On a related note, you know what else I haven't seen in a very long time – the little bits of strap metal that were used to keep the replacement inserts stiff. I used to spot them, cast aside at the edge of the road pretty regularly.

One of life's simple pleasures is a new set of blades. Even the slightest squeeeeeekcchhhhkkk drives me NUTS! The quiet flap flap of a new pair is such a nice thing. The last set I got was Rain-X brand and they worked quit well and lasted more than a year.

I'm I guess a "Middle Schooler", when it comes to Truck Driving. The Old Hands, of which there's not too many left, decry the complacency of our generation and our reliance on those new-fangled compressed air powered wipers because you didn't have to manually move the wiper from a handle inside the cab above the windshield. The New School has only seen the electric motor kind that have all the variable speed settings and what-not.
I cannot adequately confer the disdain I hold for those air-powered wipers. They suck in every way possible, and why you should ever encounter one in this day and age is truly unfathomable. They just stop, in the middle of the stroke, right in front of where you're trying to see. F*ckers, they make you wish you could just grab a handle and do it yourself.
So I'm a huge Rain-X fan, and as one of the Old Hands that turned me on to it said, "It was God's gift to Truck Drivers". Before Rain-X you could cut an onion in half and rub it on your windshield and have almost the same effect although if it was really hot it could cook that film right onto the windshield..
I use Rain-X, and never use the wiper's

The word we're looking for here are "wiper blade refills". I remember to buying those for my Oldsmobile 10 years ago from Advance Auto Parts for $2.75, and that did both sides. When I went looking for them again a year later they were gone. As much as I would like to believe that this was a case of evil corporate overlords forcing people to buy 4 x more expensive replacement blades, I think it's more along the lines of so many lazy end users who would just rather pay the extra and swap the whole blade. In the end stocking the refills just wasn't profitable enough to justify it. Now NAPA catalogue still lists them so I suppose they're available out there somewhere.
What did I buy the last time? I was in a hurry so I just grabbed a set of the NAPA 20's for my newly acquired wagon, $10 total. My excuse is that it had a mismatched set of blades on it and that would have annoyed me greatly. My 4-door has a 4.5 year old self of Bosch Microedges, I just swipe a little 303 on them when I remember.