(This post was last modified: 12-11-2018, 07:37 PM by dfoulk.)
Some random thoughts.
After watching hundreds of videos and reading hundreds of soap reviews I find many that I don't agree with at all. Probably most of them in fact. Especially the "here are my top ten soaps" video reviews that leave me scratching my head wondering how this or that soap made it into their top ten. I suspect that the problem might be In seeing these guys post videos constantly they have to always have something new to talk about. Their motivation, I don't know if they do it with the sole intention of helping others out, if they like getting free products or if they just like hearing themselves speak. Often times vendors will send products to the video makers with the expectation of a review which can make it difficult to be unbiased. I can't say that I blame the vendors as it's incredibly difficult to get any kind or publicity for their products outside of a review on these forums. I'm not questioning anyone's integrity as most soaps are actually pretty good, I just find that I like to be a bit more selective when giving something my highest rating. Who's right or wrong doesn't really matter as we're all trying to find out what works best for us. The other issue is that for me to truly evaluate a soap I have to use it for a couple weeks straight. Often times reviews are created from only one or two uses. This isn't long enough to accurately judge a soap.
Then there's the saturation issue as we have way more soap makers than we likely need at the moment. With the introduction of plenty of soap making knowledge and recipes easily found on the internet it's apparently not all the difficult to make an excellent shaving soap. Even something good enough that you could market and sell. It's easy to take an internet recipe, add a small tweak and you're in the soap making business. These however don't make it into my tier 1. The difficulty comes in making something truly elite and you're not going to find a simple internet recipe that will do that.
Price, scarcity, scent and packaging have zero impact on performance and how I'd rate a soap in that regard. Most of my soaps I move into Parkway Plastics wide mouth tubs and label them myself. So it's nice if they already come in this container but if they don't then no worries as I can easily move them. I've seen users rate a soap much higher because it was sold for a lower price. This makes absolutely no logical sense to me. A factor in whether to buy a soap or not definitely, but not as to how it performs. Scents are subjective and we all smell them differently so scent isn't something that I can factor in either. Will it make me want to reach for one soap over another, indeed it will, but it won't make it perform any better. The SOTD pics look great when a soap has a nice label but it's another thing that I don't care about either as I don't take the time to take pics of my daily shaves. It's just not worth the effort to me. When you take these attributes out of the equation then the performance is more accurate, or at least in my opinion it is.
When looking at what to try, what I'll tend to do is find friends and other users that value the same attributes that I do in a soap. If one of the few people that I trust highly recommends something then I'm interested. My previous experience with the soap makers other products is always a factor as well. Other than that with the new vendors I tend to take a wait and see approach to ensure that the newly introduced soap isn't just the flavor of the month. I used to rush to try everything new but I'm at the point now where if I do this then I'm usually disappointed in finding another soap that's not on par with my absolute favorites. There are plenty of new makers that get a ton of praise for a few weeks and then die out completely. If a soap is still getting truly outstanding reviews after a few months then it's likely worth trying.
This being said Barrister & Mann definitely does have the potential to release something at the elite level so I'd have to try this one myself to know if it's something truly special.
Anyway, just some of my thoughts that are probably worth what you paid for them.
). Second, and getting back to B&M's new soap base ... Vespers is back in stock at Maggards. Not surprisingly to me, stock has quickly run low, so if you want to pick up a jar, now's the time.
![[Image: LM0TRgA.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/LM0TRgA.jpg)
![[Image: kc0POsY.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/kc0POsY.jpg)
