Flotsam Soap

As someone who has grown up in a coastal village, minutes from the beach, I relate well to products that mimic the scent or the experience of the seaside. Not only do the smells conjure up memories of my childhood, and the many summers that I spent exploring the cliffs and rocky beaches of the island, but they help to take me away from the hustle and bustle of London, which is always a welcome bonus.

Flotsam Soap was definitely a product that won me over on the design itself. While the siege demeanour might not have made it the most colourful of soaps, the fact that it was shaped like a sandcastle gave it a little magic, and made it a little more special. That's not to say that the aroma that hit my nose immediately afterwards didn't dispel this happiness for a few seconds, but I could appreciate it far more once I'd gotten used to it for a while.

Containing lemon and lavender oils, Irish moss gel and seaweed, you can almost imagine the aroma that Flotsam offers. While some consumers have described it as pertaining a fragrance reminiscent of fish, my nose is able to decipher that it smells much more like the dried seaweed smell you get when visiting a beach towards the end of the day.

Sharing its scent with the Big Blue family, the soap offers a fresh, mild lavender scent with a touch of lemon and a little seaweed. Together, they create something that is both herbal and strangely green-like, with the lemon elevating the scent a little and making it a little more uplifting.

What is great about this soap is that the presence of the sand adds a little roughness during use, and your skin can be gently buffered as you massage this across your body. Furthermore, the inclusion of the Irish moss makes this soap a little squidgy to the touch, so it's far easier to create a lather from it than some of the other soaps I have tried.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest aspects that I didn't like about this soap was the fact that it shrunk super quickly, even though the design itself made it slightly more fiddly to use in the shower. When left on the shelf, this soap also has a tendency to dry far quicker than other Lush variations, so this doesn't leave me much hope for what it could do to my skin. In fact, my skin did feel rather taut after using this so I needed to moisturise every time I used this.  

While I enjoyed the smell because of the memories attached to such a fragrance, I cannot say that it was one I was particular excited about washing my skin with, and the smell only served to intensify under the heat of the running water. While I would usually love the Big Blue fragrance, I don't think it worked that well in this format.

On the positive side, this is a soap that does offer a robust smell, both in the shower and afterwards. Having said that, this was not a smell I was hoping would linger around for long. Luckily, it is the lavender and lemon that seems to permeate the skin a little more, and it almost gave me a sense of Sea Vegetable Soap when I smelled it an hour later. 

Overall, this was definitely a great novelty soap when it came to the design and the concept behind it. However, there was nothing here that tempted me to buy another one. A one-off experience is all that is needed here, and I think I would rather use this as a hand soap than a entire body one in the future.

Quantitative Ingredients: Water (Aqua), Rapeseed Oil and Coconut Oil, Irish Moss, Sand, Lavender Oil, Perfume, Sicilian Lemon Oil, Seaweed Absolute, Glycerine, Sodium Chloride, EDTA, Tetrasodium Etidronate, Sodium Hydroxide, *Linalool, *Geraniol, *Limonene, *Geraniol, *Limonene, *Citral.

Vegan?: Yes.

2017 Price: £4.95 for 100g.

Year Of Original Release: 2000.

Scent Family:
Big Blue Ballistic
Big Blue Body Conditioner
Big Blue Egg Bath Bomb
Bubbling Under Bubble Bar
Enchanted Island Bath Melt
Flotsam Soap
Mermaid Ballistic

Sea Vegetable Soap