Clean Body but Filthy Bathroom (Dove Soap (Dove Cream Bar))

Member Name: sandrabarber

Product:	Dove Soap (Dove Cream Bar)
Date:	06/10/01 (525 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very moisturising, Smells lovely

Disadvantages: Disintegrates rapidly, Makes a right scummy mess of the place

I'm not really a fan of soap, preferring face wash and shower gel, but I do keep some around for washing my hands. Also, other people seem to like it. Sick of seeing the adverts for Dove and their miraculous claims, I thought I'd give it a try as my hands have started to go a bit dry lately and the fruity vegetable oil soaps I used to use weren't helping.

Dove soap is pure white in colour, very soft in texture and has a gorgeous flowery, powdery smell that isn't overpowering. You can also get a sensitive version with hardly any perfume at all. It's a very appealing shape, a sort of bendy ovoid (!) which looks and feels good. It also comes in a nice little box, rather than that impenetrable wrapping paper favoured by so many soap manufacturers that was patently designed by the Krypton Factor boffins.

Dove is one quarter moisturising cream and three quarters soap, and it does indeed make a noticeable difference to your skin after just a couple of days. By the end of the week, my hands were looking not dry at all and they felt soft and velvety. To quote the adverts, 'it was as though I'd used a moisturiser'.

On its moisturising performance, I can't fault Dove at all.

The problem with Dove is because of all that moisturiser, as soon as it gets wet it starts to disintegrate and separate. This means that it doesn't last nearly as long as other soaps (but then soap isn't exactly expensive, so who cares?).

However, as the soap disintegrates, it produces a thick white goo that gets all over your sink/bath. It looks awful, and if you don't go in there and mop it up every hour it sticks to your ceramics and it's the very devil to get off. I've tried massage sponges, brillo pads (which scratched the plastic bath) and in the end resorted to one of those things you use to scrape snow off your car windscreen. It did the trick, but not until a fair amount of energy had been exp
ended. I would even go so far as to say that by the time I'd finished I was seriously thinking I'd got RSI.

This alone has put me off the Dove soap bar for life, and I've switched instead to the pump dispenser which has all the benefits of Dove without the gunge. It works out far more expensive, though, so if you're tight on pennies it might not be the solution for you.

I'm afraid I can't remember how much I paid for the soap or the dispenser version, but it hardly broke the bank. For the money conscious ,though, my sister tells me that Tesco do their own version of the soap bars for a much cheaper price.

Summary: