Rexona

“Vince Stone”

How satisfying to have a soap with only one name. Rexona. What does it mean? The king of green soap, is my guess. It's got a factory, molded look, and the greenest green this side of Irish Spring—and the weirdest thing—if I can trust my memory—is that it smells exactly like Irish Spring. Of course, I have no Irish Spring here to compare my bar of Rexona to—for color or fragrance—but there's no doubt—this Rexona has a strong—really strong—masculine fragrance. I personally like it quite a lot, but then I like living dangerously. The packaging is certainly confusing—it boasts: “100% Naturally Sourced Coconut and Olive Oils”—and there's a half coconut pouring what looks like some kind of liquor, martini olives, and coconut chunks into an echo pool—it looks like a cocktail made by misguided artificial intelligence. It occurs to me that it could actually be reconfigured Irish Spring—but that soap is made by Colgate-Palmolive, I believe, and this is from Unilever—though if someone told me those two companies were either in bed with each other, or one and the same, I would not be surprised. The package lists so many scary ingredients it might have been mixed up by the Manhattan Project. I might be hardcore, but I don't live so dangerously as to welcome this one regularly into my tub. Though, I suppose I do live dangerously enough to wake up in the middle of the night and think Lee Marvin might be using my bathroom.

Soap Review No. 142