How do I remove those clear "city stickers"

[tattman23]

When I was at school and had to purchase and display parking decals for my '67 VW van, they were sold with a clear plastic sleeve - you mounted the sleeve on your 'shield, slipped the parking sticker, backing and all, into the sleeve, and could thereby avoid sticking semester after semester of parking decals directly onto your glass.

After earning my B.S. degree (not to be confused with a "bs degree" haha), I even found more uses for that little plastic envelope on the windshield. It was STILL firmly attached when the microbus was retired with honors in the mid-1980's, after 250,000 miles of living life to the fullest. God bless 3M, this was before the Age of the Post-It Note.

Well, those were the good ol' days apparently. I now have 6 years worth of annual city stickers mounted in a (somewhat) neat row, right up the side of my windshield. Yeah, the instructions say it goes in the "lower left-hand corner"... Har har I haven't seen the lower left corner of my 'shield since about '97.

OK, to the point then. The thought of touching the windshield with a razor blade gives me shivers - that can't be the slick way to remove those old decals can it? Once I got very brave and applied some WD40 spray (don't laugh it's half my tool kit), thinking I could just pick it off in (gooey) pieces but nooo luck. The penetrating oil didn't penetrate, or maybe I didn't wait long enough. Maybe I should have trotted out the razor blade then?

In the interest of not appearing completely clueless, I did devise a trick where I'd put clear packaging tape over the entire decal, so it would "come off in one piece"... Brilliant plan yeah, but it's the "coming off" part that's giving me fits... If I need to literally scrape the things off with a blade, then someone needs to come hold my hand while I'm (trying to refrain from) mutilating my glass.

Thanks in advance for helping me see clearly, or at least peripherally,
TAtt