★★★★★ 3
IMMEDIATE REACTION, PLUS FOLLOW UP AFTER A WEEK!
Style: For Him
**Package arrived LITERALLY 5 minutes ago, here is my immediate initial reaction, and then I'll actually post this after USING the soap and getting a better feel for the product.**
Keeping in mind that smell is subjective, here are my knee jerk thoughts on the bars of soap:
- Firstly, I can smell the soap through the bag (and box). Whatever scent this is, it's POTENT.
- Opening the box, the bars of soap look a LITTLE small. Not egregiously so, but a little bit smaller than your average bar of soap; BUT I check them against a new bar of Dove soap that I have, and they are identical. The eyes are playing tricks on you with these.
- Here is the breakdown of the 6 scents
- Activated Charcoal. This is what I was HOPING would smell like the "Pine Tar" that other companies (like Dr. Squatch, which I've never used, btw) have, but it is the "soap-est" smelling soap, with a hint of tar. It smells a little bit like a can of new paint.
- Tango Mango. IMHO, the best smelling of the 6, with strong citrus smells. Very lemon-y, but pleasant.
- Eucamint. Ahhh, here's what was permiating out of the box. This smell is STRONG, with an AGGRESSIVE mint smell. Like, Ben Gay mint. And as strong to boot. It doesn't smell BAD, but it's hands down the strongest scent.
- Oatmeal Shea. Meh. Kinda smells like an old coat that would be hanging in your grandfathers closet. It's not a BAD smell, but it has this weird odor to it, like when you leave a can of peanuts in your cupboard for a long time, and then go back and smell it.
- Patchouli Lime. This one kind of smells like a mixture of Activated Charcoal, Eucamint and Oatmeal Shea. It smells like a room that you just painted a day or two ago, and it definitely has the Ben Gay after aroma lingering.
- Apline Spice. This smells like a box. Like find an empty cardboard box, open it, and take a whiff. Boom, Alpine Spice. My least favorite.
I will say, none of them STINK; as in there isn't a smell that I'm like, "ewww, I don't want to smell like AT ALL!" Which sounds weird, because I described some of them as "paint," "an old coat," and "a cardboard box," but I feel that those are just very passive smells, not aggressively bad ones. If there is a problem soap, I would assume it's going to be Eucamint, because it might just be too overpowering, although I've found that the more you smell them, they seem to mellow out. I imagine that after a shower with these, the smell will dissipate enough that it will be more mild. Still, with the exception of Tango Mango; a very good smelling soap mind you, I'd say they are all very "manly" scents, and I'm excited to try them out.
Ok, so I'm a little over a week in, and here's my final take. (I made it through Activated Charcoal and Tango Mango):
First, the scents ABSOLUTELY mellow out when used to actually shower with them. My wife, who admittedly isn't really up on me like that, hasn't even mentioned me smelling differently than the last 11 years. So, if she's even noticed, it's not on a level to make a fuss about. This is important because fresh from the box, these things have some powerful scents, but they are definitely tamed by washing with them.
The bars last ABOUT 7 showers. Obviously, your mileage will vary based on how long you're in the shower, how much you scrub, how you store them, etc, but I was able to get 7 GOOD showers out of these. I have them in these natural sisal (whatever that is) exfoliating bags that help lather and store the soap, and really did some good scrubbing in my showers. The bars lather decently, but I'm not sure how much the bag helps with that. If you are a once a day showerer, a bar a week is a very fair approximation of what you'll get.
I definitely felt.....SOMETHING I didn't before with my shower gel showers. I don't know if that's the moisturizing, or the exfoliation, but my skin felt a little different after showering.
A decent buy. I'm not thrilled, but I'm not upset either. I don't think it changed my life, or even the way I shower, but I'm not mad at the experiment. I may try the Dr. Squatch soaps to see how all these stack up.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2020
