Pass me an Alka Seltzer, please (Lush Bath Ballistics in General)

Member Name: Shazzy

Product:	Lush Bath Ballistics in General
Date:	27/02/02 (449 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A little bit of luxury when you want to pamper yourself, not tested on animals

Disadvantages: Quite expensive for one bath, The bits inside can stain the bath

Does the sound of something fizzing in your bath, making the water go a different colour and leaving you feeling all soft and smooth tempt you at all? It did me. I’d read a few opinions about Lush Bath Ballistics (otherwise known as bath bombs) and really fancied trying one. The problem was, there’s no Lush shop in Crewe.

Anyway, I noticed they have a web site and decided to have a look. The bath ballistics sounded pretty sensational and I’d just decided to order some when a friend who was due to visit asked if I’d like him to bring some up with him. Would I? Of course I would. Yes please! Please, please, pretty please!

On arriving, I noticed a wonderful smell coming from the general direction of my guest. Had he started using some overpowering floral type aftershave? Surely not! No, the smell was coming from the bag he had with him. A small paper bag with LUSH printed all over it. Oh, the excitement!!

Inside the bag were three bath ballistics. Two Softys and one Big Blue. That was one each for me, me and me. No, now I’m just being selfish. I had to share them with my daughters. But who would have what? I wanted a pink one. I really did want a pink one. I didn’t fancy the blue one with seaweed in it, I wanted the one with rose petals. The one designed to make you feel special when you can’t afford a new pair of shoes. I was sure we’d all end up arguing about who’d get what, but daughter no. 1, bless her, quite fancied the seaweed ballistic, so that settled it.

I knew I wouldn’t get time to use mine while my visitor was around, so I stored it nicely on the bathroom windowsill. I mean, it just isn’t polite to spend a couple of hours in the bath doing the whole pampering thing while you have a house guest is it? No. The old radox method would just have to suffice until a later point when I could really enjoy my ball that looked a bit like a huge sweet.

The f
ollowing evening, daughter no. 2 decided it was time for her to enjoy her ball. Horror of horrors - no hot water! I’d run out of gas earlier (it’s that quantum thing y’know) and had forgotten to re-light the boiler. Oh, the guilt. Please little girl, don’t be too mad a mummy… I didn’t mean it, honest. But the looks I got were anything other than pleasant, and when my 13 year old sat herself on the stairs, wrapped in a towel with a face like sour grapes, I knew we were in for a bad evening. Perhaps she really did need the effect of the bath ballistic now.

Luckily, we have an immersion heater too, so I put that on and told her that hot water was on its way. How long? Well I don’t know! Just be patient! And patient she was. It was 11.30 pm when she finally managed to get in the bath, having been wrapped in a towel for three hours, and even then she only got half a bath full of water. Oh stop moaning and just put the blooming ball in the water. You’ll feel much better afterwards!

A few minutes later the smell erupted and spread through the house at lightening speed. It smelt almost as if I’d gone through the house with a whole can of air freshener. Not really pleasant at all. VERY overpowering. An hour of so later, my sweet little baby called down from the bathroom, enquiring as to what she should do about the petals floating on the water. I was tired. I couldn’t be bothered with petals or anything else. Just leave them, I said. Big mistake! Take it from me, if you ever use a Softy Bath Ballistic, don’t leave the petals in the bottom of the bath. Not only do they stain the enamel, they make an awful mess of the plughole too. I spent 15 minutes digging them out the next morning, along with hair and other gunk (you know the score) and it wasn’t nice. Well, maybe the plughole needed cleaning out anyway, but I don’t like being forced to do yukky jobs. I have to be in the right fr
ame of mind for that sort of thing. As for the staining, the brown marks have gradually paled but whether or not they’ll completely disappear, I don’t know. Even bleach didn’t take them away.

Next up was daughter no. 1. I’d only just got the plughole clean when she announced that she’d be using her Big Blue. Oh, for gawd sake make sure you skim the seaweed off the water before you empty the bath. I’m not going through that again! Yes, yes, yes… of course she would.

Once again, the house was filled with scent. This one was really quite fresh and invigorating. It was actually even stronger that the scent from Softy, but this time I enjoyed having it around house. It’s supposed to offer a Pacific Ocean experience, hence the seaweed. Daughter no. 2 quite liked it but didn’t think it was quite up to what she’d expect considering that they cost almost two quid each. She reckoned you could get as good a bath experience from a decent bubble bath, and she didn’t like the seaweed because it tickled. She reckoned it was nice to watch it fizz and expel the seaweed though.

And then it was me. I’ve had mine for a whole week now, and although the kind gentleman who bought us these balls was due to arrive again today, he’d been delayed and I decided to spend a few hours just doing the pampering thing. I ran a bath that was just the right temperature for relaxing in, poured myself a drink (Vimto actually, but it was early in the day and I’ll have to drive later) and got myself into a relaxed frame of mind. I was going to enjoy…. enjoy….. enjoy!

I was really quite excited as I opened the plastic bag containing my ballistic, and even though it was broken into three pieces (his fault, not mine), I figured it’d still do what it’s designed to do. I knelt on the floor next to the bath, lingered for a moment or two, and then dropped the pieces int
o the water, ready to watch it whizz up and down the bath and do amazing things (that’s what I’d read in another op). What happened? Nothing much at all. It just stayed in one place, gently fizzing away like an Alka Seltzer after a bad night. So much for that! The bath looked pretty though, with lots of rose petals floating on the surface. The water was slightly pink, but not as coloured as the water had been when daughter no. 1 used her Big Blue. That didn’t worry me though. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to bath in brightly coloured water anyway.

At this stage, I decided it was time to get up off the floor and get my body into the bath. As soon as I lowered myself into the water, I could feel how silky smooth the water was. Now THAT really was a luxurious feeling. Oh yes… I liked it. The smell didn’t seem quite as overpowering as it had done when daughter no. 2 had taken her bath, but perhaps it’s experienced differently when you’re actually in the water, enjoying the whole sensation rather than just the smell. It was very relaxing and I could’ve stayed there much longer but my skin started to wrinkle up after about 45 minutes so I figured it was time to get out. I even remembered to remove the petals before pulling the plug! They’re quite easy to scoop up and I just chucked them in the toilet where they could do no harm.

So what’s actually in the Softy Bath Ballistic? Well first of all, there’s sodium bicarbonate (that’s what makes it fizz). Then there’s citric acid, rose petals (like you hadn’t realised), Ylang Ylang oil (relaxing), Rose Absolute, Ylang Ylang petal oil, Lavender oil (calming), Orange essence, Perfume and colour 18050 (to make it pink, right?).

Each Softy ballistic weighs 200 grams, is about 6 centimetres in diameter and is hand made. They’re not tested on animals but I’d imagine that all of those ingredients have been t
ried and tested so many times before that there’d really be no reason to.

There are 15 different ballistics available, including one that’s especially designed for small children to use at bedtime.

I’m not sure these things are really worth the money. £1.80 for one bath seems a lot to me, but then I’m a bit a skinflint anyway. I suppose I’d buy one now and then, just for some extra pampering, and as a gift, I think they’d be great. A little bit of luxury that doesn’t cost the earth.

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