Keeping Creamy In The Bathroom and Hard In The Kitchen... (Lush bath & shower products in general)

Member Name: karenuk

Product:	Lush bath & shower products in general
Date:	09/07/02 (341 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: a wide variety of unusual soaps, vegetarian and often vegan, great smells

Disadvantages: more expensive than shop's own brands

I am a big fan of Lush products, especially their soaps. To date, I have tried four of them and thought I would compare them. I have already written a detailed opinion on Banana Moon and I will soon be writing one on Sea Vegetable soap, so this one will concentrate on the two I haven’t yet written about – Red Rooster and I Should Coco – with a comparison of the four at the end.

LUSH RED ROOSTER SOAP

I first became introduced to this soap when my good friend, Kathryn (who I met here on Dooyoo) sent me a bar for my birthday. Then last month, when I was spending my Ciao ‘wages’ at the Lush website, I fancied buying a few soaps. I remembered how well Red Rooster had performed before and thought I’d give him another try. I ended up buying four soaps from Lush – I Should Coco, Banana Moon and Sea Vegetable, as well as this one.

The problem with reviewing Lush products is that it all comes down to taste – or rather ‘smell’ as no-one in their right minds would actually try to eat these things, however tempting they might look. (This excludes my stupid dog who nibbled a chunk out of the Choco La La massage bar!) What suits one person’s nose would make someone else’s run <ahem> a mile! Some people aren’t keen on Red Rooster, but I love it.

It arrives in a rectangular block if you buy it online. It costs £1.50 for 100g, which lasts well in my opinion and is really worth the money. It is a dark orange colour with black strands through parts of it. These may look off-putting, but don’t worry; they are cinnamon stems and are supposed to be there.

It’s not a beautiful soap to look at (like I Should Coco) nor is it a boring looking soap that looks like it has gone off and needs to be thrown away (like Banana Moon). It is pleasantly attractive – a sort of final twelve in a beauty contest, but not a winner.

The cinnamon stems jut out
of the bar at some point in time, when the outer layers of the soap have been used. These can occasionally be sharp, so look out for them, but I haven’t had any problems with them myself and quite like a bit of rough now and again ;-)

The soap is shiny and almost looks like it is made of marble, so it is easy to turn over in your hands to create a lather. It foams up well, plus it cleans efficiently and effectively – which is what most of us expect from a soap. But Lush deliver even more – it’s vegan, used with limited packaging to reduce waste and contains loads of lovely ingredients.

Red Rooster includes freshly squeezed orange juice and orange essential oil (to refresh you), cinnamon leaf oil (to warm you up) and gardenia extract in its ingredients. This combines to make one of the most delicious smelling soaps I have ever tried. Obviously if you hate cinnamon, don’t bother buying this, but I love it and the orange complements it really well.

So what does it smell like? I don’t mean the obvious answer – cinnamon and orange – but the pictures that are conjured up through a few whiffs of this scent…It smells of the sun peeping out of a dark Winter sky, evenings spent huddled round a warm fire, hot orange juice before bed, Christmas mornings and old TV shows. I even detected a slight tang of Val Doonican’s jumpers, but we won’t go there.

I use this soap in the kitchen, where I like to make sure my hands are clean before I prepare a meal. I keep it on the kitchen windowsill and it dries quickly after use, so it never becomes mushy and doesn’t leave my surfaces stained orange either.

It smells neither feminine or masculine – it certainly isn’t a smell that blokes would turn their noses up at (unless you get a conservative one like mine, who thinks Lush stuff is all weird and too fancy and he’d prefer to spend 25pon a bar of white own
brand!). It leaves my hands with a lovely aroma, but not one that’s too strong that it goes onto the food.

So it cleans, it smells gorgeous, it’s good value for money (mine is still rather large after two or three weeks of regular use – and you can’t say that about many things, can you?!) and it’s made by Lush.

Disadvantages? Well, Val Doonican’s jumpers were never that great ;-)

I SHOULD COCO

Out of all the soaps I have ever used, Lush’s I Should Coco wins. It is the best soap, the champion and unlike any other. Putting on my best reviewing hat, I decided to employ some of my friends to assist me and invited the five Senses along for the ride.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Ears said she was trying really hard, but couldn’t hear the soap so she sipped her tea quietly, before going off to an afternoon of seagulls squawking in the seaside sky.

Mrs. Tongue declined my invitation, insisting there was no way she wanted to help in a soap review and instead was looking forward to an afternoon of Haagen-Dazs Cookies and Cream with a glass or two of Baileys.

The other three Senses arrived safely and after a fair bit of tea drinking and gossiping about the Big Brother house, we all got down to work.

Mrs. Eyes went to work first. She was very enthusiastic and droned on and on about how beautiful the I Should Coco soap is. Here’s just a fragment of her review…

“The soap is a rectangular block. It is a beautiful bright white colour fading into a perfect pink at the top. This has real flakes of coconut on the top and the whole thing looks like an expensive painting.”

Phew, she does go on, pretentious so-and-so…

Anyway, it was Mrs. Nose up next.

“When you first smell this soap, you are treated to a wonderful whiff, a sensual scent, a fabulous fragrance, a powerful perfume that makes you want to ope
n your nostrils in a Kenneth Williams-esque gesture and inhale as much as possible.”

She thinks she’s a bit of a poet, our Mrs. Nose. Oh, and a Carry On fan. She forgot to mention it smells of coconut, that’s the important bit.

So into the capable digits of Mrs. Hands for her tactile opinion…

“This feels gorgeous. The rough edges of the block soon become rounded after a couple of uses and it is simply a joy to use. The rough coconut pieces exfoliate and scrape off any stubborn dirt, while the smooth white part quickly become a creamy lather of rich, coconut bubbles. Your hands and skin feel soft and clean…”

At this point, Mrs. Nose interjects with “… and you smell deliciously of coconuts!”

Once they had all had another cuppa and gone home, I settled down at the computer and thought I’d better finish off this opinion with a few facts about Lush in general and this product in particular.

I ordered it off the website www.lush.co.uk and it arrived some five days later, as part of a £30+ order – meaning I didn’t need to pay any postage and packaging. The soap itself was wrapped in a plain white paper bag sealed with a white label, which gives information about the soap and its contents.

I Should Coco costs £1.50 for 100g and is vegan. It contains creamed coconut infusion (to soften the skin), dessicated coconut (to exfoliate it), orange oil (reviving), vetivert (toning) and coriander (to warm and refresh).

The only minor complaint I have is that a bar only lasts a couple of weeks. This is comparable with a similarly priced liquid soap, but it is a pain having to order from the website and wait for its arrival. Of course, if you’ve got a Lush shop in your area, this isn’t any hassle for you. I think I really need to buy a couple of bars at a time, to see me through a month or so.

My kids love this soap
too and regularly rave about it. My best friend, Allie got this soap before me and seeing it in her bathroom convinced me I needed some of my own. I have since bought some for my Dad – it makes a great gift too.

Oh and the Senses all loved it, completely, totally and without reservation ;-)

OVERALL

It is taken as read that these soaps clean your skin. However, that’s not enough for me nowadays. I also want my soaps to look pretty, to smell gorgeous and to tempt each visitor to use them, before asking me for details on how to buy one. Being good value for money would be a bonus too. So how do each of the four soaps I bought get on in matching those criteria?

APPEARANCE
Banana Moon = 7 out of 10
I Should Coco = 10 out of 10
Red Rooster = 8 out of 10
Sea Vegetable = 7 out of 10

This was easy. I Should Coco is beautiful - pink, white and smooth. The dessicated coconut on the top looks great too and feels wonderful. Red Rooster is nice, but nothing amazing. Sea Vegetable is a bit strange, but a nice colour. Banana Moon is a nice shape, but a weird colour.

SMELL
Banana Moon = 6 out of 10
I Should Coco = 9 out of 10
Red Rooster = 9 out of 10
Sea Vegetable = 7 out of 10

I love coconut and cinnamon, so that decided my top two soaps in this category. The Banana Moon one does smell of over-ripe bananas, which is a bit of an acquired taste. Sea Vegetable soap was so overpowering in the packaging that it made me feel nauseous, but is much better out in the bathroom, smelling nicely of lime and lavender – but it got off to a poor start.

VALUE FOR MONEY
Banana Moon = 5 out of 10
I Should Coco = 7 out of 10
Red Rooster = 9 out of 10
Sea Vegetable = 7 out of 10

Banana Moon costs £1.40 for100g, which makes it the cheapest of the lot, but it is inclined to go a bit mushy and doesn’t seem to last as long. I Should Coco costs £1
.50 for 100g and lasts pretty well, but not as long as the latter two. Red Rooster is also £1.50 for 100g, but lasts a long time and keeps its solid shape. Sea Vegetable is the most expensive of the lot (albeit by 20p!) at £1.60 for 100g and again lasts very well and keeps its shape, although some bits seem to snap off at times.

TOTAL SCORE
In 4th place, we have…Banana Moon ( 7 + 6 + 5 = 18 out of 30).
In 3rd place, it’s Sea Vegetable (7 + 7 + 7 = 21 out of 30).
The joint winners are I Should Coco (10 + 9 + 7 = 26 out of 30) and Red Rooster (8 + 9 + 9 = 26 out of 30).

Why not check out Lush soaps for yourself and see if you agree.

www.lush.co.uk

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