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I’m a pretty big fan of Nintendo’s best and brightest mascot, Mario. I’m also a pretty big fan of LUSH’s cosmetics and toiletries, and have been privy to the occasional bath bomb to make bathing a little more exciting than me writhing in my own dirt.
So, when LUSH announced its Mario-themed collection, in collaboration with the Super Mario Bros. Movie (which is out on April 5, this week), I couldn’t resist the urge to spend a small loan on the stuff. I also, apparently, couldn’t resist the urge to make as many inappropriate jokes possible about it. People didn’t like that very much, but those who did? You’re my people.
What I didn’t like very much, however, was the LUSH x Mario products I’d picked up. It’s not the first time I’ve bought something from LUSH that made bath time the opposite of what it ought to be – stressful. I did purchase the brightest pink bath bomb I could find a few years back, and subsequently stained the bathtub as a result. The faint pink ring around the tub wouldn’t fade no matter what I tried, or how much bleach I subsequently inhaled. Ultimately, it didn’t matter, because that landlord didn’t deserve my unrivaled cleaning efforts.
Last week, I picked up the Power Up Block, which is one gigantic, yellow bath-bomb that hides a secret, soapy power-up inside. Alongside it, I’d picked up the shower gel that many didn’t like me referring to as “Luigi’s cream”. If that applies to you, you’ll be glad to know that Luigi’s cream thoroughly let me down, and smells more like Play-Doh than it does apples. Unmistakably so.
I also found something very ironic in the fact that my Power Up Block, a bath bomb designed for gamers and keen Mario fans, turned my bath the same colour as the piss of one very dehydrated gamer. Very apt, even. With the Power Up Block came an orange sparkle, but after it? One grand cleaning job.
A bath bomb as big as the Power Up Block is causes a lot of mess, I expected as much. I didn’t expect throwbacks to my past mistake, in which I was bleaching yellow and orange stains from my bathtub. Even now, two baths and multiple showers later, I can’t escape leftover sparkly residue haunting every crevice around my tub and toilet. I don’t even know how it got there.
That said, the mess is part of the fun of this collection, really. Sure, Luigi’s apple-scented shower gel doesn’t leave me feeling fresh, and the Power Up Block saw me undoing my previous hour of Mario-themed relaxation with cleaning. That said, the soapy power-up inside made it all worth it; a Mini Mushroom. In the Mario world, this would’ve shrunk me down to a portion of my size, but in the comfort of my bathtub, this secret soap smelt like sweets. As a bar of soap, it can also be stored and reused for a while, which made my purchase feel a lot more worthwhile.
Watching my Power Up Block fizz away while eagerly anticipating my Mario-themed soap made me, honestly, feel like a kid again. I regularly indulge in a bath bomb or something else to power-up my bathing, but I didn’t quite expect to experience an almost childlike joy from the occasion. While not a quality collaboration that offers the same amount of indulgence and relaxation as other LUSH products, it is undisputedly a fun one!
A fun one that I will buy once, and never again.