

Having become rather obsessed with Lush as of late, I had to try out their campaign’s crown jewel. The much sought after EXPERIMENTER bath bomb. *insert church choir sound byte here* The Oxford Street location was sold out when my father was there to pick up exclusives for me, so I decided to just wait until it landed Stateside.

A couple weeks passed, and to my delight, the desired bath bomb was indeed in stock… At $9 flipping dollars! Pardon my error, $8.95 to be exact. The speed of which my face went from excitement to sheer WTF-ery was swift. The UK prices the Experimenter exactly the same as the other bath bombs, so what’s in ours? Ground up qualludes for assured relaxation?! Utter ridiculousness!!

….I bought two….

I know, I know, but with my ADD addled impulsivity and deep desire to have them right then, I ignored my common sense and annoyance. Both money and a bit of dignity left me that day. Mainly because I realized I am a price gouging enabler. Which means I lost the right to complain about the price any further in this post, so on to the review!

The geometric bomb has blue, pink, white, and yellow quadrants fused together with a purple center. Each color seems to have its own scent, but altogether it gives off a smoky vanilla musk. The overall look kind of reminds me of when kids smash all the play doh together and whip glitter containers around like drunken sailors. So I love it!

Craft time comparisons aside, it does put on quite a show. It disperses into bright clouds of swirling color so psychedelic you wonder if this is best viewed high. To me LUSH bath bombs are like modern, high brow lava lamps. I get a chuckle imagining a room full of LUSH creators with pupils the size of saucers, dropping copious amounts of glittered pigment into water as they eat tubs of Oatifix.

Unfortunately that’s where the praise ends. After about a three minute simulation of a hallucinogenic drug, what’s left is swampy water. Sparkly? Yes. Pretty? Not so much. I think the end result was meant to be blue, but you can see in the picture below it quite missed the mark.



Second negative is the scent. It may just be me, but the best comparison I can make is smoking a half a pack of cigarettes then trying to mask the smell with Bath & Body Works warm vanilla sugar spray. I found myself daydreaming about bonfires when I caught whiffs of myself, so yeah not my favorite. Although some people may love it and not detect the smell of vanillary chainsmoking.



Also, after a bath it’s not very relaxing to realize you’re going to have to scrub the tub before it stains. Pink being the main offender on the tub and wherever a strong cluster of pink pigment laid on my body.

So, was the experimenter worth the price of a movie ticket? Meh. The fizzing was super pretty, but I don’t think I’ll be using the second one.