This bubble bar was part of a selection of bath goodies lovingly chosen by my six year old son for my birthday last week. I suspect he chose this because of the bright yellow colour and the sparkly gold star on top! It looks all bright and glittery but, surprisingly, it doesn't actually contain much glitter at all. It does have tiny little gold stars hidden inside. These are the same gold stars that you used to get for doing good work at primary school and are a cute little addition.

'A Gold Star' is a bubble bar which is essentially solidified bubble bath, compressed into a bar shape. To use it, you just crumble under running bath water to produce lots of lovely bubbles. It has a similar appearance and texture to slightly dried out Playdough and is easy to crumble up. I eagerly crumbled the whole bar into a nice warm bath and was overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of bubbles it produced! I could quite easily have used half, even a third, of the bar and there would still have been ample bubbles. If I did have one again, I would definitely make it last for more than one bath. If you like a bubbly, bubble bath, this one will suit you down to the ground.

As for the smell, the Lush website informs me that it contains sandalwood, frankincense and benzoin essential oils. I couldn't tell you what any of those smelt like, to be honest! The unused bar smelt gorgeous in the little paper bag and it had quite a distinctive vanilla smell to it. I have checked the ingredients and it does actually contain vanilla absolute so my nose was not deceiving me. Once the bar is crumbled in the bath, though, the predominant fragrance is completely different. To me, it was quite a citrusy sort of smell. It is more of a 'perking yourself up after work, before going out' kind of smell and not necessarily a 'relaxing before bed' fragrance. I certainly felt quite invigorated and uplifted after using it, rather than wanting to doze off in the bath.

The other distinctive feature of this bar is the really vibrant colour that this turns the bathwater (as much as you can see under the masses of bubbles!) It is a bright, artificial looking greeny shade of yellow (if that makes any sense at all!) It is definitely a fun colour to bath in. Although glitter is listed on the ingredients and the gold star on top looks all glittery, it doesn't seem to contain a great deal. It certainly didn't coat my skin with lots of glitter, during and after the bath, unlike some Lush products. I suppose that might be either a good or a bad thing, depending on your personal take on glittery products. Personally, I prefer my bath products just to leave my skin smooth and silky and am not too keen on fishing bits of glitter out of my nether regions for days, or even weeks, afterwards!

So - how did it fare in terms of lasting effects? Well, the bath itself did make me feel quite lively and invigorated. Shame I wasn't doing anything more festive than writing reviews on Dooyoo for the evening! The smell was really strong and lingered long after the end of the bath, both in the bathroom and on my skin. I can't honestly say that my skin felt particularly moisturised afterwards but it certainly smelt nice. I wouldn't rush out to buy this again as I prefer having a bath last thing at night and tend to choose soothing bath products to relax and de-stress me. Nonetheless, I would be happy to receive another as a present at some point.

Pricewise, this is available from Lush stores and online at www.lush.co.uk at £2.69 per bar. (I think the odd pricing is due to the VAT reduction.) It would easily stretch to two or three baths and is much easier to seperate than a bath bomb. 'A Gold Star' is part of Lush's seasonal range so it will only be available over the Christmas period. Better stock up quick if this sounds like your sort of product!