Previously on Lyle Verbilion’s From What I Can Tell:
Some day I will post a review of brands of bar soap that I have known and loved. For the impatient, Skin Trip Coconut and Dr. Bronner’s Eucalyptus are my faves.
Here’s why I like Skin Trip soap: it smells good.
It smells like coconut. Other soaps smell like coconut. But this one smells like warm coconut.
It sort of smells like suntan lotion from days gone by.
In fact, every time I smell Skin Trip soap, I have a vision. It’s summer. It’s hot. There’s a swimming pool. I feel the rubbery goodness of blue flippers as I squiggle my feet into them. The blue rubber diving mask snaps too tightly into place, pinching my upper lip hard against the front of my maxilla. I taste metal. And I smell warm coconuts and soft rubber.
I love this soap.
And it makes huge amounts of dense lather. The lather is so thick, it actually feels like the rubber from the flippers. If only it were blue.
Dr. Bronners soap, on the other hand, has delicate little ebullient bubbles. It’s like the difference between soda pop bubbles and seltzer bubbles. You’d think that they’d be the same, but they’re not. The seltzer bubbles are smaller and finer and more sparkly in your mouth. Don’t put the Dr. Bronner bubbles in your mouth, though. They’re for external enjoyment only.
The scents of Dr. Bronner’s soaps are also more insipid. Not quite as bold. Yet very tasteful. (Don’t put it in your mouth!!!)
The standard by which all other Bronner soaps are measured is, of course, the Peppermint. And it’s awesome. But somehow it reminds me of those chalky candies that you find in the little bowls at your grandparents house. And I admit to brushing my teeth with it on more than one occasion, so I should know. (Do as I say, not as I do.)
And the Citrus Orange flavored scented one is OK, and the Unscented one is pretty much as unscented as you can get. The others are equally deserving.
But of them all, my truly favorite is the Eucalyptus. It’s euphoric. It’s epic. It’s Californian. It’s Eucalpytic!!! Makes me feel like a happy koala bear. In a medicinal way, of course.
I alternate between each bar. I Skin Trip till the bar is all gone, then I Eucalpytilize with Dr. Bronner. I use the bar version of that too because the liquid version wrestles with me spastically about dosage sizes. What’s best about each of them, however, is that once you dry off, all the smell is gone. All that’s left is cleanliness.
Just remember, don’t ever mix the two of them. You could end up in the hospital! Well, maybe not really. But it would taste that way!
