Monsta_AU
...can I interest you in some vintage blades?
Staff member
Forum Administrator
Grand Society
- Joined
- Feb 2, 2011
- Location
- Guildford.nsw.au
The genuine blades have arrived! Lets have a closer look.
The verdict: it's official. The idiotdoc-supplied Gillette Rubie Platinum Plus blades are most assuredly fake, counterfeit and non-genuine.
I would like to thank David Mendoza a.k.a. iamdarkangel2005 from proud shaving vendor Razorbladesandmore.com for stocking genuine product. He has been able to supply me a tuck of 100 Gillette Rubie Platinum Plus blades to compare the blades supplied by idiotdoc. They were paid for by me - not free/PIF of any kind - and arrived today in less than 2 weeks from California to a day west of Sydney.
The packaging is very detailed and an extremely good copy. As a former graphic artist and pre-production print press operator, I have 10 years experience in a number of areas including Imagesetters and platesetters, shooting bromides, production of printing plates from film, plus digital workflows, automated ink trapping. I would rate these 90% correct from a graphic design point of view however it is the small touches and print quality control that let them down. The printing is also very good but does not match the quality of the genuine packaging, and the cardboard that the box is constructed from lets it down.
The first and easiest way to spot the deficiency in the packaging and thus identify them as counterfeit is in the font of the barcode number. The fakes appear to have used Helvetica Condensed Light for the font, instead of the much more common OCR-B font that you will see on any real barcode numbering. This in fact is more likely to be a system error, with the platesetter/imagesetter that the plates or film was produced on did not have the same font on its systems. This could be a different font version revision, or possibly the artwork was done with a Truetype (TTF) font while the font installed on the production equipment was more likely Type1 or OpenType. This will drop back to a default font, usually Courier New Light, however this can be configured to something less obvious like Arial/Helvetica/Swiss721 style.
As you can see the print copying is very good otherwise, the text is not as crisp though. It appears they have been too heavy on the inking setting on the press. This is especially evident on the address text where the fake looks heavily-inked and kind of smudgy - the edges are not as sharp.
The second main deficiency is the real packs have cellophane wrapping of the box, whereas the fakes do not. Because of this, and the lower quality cardboard they are made from, the boxes appear damaged and tend to break along the box edges.
This is exactly how the Fakedidium boxes acted also, the outside surface cracked along the creasewheels on the press, and then when bent into shape then the cardboard surface cracks and peels away a little (for example of the left side of the top edge of the fake).
You can also see the difference in print quality in the above shot.
Also on the front, you can see the bad registration between the Red print and the Silver print. You will notice that the edges of the star are soft on the genuine (printing term is 'screened', or where you fade it and the print method is to turn it into ever decreasing in size dots), while the edges are hard on the fakes. The fakes are also missing the small white highlights in the star.
The third easy way to tell if you have fakes is that they are supplied as loose boxes and usually in a plastic zip-loc sandwich bag, while the genuine blades are distributed on a fold-up cardboard tuck, just like the Gillette Dark Platinums, Voskhods, Ladas, Lord Platinums, Mexican Red Personnas, etc etc etc.
I hope this helps the shaving community. A complete comparison and review between these blades will be posted at Paste & Cut in the near future, I am awaiting my microscope to be delivered so we can compare the steel, grind and hone between the fake and the genuine Rubies.
The verdict: it's official. The idiotdoc-supplied Gillette Rubie Platinum Plus blades are most assuredly fake, counterfeit and non-genuine.
I would like to thank David Mendoza a.k.a. iamdarkangel2005 from proud shaving vendor Razorbladesandmore.com for stocking genuine product. He has been able to supply me a tuck of 100 Gillette Rubie Platinum Plus blades to compare the blades supplied by idiotdoc. They were paid for by me - not free/PIF of any kind - and arrived today in less than 2 weeks from California to a day west of Sydney.
The packaging is very detailed and an extremely good copy. As a former graphic artist and pre-production print press operator, I have 10 years experience in a number of areas including Imagesetters and platesetters, shooting bromides, production of printing plates from film, plus digital workflows, automated ink trapping. I would rate these 90% correct from a graphic design point of view however it is the small touches and print quality control that let them down. The printing is also very good but does not match the quality of the genuine packaging, and the cardboard that the box is constructed from lets it down.
The first and easiest way to spot the deficiency in the packaging and thus identify them as counterfeit is in the font of the barcode number. The fakes appear to have used Helvetica Condensed Light for the font, instead of the much more common OCR-B font that you will see on any real barcode numbering. This in fact is more likely to be a system error, with the platesetter/imagesetter that the plates or film was produced on did not have the same font on its systems. This could be a different font version revision, or possibly the artwork was done with a Truetype (TTF) font while the font installed on the production equipment was more likely Type1 or OpenType. This will drop back to a default font, usually Courier New Light, however this can be configured to something less obvious like Arial/Helvetica/Swiss721 style.
As you can see the print copying is very good otherwise, the text is not as crisp though. It appears they have been too heavy on the inking setting on the press. This is especially evident on the address text where the fake looks heavily-inked and kind of smudgy - the edges are not as sharp.
The second main deficiency is the real packs have cellophane wrapping of the box, whereas the fakes do not. Because of this, and the lower quality cardboard they are made from, the boxes appear damaged and tend to break along the box edges.
This is exactly how the Fakedidium boxes acted also, the outside surface cracked along the creasewheels on the press, and then when bent into shape then the cardboard surface cracks and peels away a little (for example of the left side of the top edge of the fake).
You can also see the difference in print quality in the above shot.
Also on the front, you can see the bad registration between the Red print and the Silver print. You will notice that the edges of the star are soft on the genuine (printing term is 'screened', or where you fade it and the print method is to turn it into ever decreasing in size dots), while the edges are hard on the fakes. The fakes are also missing the small white highlights in the star.
The third easy way to tell if you have fakes is that they are supplied as loose boxes and usually in a plastic zip-loc sandwich bag, while the genuine blades are distributed on a fold-up cardboard tuck, just like the Gillette Dark Platinums, Voskhods, Ladas, Lord Platinums, Mexican Red Personnas, etc etc etc.
I hope this helps the shaving community. A complete comparison and review between these blades will be posted at Paste & Cut in the near future, I am awaiting my microscope to be delivered so we can compare the steel, grind and hone between the fake and the genuine Rubies.
