Happiness is not yet sold in bars! (Lush Happy Soap)

Member Name: nursie_nursie

Product:	Lush Happy Soap
Date:	31/05/08 (93 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lovely colour, smells nice, one for the guys, cleans well, is said to be toning.

Disadvantages: Luminous orange marks round my sink! Scent is too strong on my hands.

Another bar of soap being tried means another review to write!

I am a Lush lover and not ashamed to admit it. Even though I love the majority of the products they do sell some duds too, so I wont be telling you it is good for the sake of being nice about them.

I have tried about half a dozen of their different bars of soap, loving and hating some. I dislike Bohemian that much (the first I tried) that it is still half used in my soap dish and needs throwing out, I can't even be bothered to review it I was that disappointed in it. I have two I like most of all so far, Angels Delight and Honey I Washed The Kids, this bar has not changed that.

When I last visited Lush a couple of months back they had a promotion on where if you spent over £5 you received a free 100g bar of your choice of soap. As I was already spending that much anyway I certainly wasn't going to say no! After having a sniff of a few soaps I decided on Happy. Lets face it at times we all wish we had a little more happiness in our lives, so why not get some in the form of soap!

I took home my free chunk, I say chunk rather than bar as Lush make their soap in huge blocks and cut off a chunk to the size you want but the minimum you can buy is 100g. Instead of using lots of packaging they just wrap their soap in a small piece of wax paper and put a label on saying the weight, price, name and a small description along with their simple green and yellow logo. If you are buying as a gift just ask and they will happily leave off the price for you.

If I had paid for my soap it would have cost a reasonable £1.95 per 100g. Not horrendously over priced in my view unlike some natural (I say natural but Lush do use some chemicals when they have to for prolonging the life of their products but they are as natural as possible) products I have seen. Their soaps vary in price from £1.95 to £3.45 per 100grams, but all are under £2.50 per 100 grams apart from two, Farmacy soap which is mainly for faces and Karma soap which has lots of expensive oils in it which drive up its price.

The soap itself is made in a large block and is bright orange in colour and has green smiley faces on top. Your chunk you buy from the Lush store or website wont have a face on top but may have a little green on it, mine did not.

The soap is gorgeously scented! It is meant to (according to Lush) be orange scented and although I must admit you can smell orange it smells of far more to me and looking at the list of essential oils in this soap I am unsure of why! The oils it contains are Sweet Orange and Tangerine Oil, with some Gardenia Extract. You would think it would just be really orangey wouldn't you! It has a really rather masculine smell and is rather spicy. My other half really likes it, as it isn't a feminine soap that makes him feel worried about smelling girly.

I have got the soap at the sink not in the shower and that is where it will be staying as although I like this soap I wouldn't want to shower with it as I wouldn't want to smell of it too much. Men would really like it, might be a good way for a lady to get their other half over on to Lush products, most guys (not all I know) think Lush is really girly and just paying extra for the same as stuff in the supermarket. They might like Lush a little more after using this soap though.

Using this soap is very easy it doesn't take much time or effort to get a good lather going and even better is that the lather itself is a lovely orangey yellow colour! It cleans hands really well and according to the Lush website is toning for your skin and good for making you wake up with a smile in the shower so is ideal if you don't mind smelling a bit masculine throughout the day.

The thing is the smell really does linger on my hands, if you aren't touching anything that would cover up the smell then it will last for a couple of hours and when your hands are anywhere near your face you can smell it quite strongly, a little too strongly for my liking I think.

Unlike some of the soaps I have tried this one did not make my skin dry. It didn't moisturise either but some can leave my hands screaming out for moisture. So it is good for those who have a problem with some soaps drying their skin.

This soap doesn't make my bathroom scented unlike some of the other Lush soaps I have used. Which is a little bit of a shame.

The biggest problem I have with this soap is on my nice clean white sink it leaves a load of bright orange goo and there is a streak where the water runs off it in a lovely shade of luminous orange! It is very messy and because of its colour it is hard to keep under control! At the moment I have to wipe the sink round every day and every time I wash my hands I am trying to clean it up a bit. It makes the place look like it needs cleaning the whole time. My bathroom is clean I swear!

This soap like everything at Lush has not been tested on animals and is veggie, well actually this one is vegan, as are a lot of their other soaps! They say about their soaps that they are whale friendly! I sleep better knowing that my products aren't harming animals!

I do like this soap but I wont be buying it in future, it is just too messy and the scent is too strong on my hands. I am giving it three out of five as I think for guys it would be great in the shower! I do recommend it but make sure you smell it first and that you are sure you will like having the smell on your hands or body.

Lush has lots of stores and you can find your local store or buy online at www.lush.co.uk

Summary: Give it a sniff.