The Everlasting Shampoo Bar (Lush Ultimate Shine Shampoo Bar)

Member Name: wigglylittleworm

Product:	Lush Ultimate Shine Shampoo Bar
Date:	03/03/09 (190 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: No plastic bottles, leaves hair clean and shiny

Disadvantages: can leave hair a little dry

When I opened my box of Lush goodies for my birthday, I was not too happy to see the ultimate shine shampoo bar nestled amongst my goodies. It seemed a bit boring for a present and I also have an abiding hatred (bordering on phobia) of bars of soap. Who knows where my hatred of soap started, perhaps it was Mrs A in primary 4 who threatened to wash our mouths out with the stuff or perhaps it is the fact it makes my skin dry and I hate the smell and squeaky noise it makes but I have not voluntarily touched a bar of soap for very many years.

The ultimate shine bar languished unloved in my bathroom cabinet for several weeks until one day I realised I had run out of normal shampoo. I decided to give it a try fully expecting to hate it but have since gone out and bought myself two different shampoo bars from the range.

The best thing about the solid shampoo bar is the lack of plastic packaging. I decided when we went onto fortnightly bin collections to start recycling my plastic and was amazed at how much I was using. I decided to try and cut down on my plastic comsumption (not very successfully I may add) and the fact that Ultimate shine comes wrapped only in a paper bag means one less plastic bottle for me to throw out.

Using Ultimate Shine is easy, you just wet your hair and rub the shampoo bar over the top of your scalp and it produces masses of soft white foam. You can then have fun like you did when you were a kid by sculpting your hair into a foamy white mohiccan.

Like all Lush products, Ultimat Shine is produced in an environmentally friendly and cruelty free way and is packed with a range of essential oils to with proven benefits. The essential oils in Ultimate Shine are ylang ylang oil to make your hair shiny and violet oil for decongestingn your scalp. I can't say I would have picked out either of those fragrances but overall the bar has a nice clean smell.

The most important thing to tell you is how the bar performed. I've got to say it was pretty good but not outstanding. My hair was left clean and shiny but it didn't perform any better than any other decent shampoo. The only criticism is that when my hair was very long then it could sometimes feel a bit flyaway.

The shampoo bar is meant to last for up to 70 washes and it certainly lasted at least that long for me. At a cost of £4.40 this actually means that for once Lush ends up cheaper than using bottles of mid priced shampoo. Lush and cheaper than the alternative are not phrases you often hear in the same sentence so it makes sense to buy it. Just to put the usage into context for someone like me who washes their hair every second day then this shampoo bar will last for 20 weeks. I've been going out of my way to use this bar up for several weeks now as part of my ban on buying new beauty products and it was frustrating using it shower after shower and hardly seeing it disappear at all until finally it disolved away to a tiny sliver.

Ultimate Shine is a great product from an environmental and moneysaving point of view. I wasn't wowed by it's performance but have invested in different shampoo bars to try the whole range out.

Summary: A good alternative to bottles of shampoo