Retro Tree Bath Melt Tablet

After a scorching hot day out in the sun, it felt rather strange to be coming home to bathe with a Christmas tree. In fact, it's been so hot these last few days that it feels strange even running myself a bath when the weather is so sticky outside. Alas, I was determined to get myself on top of the reviews I had planned to do and the only bath product I had leftmost happened to be a seasonal one. 

In nearly every one of my reviews of these seasonal bath melt tablets, I have explained how little press they received, not to mention how little time they were made available on the website. For this reason, I am probably one of only a handful of lucky people who were able to get their hands on these limited editions, which is a real shame.

Retro Tree Bath Melt Tablet couldn't be any more festive-like if it tried. Sporting a cream base with an orange and green-striped Christmas tree on the front, this limited edition was designed as both a decoration to hang on your tree and a companion for the bath as well. About 9cm in width, 6cm wide and about 5mm thick, this seasonal special also offered a gentle scent that didn't exactly fill the room, but did make an impression if you were sitting close enough.

Sharing its scent with the Floating Island Bath Melt, this particular tablet offers a rich but very gentle aroma: one that presents both a creamy vanilla note and a warming, woody one as well. The tablet smells very much like a scoop of rich vanilla ice cream combined with a subtle woody twist that grounds the overall fragrance a little.

While Retro Tree is sold as a single product, there is not really any need to place the whole tablet into the bath in one go. Cutting the melt in half or even quarters will still offer a really moisturising bath for your skin and you'll still be able to smell the wonderful aroma throughout the whole experience. In fact, you actually run the risk of creating a mess around the tub if you include the whole tablet at once, as the oils and butters don't all tend to dissolve into the water and they stick to the sides instead. Furthermore, I would also recommend that if you're going to use the tablet across multiple baths, it is better to break it into pieces whilst its dry than having to hang and store the used tablet once it's been placed in the water. 

As with nearly all of Lush's bath melts, Retro Tree didn't exactly put on much of a show in the water. The bath melt floated on the surface whilst it slowly dissolved and sent out little splodges of beige-coloured oil into the water, which seemed to disappear fairly quickly and give the water a slightly creamy tinge. 

As with all of the bath melt tablets, Retro Tree presents an impressive range of essential butters and oils to nourish your skin and leave it feeling smooth and replenished. Every so often I found myself massaging the bar itself to release the oils into the water because they were quite thick and resistant to dissolve by themselves. I think if you simply waited for the bath tablet to melt by itself, you'd probably be in the tub for a matter of hours. 

Once the tablet had fully melted, I found that the water was left with next to no colour all, which didn't exactly inspire the most exciting of reactions from myself. However, I had to remind myself that it was indeed a bath melt as opposed to a bath bomb, so it shouldn't be tarnished for doing something it's not designed to do. It did however make an immediate impression on my skin.

Within seconds of submerging myself beneath the water, my skin felt super silky-soft and smooth: as if there was a thin protective layer that was coating my skin and replenishing my body in record speed. My hands and legs took on an almost shiny form during the experience and I could still feel ow supple velvety they felt after I had towelled myself down. This is definitely a bath tablet that goes above and beyond what it's supposed to do.

While the fragrance was present during my time in the bath, I wasn't really able to detect it that well, and whenever I used another product this tended to thwart the aroma altogether. Afterwards, I wasn't surprised to find that the scent barely lingered on my skin much at all and I wasn't able to smell it anymore some twenty minutes after I had exited the bathroom.

If you're looking for a product that is going to offer you a good show in the bath; present you with a strong aroma to enjoy whilst bathing; and linger on your skin afterwards, this bath melt is probably not the best choice to go for. However, if your skin is in need of some serious nourishment and you're happy to couple a chunk of this alongside another product, this is one you should seek out and try. It's definitely better value than the small bath oil you can buy as a regular item!

Quantitative Ingredients: Fair Trade Organic Cocoa Butter, Sodium Bicarbonate, Cream of Tartar, Laureth 4, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Perfume, Lauryl Betaine, Titanium Dioxide, Sandalwood Oil, Sicilian Lemon Oil, Labdanum Resinoid, *Farnesol, *Limonene.

Vegan?: Yes.

2018 Price: £5.95 each.

Year Of Original Release: 2018.