Miss Cellania
10 Strange and Wonderful Soaps
by Miss Cellania - August 31, 2010 - 8:57 AM
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Solid soap is, of course, a useful consumer product. It is also possibly the perfect multi-dimensional art medium. The shape, colors, design, and scent can all be manipulated to produce just about anything the mind can imagine. Then you can mass-produce them in sizes that many people can afford to buy and use. Here are some wonderfully creative soaps that will impress your friends and family -or else have them scratching their heads in confusion!

1. Petri Dish Soap

Cleaner Science sells soap in petri dishes that resemble biological experiments. Pictured is e. coli, which smells like honey when you wash with it. Many cultures are available, or you can get a package of four small petri dishes in a sampler. Don’t miss the fluorescent cyanobacteria!

2. Movie Poster Soap

Show off your love of cinema with a bar of soap embedded with a movie poster! Movie soaps have a scent that evokes the movie theater experience, that is, a combination of popcorn, soda, and chocolate. There are other posters and movie stills available, or you can request a particular movie to be depicted in soap.

3. Cat Food Scented Soap

I don’t honestly know why you’d want to use cat food scented soap. Most likely you’d get Crazy Cat Lady Cat Food Scented Soap as a gag gift for an understanding friend. I know my cat-crazy daughter wants a bar just to have it around.

4. Toast with Jam

Etsy seller Soapapotamus crafts soap to resemble all kinds of food products. The toast and jam soap contains real strawberry seeds in the jam and both the bread and jam are appropriately scented -but they are made of real goat’s milk soap.

5. Pickle Soap

Named for its scent rather than its shape, this soap really smells like a dill pickle! You might find yourself craving a hamburger after your bath.

6. Han Solo in Carbonite Soap

From the film The Empire Strikes Back, this soap depicts our hero Han after he was embedded in a “bar” of carbonite. The perfect gift for Star Wars fans, each bar is hand-crafted with skin-safe metallic pigment for an authentic look.

7. Pet Fish Soap

Your new pet fish is not swimming in a bag of water; but you’ll have to excuse anything who thinks so at first glance. The fish in a bag soap is solid, with a soap fish surrounded by clear glycerin soap. No fishy smell, either, just a nice tangerine-grapefruit scent.

8. Beer Soap

The Beer Soap Company makes 90 different varieties of soap using beer instead of water. The type of beer used varies, as well as the added fragrance -not all of them smell like beer. The Mexican Hops soap shown is made with Dos Equis beer and scented with vanilla and cedarwood oil.

9. Abby Normal

A reference to the movie Young Frankenstein, this soap has a lovely raspberry scent, but is shaped like two brains in a jar. Remember, the brain you choose is the most important component of the monster you create.

10. Eyeball Soap

Halloween is coming up. Eyeballs in your soap dish will discourage those pesky trick-or-treaters from asking to use your bathroom ever again! Or you might want to use these all year round. The same vendor, BunnyBubbles, will help you to prepare for Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19th) or Thanksgiving.

See more unusual soaps in the previous posts 8 Attention-grabbing Soaps and 9 Odd and Unusual Soaps.

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Comments (25)

  1. I love the Han Solo soap, I just might have to get that for my son’s stocking and the Abby Normal one for my dad for Christmas, he loves that movie.

    posted by Sarah in CA on 8-31-2010 at 10:14 am

  2. I’m getting the Han Solo soap RIGHT NOW.

    posted by nikki on 8-31-2010 at 10:15 am

  3. Oh no! The link for the Abby Normal soap doesn’t work ;-(

    posted by Sarah in CA on 8-31-2010 at 10:16 am

  4. I already got it Nikki, haaha. Kind of expensive, even on sale ($10 right now), but I really think my son will love it in his stocking.

    posted by Sarah in CA on 8-31-2010 at 10:18 am

  5. The Abby Normal link worked earlier, but I think that Think Geek is having some temporary problems.

    posted by Miss Cellania on 8-31-2010 at 10:29 am

  6. Sarah: I almost choked on my breakfast taco when I saw it was $10 for a bar, but I went ahead and purchased it anyway. Sometimes being a geek is rough on the bank account.

    posted by nikki on 8-31-2010 at 10:31 am

  7. Sarah, the luxury lane (han solo soap) site also has the abby normal soaps. The jars are plastic on luxury lane and glass on think geek.

    posted by nikki on 8-31-2010 at 10:36 am

  8. Christmas is coming…and I think a LOT of people in my family are going to be getting some of these soaps. Love the Soapapotamus soaps that look like food. Great stuff.

    posted by Rachel on 8-31-2010 at 11:01 am

  9. nikki… Well, I don’t expect my son to use the soap, it’s more of a geek decorative thing to have instead of little soaps that look like leaves in a nice basket with potpourri, haah.

    I will check the Lane site again for the Abby Normal, thanks.

    posted by Sarah in CA on 8-31-2010 at 11:39 am

  10. I would probably accidentally eat that toast and jam soap. It made my mouth water just looking at it.

    posted by Elissa on 8-31-2010 at 11:46 am

  11. I bought some beer soap for my fiance for his birthday. He actually uses it for shaving soap since he uses one of those old time saftey razors. He loves that soap and the one made with Hornsby’s hard apple cider smells great.

    posted by Colene on 8-31-2010 at 12:01 pm

  12. One of my absolute favorite soaps-it’s NOTHING like the stuff here-is Magno soap, made in Spain.I can’t really describe the smell, it’s not floral-I’m not real big on flowery stuff. It can be used by men as well. Kind of woodsy, really rich. Amazon sells it.

    http://www.amazon.com/Magno-Toja-Soap-4-4-125gr/dp/B0006MQ3B2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=hpc&qid=1283273301&sr=8-2

    posted by Paula on 8-31-2010 at 12:51 pm

  13. Must… get… that Han Solo soap!

    posted by Steve from San Diego on 8-31-2010 at 2:07 pm

  14. I think the Petri dish soap is cute

    posted by LaLa on 8-31-2010 at 3:27 pm

  15. The petri dish soap is creepy! I just finished teaching my students about bacterial cultures. The soap looks suprisingly like the real thing.

    posted by Julie on 8-31-2010 at 3:39 pm

  16. I mentioned you at my blog:

    http://www.cricketfix.tk/uncategorized/proud-of-my-cupcake-twins-fun-soaps/

    posted by Cricket Saunders on 8-31-2010 at 4:41 pm

  17. I have to give mad props for the Flaming Lips reference at the very end…

    posted by Heather in CA on 8-31-2010 at 5:00 pm

  18. My favorite soap I have ever seen is produced by a local Dallas artist who makes all natural soaps with awesome names. My favorites are “A Stout Man” (made with Guiness) and “4 Virgins & a Hussy” (made with 4 types of virgin oils as well as a little regular olive oil.

    posted by Emaline2Fine on 8-31-2010 at 6:25 pm

  19. There’s an etsy seller that makes soaps shaped like skeletons in coffins – the lid comes off and everything. Several scents available. I once bought a couple for my dad, who’s a mortician. Thought he’d get a kick out of them!

    posted by Christine G. on 8-31-2010 at 6:47 pm

  20. You forgot the epic D20 die on a rope by Geek Soap http://www.geeksoap.net/product/d20-soap-on-a-rope-geeksoap I bought one for all of my D&D group members.

    posted by Jan on 8-31-2010 at 8:06 pm

  21. How could I forget, AND game cartridge soap by Geek Soap http://www.geeksoap.net/product/8-bit-game-cartridge-geeksoap

    posted by Jan on 8-31-2010 at 8:21 pm

  22. Cool soaps although I don’t know why anyone would want their hands or any part of their body smelling like a pickle.

    posted by Anon on 8-31-2010 at 8:59 pm

  23. Thank you so so so much for featuring my Soap in Carbonite!!! I also make the Brain Soap for ThinkGeek!

    There are so many cool soaps on this list!

    And do check out my girl GeekSoap.net she freaking ROCKS the cartridge soaps!

    posted by Kylee Lane on 8-31-2010 at 10:25 pm

  24. I want, nay need, that Han soap. Too awesome.

    posted by Ben on 8-31-2010 at 10:40 pm

  25. One of my favorites are SoapRocks: http://www.tspink.com/html/CircleoSoap.htm They’re really realistic!

    One year, for a holiday party, my director gave us some of these as holiday gifts. Turned out that her brother makes them. Good soap, too, and they smooth down as they’re used. Very cool.

    posted by Synnamin on 9-4-2010 at 2:32 pm

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