Gillette Contour

Identification notes for Gillette Contour cartridge packs — the pivoting-head twin blade sold under the Contour name outside the Americas (Atra is the equivalent US branding). Card livery variants, barcode and batch codes, distributor markets, and a clearly older third print run sitting alongside two newer ones.

Era late 1980s – 1990s Made by Gillette Deutschland GmbH & Co., Berlin Blades 2, pivoting Draft — three samples documented; dating not yet confirmed

Seven-point verification standard

1. Identification — card layout, barcodes, batch codes logged for three samples
2. Manufacturing — pending: cross-reference batch codes to date ranges
3. Packaging — two current-livery fronts and one older livery front photographed
4. Compatibility — pending: confirm against Atra handle generations
5. Rarity — pending: no comparison sample size yet
6. Collectability — pending
7. References — primary photography only; secondary sources not yet added

Overview

What Contour is

Contour is Gillette's pivoting-head twin-blade cartridge, sold under that name across most of Europe while the identical cartridge went to market in North America as Atra. It's the cartridge Contour Plus later added a Lubrastrip® to — this entry covers the plain (non-Plus) version.

This entry documents three physical samples: two five-cartridge packs sharing a current-looking grey/red livery, and a third, visibly older five-cartridge pack in a plainer black/red design. All three share the same product barcode despite different card designs and print codes, discussed under Identification below.

Packaging

Card front — two liveries

Two of the three samples use the same grey-gradient card with a red top/bottom border: "Gillette" in white over "Contour" in red, and a large illustration of the cartridge pivoting on the handle, picked out with two yellow curved motion-arrows. Both are marked "5" cartridges. The only difference between them on the front is a "France 98 Official Sponsor" badge in the top-right corner of one — the same World Cup 1998 tie-in seen on a Contour Plus sample already on file, and a useful shared dating anchor of around 1997–98.

The third sample is a noticeably different, plainer design: a black card in a thin red frame, "Gillette Contour" set as a single white wordmark rather than the two-tone white/red lockup, and only a small corner icon of the cartridge with red motion-arrows rather than the large illustrated panel. The cartridges sit visibly in the tray rather than behind an illustrated panel. This is the strongest visual cue that it's a different — and on the evidence of the plainer, more utilitarian design, likely earlier — print run than the other two.

Three Gillette Contour card fronts: two in grey/red current livery, one in an older black/red design — Three card fronts as photographed, left to right, top row then bottom — referred to below as Front 1–3.

Identification

Reading the card back

All three backs share the same overall block layout — Gillette wordmark, four-step pictogram strip, "Made by" block, Gillette Series cross-sell graphic, barcode and print code — but differ in formatting, translated languages, and which Gillette Series products are shown, which together help sort a stack of these by print run.

Three Gillette Contour card backs, showing barcode, batch code and distributor print variants — Three card backs as photographed, matching the front photo's arrangement — referred to below as Back 1–3.

Back 1 — top left

Corner code: 3237 / 18
Barcode: 3 014260 200411
Batch / print code: 170008835
Cross-sell lineup: Cool Wave After Shave, Gel, Shaving Foam, Shave Gel Concentrate, After Shave Gel
Distributor markets: Annecy, Berlin, Brussels, Espoo-Esbo, København, Lisboa, London TW7 5NP, Madrid, Milano, Oslo, Rijswijk ZH, Stockholm, Wien, Zürich, Dublin (Daelgate Ltd.), Metamarfosi (Greece)

Back 2 — top right

Corner code: 6913 / 20
Barcode: 3 014260 200411
Batch / print code: 170009565
Cross-sell lineup: Gel, Shaving Foam, Deodorant, Clear Gel — a different Gillette Series range to Back 1, with no After Shave products shown
Distributor markets: Same market list as Back 1, in the same paragraph format

Back 3 — bottom

Corner code: 7607 / 1-10-4-2 / 23
Barcode: 3 014260 200411
Batch / print code: 170008379 2a
Language set: Adds Finnish/Swedish translations to the "Made by" block ("Valmistaja/Tillverkare," "Tyskland/Saksa") not present on Backs 1–2
Distributor markets: Same city list, but laid out in a four-column grid rather than a paragraph, and gives "København Ø" with the district letter

All three share one product barcode — 3 014260 200411 — despite three different corner codes, three different print codes, and visibly different card designs. That's expected for a single pack size and product line: the barcode identifies "Contour, 5 cartridges" at retail, while the corner and print codes are the printer's own batch references. It's a useful general rule for this archive: barcode identifies the product and pack size, corner/print codes identify the specific run.

Compatibility

What these cartridges fit

None of the three cards state compatibility beyond the Contour name itself. Contour is understood to share its cartridge with Atra (the US-market branding of the same pivoting-head system), but that hasn't been independently confirmed here against a physical handle — flagged as pending under Compatibility in the checklist above, and worth checking against the existing Atra and Contour Plus entries once more samples are on hand.

References

Sources

Primary: three Gillette Contour five-cartridge packs, photographed front and back and transcribed directly for this entry, August 2026.
Secondary sources — manufacturer archives, collector forums, dated retail listings — have not yet been added; see the verification checklist above.

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