As part of Lush's usual range, the company have a selection of five different scented FUN Bars that are available all year round. They are Pink FUN, which is a fruity candy smell, Yellow FUN, which has a vanilla scent, Red FUN, which is mandarin and orange, Green FUN, which possesses a lemon and lime scent, and Blue FUN, which offers a lavender scent.
Being one of the most versatile products they offer, as well as being good value for money, FUN is a wonderful concept that offers affordable cosmetics for those that aren't lucky enough to have their pockets lined with gold. Working as a shampoo, shower gel and bubble bar, a small 100g bar of FUN should be a steal at £5 a pop. But is it?
Recently, Lush extended it's family of FUN and released a limited edition Gold bar as part of their Christmas 2013 range, promising to release other uniquely scented variations in the near future. Two weeks ago, Lush kept their promise and released a brand new edition - FUN With A Twist.
Initially, I was overwhelmed with excitement about this new product. Not only did it look beautiful - a decorative bright orange and deep purple dough, moulded and twisted together to make the most attractive FUN bar to date, but Lush described it as possessing both the Twilight and Dragon's Egg fragrances - two of my favourite smells to come from Lush. For those unfamiliar with these two smells (how is that possible?!), Twilight is a beautiful creamy, malty lavender aroma with elements of tonka to give it a sensual but vanillary note, while Dragon's egg offers a zesty, sherbet-y, playful burst of lemon and lime. Two completely different smells; two equally gorgeous aromas.
When my FUN With A Twist arrived, I was immediately bowled over by it's scent - both of the different fragrances were clearly defined and they were equally potent in the wrapper. Up close, you could pick out the Twilight when sniffing the purple section, and the Dragon's Egg on the orange. Strangely, when smelling them together, it was the Twilight that shone through, yet it was the Dragon's Egg scent that came through more when being used in the bath.
As with all of the FUN bars, I like to use mine as a replacement for more expensive bath ballistics, when I'm after a short bath as opposed to a longer soak. So I pulled off a generous sized chunk and crumbled it under the running tap. Immediately my bath tub began to fill with fluffy, zesty bubbles and the water merged into a lovely shade of orange. Unfortunately, both the colour of the water and the overall scent was lost quite a bit once my bath had been run, and I found that I could barely detect much of the fragrance at all within a matter of minutes.
Secondly, whereas other Fun bars work almost as well as a bubble bar and leave my skin smooth to the touch, I found this one was very drying and the water felt rather rigid, almost as if I'd dissolved a piece of soap in the tub. Most of the bubbles stayed until the end of the experience, but the colour of the water turned a murky orange colour and my skin didn't seem to benefit from these aspects at all. On my second attempt at using this, I opted to use FUN With A Twist as a shower gel/soap and found that it lathered up quite well. I had to experiment with how much water to add to get a good lather going but it did seem to work very much like all of the other FUN bars I've tried. The lather is much thicker in consistency, and may need a little coaxing to spread across your skin, but the compressed format of the product means that a tiny piece will go a lot further than your usual splodge of shower gel and this makes it worthwhile.
Using it in this way meant that I was able to see the specks of glitter that are distributed throughout the bar, and these tended to stay on my skin, although there was very little in the way of lustre and I couldn't find any on my skin once I'd rinsed myself off.
Lavender, lemon and bergamot oils are just some of the ingredients used to try and help make FUN a moisturising, uplifting and refreshing product. While the scents are true to the original aromas, these smells were somewhat lost during use and I wouldn't say that this was the best product to use if you wanted to improve the condition of your skin. Overall, fans of these scents will no doubt be rather interested in trying out a new product, and if I was judging on smell and design alone, it would win many awards. However, I was a little disappointed with it's productivity and I feel the gimmick of FUN doesn't deter from the fact that I'd get a lot more out of a bubble bar, even if it works out more expensive.
Quantitative Ingredients: Talc, Cornflour, Glycerine, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Lemon Oil, Bergamot Oil, Jasmine Absolute, Benzoin Resinoid, Tonka Absolute, Ylang Ylang Oil, Perfume, Citral, Geraniol, Coumarin, Linalool, Gold Glimmer Lustre, Snowflake Lustre.
Vegan?: Yes.
