QEDman – Spearmint and Tangerine shave stick

Tags

7/10, citrus, Discontinued, Fruit, mint, QEDman, shaving soap, shaving stick, Spearmint, tangerine

Edit: as below, this line is no longer available.

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So, apparently the owner of the place that made the QEDman soaps for QEDman has retired. They’re down to one last scent available in the shaving stick, the wild orange, and three scents available for the tubs; Anise & Lavender, Grapefruit & Peppermint, and this one, Tangerine & Spearmint.

The lather is decent enough; a good balance of lubrication and thickness; you’ll want to be reasonably generous with the amount of water used. Somewhat narrow sweet spot to get the balance just right, but some good moisturization.

The balance on the scent is definitely predominately the spearmint, which shouldn’t be all that unexpected, considering it’s generally considered a much strong scent than tangerine. You can detect hints of the sweetness of tangerines underneath the minty-ness. Fairly pleasant, although I would have preferred more tangerine.

The strength is reasonable to start, without much in the way of fading. Not strong per se, but definitely not weak.

• 8/10 Scent Pleasantness
• 8/10 Scent Strength
• 8/10 Lather Quality

Anyways, it’s a nice enough soap, with good performance in all areas, but nothing to write home about in any aspect. 7/10 overall.

• Cost: As mentioned, the shaving stick in this scent is no longer available, however a 5oz jar can still be found for $13.50. While they do ship to Canada and some other places outside the US, the shopping cart feature only works within the US, so you’ll need to e-mail for a quote.

Gear used:

• Brush: Wee Scott
• Razor: Feather AS-D2
• Blade: Big Ben Super Stainless

Ingredients: Saponified 100% food grade coconut, palm, castor, and safflower oils, with kosher vegetable glycerin, soybean protein, aloe vera extract, and essential oils.

MJ’s Soap Shop – Tangerine Grapefruit shaving soap

Tags

5/10, citrus, Discontinued, Fruit, grapefruit, MJ's Soap Shop, shaving soap, tangerine

Edit: The site has had the following message up for at least a few months now: “In order to perform site maintenance, our online shop has shut down temporarily. We apologize for the inconvenience and ask that you please try again later.”

I can only assume that this change isn’t actually all that temporary.

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So this’ll be my first foray into reviewing a soap from my home country. Alas, I wasn’t all that impressed.

Well, with the scent at least. It’s supposed to be a tangerine and grapefruit. I love the smell of grapefruit, and I like tangerines, so I was rather looking forward to this one. Unfortunately, it ended up being far too weak to really appreciate. When lathered, there was essentially no scent left. When sniffing the shaving soap itself, even then the smell is somewhat overpowered by the smell of the other ingredients of the soap; what’s left is a vaguely sweet smell, one that I can’t really pick out any citrus notes from, and certainly not grapefruit.

The lather, on the other hand, performed admirably. It loaded easily, and lathered up nice and thick. It was relatively thirsty, but used what water was added well, building a nice creamy lather with good glide. It seemed to have a decent enough sweet spot for water content, and gave good moisturization to the face as well.

• 6/10 Scent Pleasantness
• 3/10 Scent Strength
• 9/10 Quality of Lather

So… if you’re one of those folk who don’t really care how the soap smells, I’d recommend giving this one a shot. Otherwise, eh, too plain, the scent does nothing to add to the shaving experience. Overall, I’m giving it a 5/10.

• Cost: A puck (~ 3 oz) will set you back $5.

Gear used:

• Brush: Wee Scott
• Razor: Gillette Old Style with WWI US Service Set
• Blade: Crown Super Stainless
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4

Ingredients: Tallow, Stearic Acid, Coconut Oil, Potassium Hydroxide, Castor Oil, Sodium Hydroxide, Glycerine, Essential oils, White Kaolin Clay.

Jabonman Vetiver-Tangerine-Litsea Cubeba shaving soap

Tags

8/10, citrus, Fruit, jabonman, shaving soap, tangerine, vetiver

I really liked the smell of this shaving soap; the earthiness of the vetiver paired really nicely with the sweetness of the tangerine, and a bit of the tartness of the Litsea Cubeba (which for anyone who like me didn’t know, is a largely lemony-scented essential oil). Combined, they reminded me a lot of lemongrass, but a bit deeper and a bit sweeter.

The strength was good; it came on nice and strong at the start, with a bit of fading during the shave, but not too much.

Lather-wise, I found it better than I found the last Jabonman soap I tried. A few other posts about the soap seem to indicate that one of the keys is putting a bit of elbow grease into building the lather. It ended up with something nice and thick, with some decent glide. Decent moisturization, which this time I can’t attribute to the lanolin, as this formulation doesn’t contain any.

• 9/10 Scent Pleasantness
• 8/10 Scent Strength
• 8/10 Lather Quality

This one merits an 8/10. I just kind of wish the sample I had had enough for a few more shaves.

• Cost: Apparently it’s about 10.50 Euro a puck, plus shipping and handling. Jabonman doesn’t have a website, but if you e-mail the manufacturer, Manual Garcia at magafe_es@yahoo.es, he can give you an accurate price list. But he does rely upon google translate, so you might want to avoid convoluted language.

Gear used:

• Brush: Wee Scott
• Razor: Gillette Old Style with WWI US Service Set
• Blade: Shark Super Stainless
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4

Ingredients: (Note: I’m not positive that this listing is for this scent, but it’s the closest I was able to find on-line) Palm stearic, coconut oil, argan oil, almond oil, jojoba oil, castor oil, rosehip oil, shea butter, glycerine, sodium hydroxide, potassium hydroxide, water, aloe vera, rhassoul (a moroccan clay), aromas

Mama Bear Soaps – Tangerine and Tulip

Tags

6/10, citrus, floral, Fruit, Glycerin, Mama Bear Soaps, shaving soap, tangerine, tulip

Mama Bear Soaps Tangerine and Tulip is a pleasant enough scent, IMHO. It’s a bit heavier on the tulip than the tangerine. Reasonably nice, but not one of those ones that I have any compulsion to just keep sniffing.

The strength of the aroma is ok. It’s of middling strength when lathered up, but at least didn’t fade noticeably during the shaving.

As for the lather, here’s the Mama Bear boilerplate review: Lathers up nice and thick to begin with; be sure to add a decent amount of water to get enough glide, but not too quickly as it’s easy to over-shoot the mark and be left with something too runny; if you’re using a scuttle, the heat will cause the lather to break down between passes, but a few extra drops of water and a quick stir will fix that up nicely. Gives a perfectly nice shave.

As an aside, I’ve also amended my scoring for lather, since I’ve been giving out too many 9’s. So it got split up into 8s and 9s, and everything below it got bumped down, including this one. Hence the fact it’s getting a 7 instead of a 8 now.

• 8/10 Scent Pleasantness
• 7/10 Scent Strength
• 7/10 Lather Quality

6/10 overall. It’ll definitely do the trick, just don’t expect much in the way of tangerines.

• Cost: $9.99 for a tub worth, or the samples can be had for $1.

Gear used:

• Brush: The Colonel
• Razor: Gillette Travel Tech
• Blade: Shark Super Stainless
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4

Ingredients: Coconut Oil, Palm Oil, Castor Oil, Safflower, Glycerine (kosher, of vegetable origin), Purified Water, Sodium Hydroxide (saponifying agent), Sorbitol (moisturizer), Sorbitan oleate (emulsifier), Soybean protein (conditioner), Wheat protein and fragrance either natural or synthetic.