Shea Body Butter - The Body Shop (The Body Shop Shea Body Butter)

Member Name: Cinny91

Product:	The Body Shop Shea Body Butter
Date:	29/10/09 (53 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very ethnical product, which gives you halo a nice shine.

Disadvantages: Leaves a bit of a film on your skin, and is stupidly priced.

I'd never really used Body Shops Body Butter before I got the Shea Body Butter free with a magazine. I'd heard a lot of rave reviews about it, saying how it was the best moisturiser and had done wonders for their skin. So when I saw a 50ml tub being offered free with a Magazine I thought 'why not?' and made my little way down to WHSmiths.

==Body Shop==

Body Shop has to be one of the most trusted brands in the Country, and rightly so as it's the second largest cosmetic brand in the world and one of the first cosmetic companys to say 'No!' to animal testing. Opened in 1976 The Body Shop has always promoted fair trade with third world countries, and has been using recycled bottles since day one. The Body Shop is a British brand that you can really be proud of.
In 2006 The Body Shop were taken over by Loreal, I found this majorly hypocritcal on the Body Shops part as Loreal are completely open with testing on animals - something The Body Shop has always been against - and in my mind this discredited them a lot. Thankfully they still don't test on animals themselves, and still keep an 'all natural' front, but it's something that still bugs me 3 years later.

==The Product==

Body Shop's Body Butters have a kind of cult following, with lots of ladies swearing by it and claim it's the only moisturiser they use, which just fueled my excitement for getting my hands on a little - totally free - tub.
The body butter itself is quite thick, compaired to my other moisturisers, so you need to press down quite hard with your fingers to get the product out leaving a nasty build up under you nails. But once on your skin it kind of 'melts' and rubs quite easily into the skin - something I was worried about with it being quite thick in the tub. Although I'm not going to lie and say it completely rubs into your skin because it doesnt, it leaves a kind of tacky feel on your skin for a while after using it making it quite uncomfortable to put your clothes on straight after applying. (I made the mistake of rubbing into my legs, then putting skinny jeans on - big mistake!) But if you can happily potter about your room in your undies while you wait for it to fully absorb into your skin this isn't a problem.
The smell of this is pretty lovely too, it's a nice fresh smell and while it's also sweet, it isn't over powering. Although it a strong scent in the pot I've found once on the skin it's quite delicate and you only get a waft of it every now and then.

==Ingredients==

To say this is meant to be a natural product, the only two words on the ingredients list that made any sense to me were 'Caramel' and 'Butyrospermim' but after googling a handful of the other ingredients I will happily pop on my dunces hat as almost all the ingredients are completely natural. Yay!

==Packaging==

The packaging for this product is rather basic. It's a little hand sized cream coloured tub with a screw on lid. There's a circle sticker on the top of the lid which is a rather pretty picture of Shea Nuts and 'Shea Body Butter' written in typical Body Shop font with 'With Comminuity Trade shea butter to mositurise. VERY DRY SKIN' written neatly underneath that. And on the bottom of the tub is a similar circle sticker with the ingredients typed neatly in the middle, then symbols stating you can keep it for 12 months after the first use and you can recycle after use.

==Overall==

Overall? Ermm, I don't think I'll be buying this product again. If it came free with a magazine again I might pick it up, but it didn't have the 'wow' factor with me. Maybe after reading all the other reviews of it I'd kind of built it up in my head to be the God of all body creams. It was a good product, and even though it did leave my skin feeling moisturized as promised, it also left a kind of film on my skin after use which wasn't all that nice. And while I like the fact it's an ethnical product I don't think this justified the price, which is pretty darn steep for what it is.

==Pricing==

The Body Shop's Shea Body Butter is £12.20 for a 200ml tub. Personally, I don't think it is at all worth it and could easily reccomend several moisturisers that are just as good for a fraction of the cost.

**This Review is also posted on Ciao under the same Username**

Summary: It's a nice product, but for what it does it isn't worth the price tag.