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24 September 2018

Psychodelic Bubble Bar




For many years, I used to own most of Lush's old 'Lush Times' magazines, which was the perfect gateway to find out about releases across almost a decade of the company being in business. I would often sit for hours trawling through the pages, circling the 'must haves' and sometimes feeling a little jealous at some of the wonderful products that had escaped me, and would probably never be back again. 

Yet when Psychodelic first made an appearance in the Lush Kitchen, it didn't immediately jump out at me as being one of the bubble bars that had excited me all that much. I certainly didn't remember circling it in any of the magazines, and when I went back and checked for myself, I saw that it had featured in multiple editions, across multiple years, and not once had I added it to my list of 'must haves.' Yet the ingredients list and descriptions read like poetry to me, and I couldn't wait to try one out.

Containing cinnamon, cardamom, sandalwood and orange oils, this bubble bar is definitely one for the coldest months of the year. A perfect blend of sweet and spicy, it was the orange oil that surprisingly stood out for me above any other. This ingredient adds a warm, rounded note of fruitiness, that dances around the cinnamon and creates an element of sweet spice to seal the deal. While not the same scent, this bubble bar does remind me a little of both Phoenix Rising Bath Bomb and Jilted Elf: they'd make a great pairing in the bath together.

Amidst these two, warm sultry notes of cardamon pad out the scent, while a gentle but very sensual woodiness from the sandalwood lingers underneath: just enough to ground the scent without taking away from the orange and cinnamon at all.

Strangely, the design of the bubble bar didn't really fit the description of the scent, despite the interesting and very psychodelic vibes that I got from the blue, white and yellow splodges that made up the surface pattern on the bubble bar. However, I was interested to see how the scent and the choice of colours worked together in the bath tub.

Unfortunately, I ended up being a little disappointed with the colour that my bath water turned. When I pictured psychodelic colours, I was hoping for something super vibrant and vivid: something in my face at the very least. Yet, the bath water ended up being, what I can only describe as, a light, murky shade of turquoise.

On the positive side, this bubble bar was super moisturising. I could quite literally see a gentle glaze of oils on the surface of the water, and it didn't take me more than a minute or two to feel the effect it was having on my skin. Furthermore, the bubbles that were created were of an abundance, and they offered a delicate fragrance as they cocooned around your body.

After the bath, I could feel how silky smooth my skin felt and I could detect a select hint of the orange and the cinnamon as well. This didn't stay for all that long but I'm sure that's more because my nose just became accustomed to the fragrance.

Given that Psychodelic Bubble Bar was of a good size, you could easily get 2-3 separate baths out of a single slice. In addition, the bar itself, although slightly rigid, was fairly easy to crumble under the water. After storing one for a good couple of months, I found that it didn't seem to have aged all that much, and I could still smell the wonderful combination of orange and cinnamon during this time. 

Yet despite the wonderful positives that the bubble bar offers the consumer, this would definitely be more of a bubble bar that I combine with something else to get a little more 'life' into my tub. Phoenix Rising, Cinders or maybe even something like Metamorphosis would work well in this combination, and I do hope that it makes a reappearance so that I can test these theories out. 


Quantitative Ingredients: Sodium Bicarbonate, Cream of Tartar, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Lauryl Betaine, Sweet Orange Oil, Cinnamon Leaf Oil, Sandalwood Oil, Cardamom Oil, Litsea Cubeba Oil, *Cinnamal, *Citral, *Eugenol, *Benzyl Benzoate, *Limonene, *Linalool, Gardenia Extract, Colour 14700, Colour 42090.

Vegan?: Yes.

2017 Price: £3.95 each.

Year Of Original Release: 1999.


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