Now that fall is on the way, I'm ready to return to perfumes and body products with stronger and sweeter fragrances, including a few gourmand scents. In my recent review of Wiggle Perfume's Bee perfume oil, I mentioned my occasional honey craving. So, when I found out about One Bath and Body, its honey-oriented products were the first ones that piqued my interest.
This new company has a "green" agenda: according to their website, “ONE is committed to promoting natural beauty without compromising the beauty of the earth, providing eco-friendly products in recyclable, plastic-free packaging to rejuvenate the spirit and save the planet.” Sweet Honey Soap and Honey Please Bath Fizzer both have relatively straightforward ingredients lists and simple, paper-based containers: the soap is tucked into a little hinged cardboard box, and the spherical Bath Fizzer is housed in a sturdy cardboard cylinder (which was a bit of a struggle for me to open).
I like Sweet Honey soap best as a hand soap, since it's somewhat low-lathering; with its honey-like glycerine stripe, it looks neat and cheerful next to the bathroom sink. It smells like honey, too, but also like creamy jasmine petals; it's a clean, even (yes) soapy scent, and it lingers on my hands for a while. The Honey Please Bath Fizzer has a slightly different fragrance, more like honey mixed with a swirl of caramel and a few orange blossoms. Or maybe I'm thinking of orange blossom honey? In any case, if you're not familiar with the concept of a Bath Fizzer (or bath bomb, as they're often called), it's basically a solid ball of bath salts that floats and spins in the bathwater, with an entertaining fizzy effect, until it has dissolved. Honey Please's scent melts into the water and diffuses into the steamy air over the bath, rather than staying on the bather's skin.
Of course, the elephant in the (bath)room here is Lush: no one who has made a few Lush purchases or even visited the Lush website can miss the similarity between One's products and certain Lush products. Usually I raise a bit of a fuss over copycat situations. In this case, I'm less bothered by the actual formula of One's soap and Bath Fizzer (and shampoo bars and solid lotions) than I am by the fragrance blends and product names that One seems to have adapted from Lush. A brand like this one, competitively priced and more widely distributed, is a welcome alternative for anyone who lives far from a Lush shop or Whole Foods but still wants to shop for good-smelling, eco-conscious personal care products (i.e., many people). I just wish that One had been a little more original with the details of its product line.
One Bath and Body Honey Please Bath Fizzer sells for $5.99 (6.5 oz. fizzer) and Sweet Honey Soap sells for $6.59 (5 oz. bar) at Target and Walgreens.
Note: top image is sweet, sweet honey [cropped] by BotheredByBees at flickr; some rights reserved.
We have so many bees on campus. I’m always scared of getting stung >____<
Anyway, the bath fizzer sounds nice.
I hope you don’t get stung! They’re amazing little creatures, as long as they don’t attack. 😉
If they are not the Africanized bees, they should not be aggressive. As long as you are not hypersensitive to bee venom, don’t worry (if you do have a sensitivity, then I understand the concern). I have hundreds of bees in my yard every spring (I have a lot of flowering plants in my garden), and I was nervous at first. In the ten years I have been in this house, however, I have never once been stung. I can be working right in among them–weeding, fertilizing, planting–just inches away from them, and they do not bother me. I think you have to practically run into one of them to get stung, unless you are very close to their hive. They are protective of their home. I have only been stung by a bee twice in my life (both times when I was a kid), and neither time was really a big deal. Wasp stings are much more painful.
I agree with 50roses—bees are generally pretty mellow if you’re not messing with them or stepping on them. I work in the flowerbeds with bees buzzing all around- no problem. HOWEVER, if what you have on campus are Yellow Jackets and Wasps…that’s another story! We have far too many yellow jackets in this area and more wasps than I care for as well—and those buggers are nasty tempered and aggressive. I’m not sure if a honey scented body product would draw them, but certainly any real fruit juices etc. will have them after you in droves! Just eating an apple outside in this season can be a real risk!
Lush store are so tiresomely cheerful. So many bright colours and screamingly artificial scents (or they seem artificial to me anyway). We don’t get One products where live but the brand certainly seems more restful.
I’m in my forties and I find that if I wander into a Lush shop by myself I get ignored, but if I have my children, the bright and bubbly teenage staff are all over them, wanting to demonstrate their many strange fizzy and gooey products. Of course it is my wallet that has to come to the party!
The Lush stores are certainly very fragrant! I actually like that effect. But you’re right, the service can be overwhelmingly upbeat. Lots of sales pressure, with a smile! 😉
I have this same problem with Lush…I applied for a job there, and in their “questioning,” was bombarded mainly with inquests into whether or not I could be aggressively cheerful and pushy….which seems to me how many Lush reps can be. That being said, I do love their bath bombs and solid shampoos, but the price (the price!) is what gets me…Going in I have to accept $7-$10 baths, which just seems a bit too steep.
I’ve seen these One products, too, at Target and have been tempted because they are (quite obviously) Lush knockoffs for a lesser price…the only difficulty, however, is that they are innately much less testable than Lush products given their retail location.
That’s one advantage of Target or Walgreens or KMart… no one follows you around the personal-care section and tries to recommend products that don’t interest you or “up-sell” when you do want to purchase something! 😉
Hence the price of the Lush stuff, I guess. All those demos have to be payed for. I paid $10 at Lush for a bath bomb for my daughter’s birthday. Can’t imagine paying that sort of price for anything other than special occasions.
The prices do seem to have gone up on certain items over the past few years! The skincare is more fairly priced than most of the body/bath items, imo.
Bath bombs at LUSH are ridiculously priced, but I like the bubble bars alot.
I ordered the sample set of their new perfume line and, I gotta say, there is some really odd stuff going on there. Not necessarily bad, but odd. I really loved Lust and Tuca Tuca. TT is surprisingly skanky. Like, reeeally skanky.
Ladida, I like a few of the former B Never scents that are now being offered as Gorilla scents… and I think Robin has tried some of the new ones. I tested Tuca Tuca in a Lush store; it does have a dirty-sweet feeling!
Oh, if this are carried by Target & Walgreens, then that really is pretty wide distribution. Here when I started reading I thought it was some little indie line available only by mail order.
They do sound nice. That soap is a bit more than what I consider an expensive bar — I have to justify even buying a $4 bar of Monoi Tahiti! Thanks for the review… it’s really nice to hear about new bath and household products.
Hi Joe — They definitely have a wide market, yes! Some stores have more products than others. If my shopping was limited to these chain stores and big-box stores, I’d be really happy to see this line there! Not many green-ish options at those huge places.
The only thing I have ever tried from Lush is Honey I Washed the Kids. I liked the soap but could never figure out what I was supposed to do with the honeycomb. The only Lush store in my city is inside Macy’s and it has become something of a haven to me when I’m testing perfumes because they let me take a sponge bath at their sink to wash off everything I’ve been testing.
I love honey scented products, but I’ve found that many people interpret the scent of honey as rancid. It seems to be a love it or hate it scent. My latest honey product is Korres Thyme Honey face cream. I’ve also been using a recipe for a deep moisturizing hair treatment that has a big slug of honey in it and my hair loves it. Some say that if it is mixed in the right proportion with distilled water it creates a little peroxide action to gently lighten hair.
Hi Julia — I love honey-oriented perfumes and honey-scented body products, so I’m with you! Lush used to make the most amazing honey shower gel, called B Never Too Busy To Be Beautiful. Then it was only sold at the B Never shops when they opened. I don’t know what will happen to it now.