I love how LUSH stores smell.

I love the idea of good for the earth, cruelty-free bath products.

I don’t really love LUSH prices.

BUT

Their bath bombs are visually gorgeous. They have all sorts of colors, scents, shapes, creatures – you name it, LUSH probably has a fancy pants bath bomb of it.

During quarantine, I doubled down on self-care land and this occasionally included bubble baths, but actually bath bomb baths because I get a massive rush of joy from holding a bath bomb in my hands as it effervesces against my palm.

Yup, I do know that’s kind of a weird sentence, but we’re all a little weird in our own ways.

For Christmas, my dad got me three LUSH bath bombs. How decadent!

In my normal life, baths are pretty rare. Baths take a lot of time. I am not the most patient person.

But when wandering in circles around my apartment in March and April with nowhere to go and not enough to do, a bath suddenly sounded delightful.

And so my love affair with bath bombs truly began.

I giddily watched a $12 bath bomb of a camel effervesce into a glittery swirl in my hand.

I was less pleased to see that glittery swirl ringing the tub in my apartment, which I will shortly have to move out of. But a quick wipe down fixed the issue.

On a trip to Target, I found an aisle of bath bombs!

But how could they be as good? They were enclosed in plastic, so I couldn’t sniff them like I can in LUSH.

And they were $2.99, so, like, how could this possibly bring the same effervescing joy?

None the less, I skeptically bought one (partially because I am a sucker for ‘surprise inside’ – I mean, what does that mean?).

At home, the Target bath bomb sat dejected in a cabinet, because there was still one more of the good stuff left.

An awesome, galaxy looking LUSH bath bomb.

The time finally came, I sat down in the bath, took the galaxy in my hand and enjoyed the effervescence again. It turned the tub water incredibly black.

Then I looked at my fingers and finger nails and they seemed kind of stained black, which seemed silly because I was in a tub, getting clear for pete’s sake.

When I let the water out, there was quite a dark ring but even more exciting was the fact that the floor of the tub was a weird, patchy black.

One of those nice stains that you suspiciously raise an eyebrow at when you’re a renter and think, you’d better come right out or I hear the ka-ching of my security deposit depleting.

So I took a towel, like last time, expecting the dark stains to rub right off like the glitter.

They did not.

I scrubbed a bit more, they were still very visible. And the fairly gross looking stains on the floor of the tub also went nowhere.

I sighed.

I thought, man I hope a magic eraser will work on this.

Apparently magic erasers were part of the people’s panic buying though, as there were none to be had anywhere and even back ordered on Amazon.

As I continued my magic eraser hunt, a few days later I thought, you should use this other dark bath bomb from Target before you magic eraser the tub. If the LUSH bath bomb did that, the Target one is surely going to turn the whole tub and maybe me black as well.

So I drew a bath.

I saw down.

I expected subpar effervescence from this cheap bath bomb.

And yet…

The effervescence was quite nice. Equally as nice as the expensive bath bomb.

The bath bomb then gifted me a tiny toy alien. Why yes, bath bomb, this is certainly a surprise inside.

And best of all, cheap bath bomb, despite also being a dark, little galaxy sphere, did not turn my tub black at all. It did not dye my skin.

It was 1/4 of the price of the fancy bath bomb and it destroyed nothing.

The moral of the story is cost does not equal quality.

Good day, friends.