10 Strange and Wonderful Soaps

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.