care about improvements in that shit, consistancy and stogerism is the key dammit! We don’t want new colors on our socks, new threads on our shoes, new Madagascarian roots in our aftershave, or new ergonomic shapes of our nose hair whackers. Just make a fucking product that works, and will still be there the next time we go to the store, and we will be yours for life.

2

No shit. Good OP.

3

Don’t forget the 80 different kinds of razor blade heads that each attach to a single one of the 80 different handles. AND HOW THEY ALWAYS SELL DIFFERENT BLADE HEADS EVERY DAMN TIME YOU GO TO THE STORE!

buggers

Pain in the ass to find unscented soap too. Aromatic ones make me cough every damn time I get a whiff–which increases when wet–and rubbing against my face :mad:

4

You know, women don’t really have it any better, 'cause, when we have 34 scents of deodorant each in solid, semisolid, smooth solid, invisible solid, clear solid, clear gel, roll-on, original roll-on, clear roll-on, powder roll-on, dry roll-on, and aerosol to choose from, we’re just as a matter of course expected to LIKE the variety. Unlike the advertising aimed at men, which brazenly states things like, “Use our NEW razor, and hot chicks in negligees will come over to stroke their fingers across your face while you smirk at the camera!” the ads aimed at women say “You will enjoy our NEW product, 'cause, well, you’re a WOMAN! so you like that kinda stuff! Is this ad over yet? I’ve got a dentist appointment…”

:rolleyes:

And I can’t find any fucking unscented antiperspirant either. 34 different scents, and they all smell like baby powder. Dammit, I’m 33 years old, I don’t wanna smell like fucking baby powder, unless I’m actually hauling a baby around. Which I don’t do on a regular basis.

5

And y’know, I wasn’t really trying to one-up your rant with a “Oh, yeah, well…women have it worse!” kinda thing, though looking at it, it reads that way. I thought it was a great OP. I also thought it pretty much applies to everybody.

6

Indeed. It seems to me that just about the time I (and I’m a woman) start to really like a product, the marketing gods snatch it away and tell me I should like this New! and Improved! version, which has some dubious new feature and, of course, costs more.

I bought a razor. It’s the Gillette Sensor Excel for Women. It works. The handle is comfortable and easy to hold with wet hands. The blades last a decently long time, and I rarely cut myself with it. I bought it years ago and I am still using it. But the blades for it are getting harder and harder to find, because Gillette would like me to “upgrade” to some weird thing that has a narrower handle and larger blades which, of course, cost at least 1/3 more per blade. Curiously, the men’s Sensor Excel blades are still easy to find, but I’m not sure if they’re compatible or if they fucked with the connectors to make sure they weren’t.

Let’s not even discuss the Body Shop, who, I swear, had spies in all their stores to see what products flodnak bought so they could yank it from the shelves the next week. I wonder what those spies are doing now that I’ve given up shopping there?

7

I think wolfman you may have missed something.
Some of the men’s products are designed to appeal to women, because a significant proportion of men’s products are bought by women.

In households where there is one weekly shop, including a visit to the Pharmacy, it may well be the woman of the household who does it. She might be picking up razors, deoderants, shaving gel etc for the guys along with the shower gels, moisterisers, deoderant, shaving gel and razorblades and shampoo for herself.

I get what you’re saying, but the marketing people know EXACTLY who they’re appealing to, and my guess is that this market of women buying stuff for their husbands, partners, brothers and sons is bigger than you realise.

8

Yeah, but I don’t buy shaving gel just so some random hot chick in a negligee can stroke his baby-smooth cheeks. Unless that hot chick is me. And there better not be a camera in the room.

I think I should just say “great OP” and fix some coffee.

Robin

9

Somehow I doubt wolfman fits in the ideal target demographic for men’s skin moisturizer.

Even if they get Clyde Frazier and Keith Hernandez to promote that stuff, you wonder who’s going in to buy it without wearing noseglasses and a fake beard.

10

Look, this is the Pit. Please stuff your calm rationality up your nose and take it over to MPSIMS! :stuck_out_tongue:

I agree with you, though; before hubby buys new soap or deodorant he always asks me if I like the fragrance.

11

Great OP. I especially liked the line about “Cheap Whore In A Headlock.” They ought to market some men’s deoderant with exactly that name.

“Women go crazy for a man who smells like he has a cheap whore in a headlock! 'Cause they’d like to be in a headlock, too. If you know what we mean …”

Cut to picture of supermodel smiling broadly as she struggles to escape a headlock.

Oh, yeah. That’s gonna work.

12

I would so buy that deodorant.

13

My SO has one of those “pure sport” deodorants – amazingly, he hadn’t noticed, he just doesn’t read labels, it drives me nuts, but that’s another thread. I pointed out to him that if I think of how “pure sport” would smell, it would be huge amounts of BO. Especially in the summer.

He had to agree.

14

<standing ovation>

'Nuff said.

15

One more. Can we please, please, please have a product simply named LOTION? None of this special skin therapy, moisturizing effluviant, aloe enhancing skin bullshit. If it’s lotion, it should figure somewhere prominantly on the damned label.

Stuffy,

Who went to Walgreens this weekend looking for lotion.

16

I think it’s retarded that razor makers feel they HAVE to put out a separate women’s razor… but make sure it’s pink or turquoise! We can’t have that ugly old black/grey/silver razor clashing with the rest of our bathroom accoutrements. :rolleyes:

They even have a stupid commercial now (I think it’s for Schick, possibly someone else) that says, “Ladies, now you don’t have to go around sneaking his razor…” while showing a girl distracting her boyfriend/husband with a big kiss so she can take his razor, etc. You see, now there’s the exact same razor… FOR HER! And it’s pink!

Jesus fucking Christ, will it KILL these women to use the black and grey razor? I have a fucking Mach 3 razor, not a stupid “Venus” bullshit thing. It’s the same damn razor except the handle isn’t a weird blob and it still stays nicely in my hand in the shower. But heaven forbid I don’t have a pink razor! And I say this as someone who loves pink!
'Course, when I can, I get men’s deodorant: Mitchum Unscented clear gel. I’m probably one of those people snatching them up before wolfman gets there (although I usually have a bitch of a time finding them too).

17

You win for today. That bit made me guffaw at work.

18

My solution to this problem was to buy an enormous bag of cheap disposables at Costco. I’m set on razors for many years, and they cut just as good as the ridiculously expensive “now with 12 blades!!!” models.

19

To this day my husband buys the pink disposable razors: in college, there were 3 or 4 boys sharing a bathroom and it was hard to tell razors apart, so he started buying the pink ones so that he would know which one was his. Fifteen years later, he’s still in the habit.

20

Usually, the more expensive female razors have the shaving head at a slightly different angle than the men’s razor. This is to compensate for the fact that women are usually looking at what they are shaving, and hold the razor differently.

To the OP: Well done! I have found that the only way to insure that I have the products I like is to buy in bulk. It means having a dozen sticks of deoderant in the cabinet at a time, but it is a small price to pay.