AOS sandalwood soap, does it smell like anything?

[Quintar]

I ordered a puck of AOS sandalwood. I like sandalwood colognes and such and when there was a coupon for $10 off at AOS I thought, I always wanted to try the soap and sandalwood is nice so I'll give it a shot.
So when I got the soap and opened it, I gave it a sniff and thought it was almost scentless. I also have a puck of the unscented AOS and it's the exact same brown color and it too is not very smelly, but in a different way (smells like soap). I tried smelling the sandalwood shaving cream, preshave oil, and aftershave balm and they all have hardly any smell at all.
So, are the AOS sandalwood products just very faintly scented? Did I get a bad puck? or do I just lack the scent receptors for their brand of sandalwood oil?

 

[inkwell]

I dont really know if scent varies much between pucks, but I have two pucks of the sandalwood soap, ASB, cream, and EDT and i get a fairly strong sandalwood scent from all items. The soaps do have a bit of a clay background to me, but i think that is a quality of all the AOS soaps from what i hear. just my experience....

 

[texaninkc]

not sure if you got a bad puck or if your nose has a hard time picking it up, but when i got a puck delivered, as soon as i opened the outer box you got that big wiff of sandalwood. my ASB, creams, and soaps have a great strong sandalwood scent. then again, i guess if it's possible you lack the receptors, mine might just be firing at all cylinders so it smells pretty strong (and awesome) to me. do you have a hard time smelling other sandalwood products (non-aos)?

 

[Evbo]

I've found AoS's sandalwood-scented products to be pretty strongly-scented. At first I thought you might have a bad or old puck, but then you write that you can't really sense a scent from their cream, PS oil or ASB. That leads me to believe you might be anosmic to their sandalwood, period. Weird, but I can't think of any other explanation.

I ordered a puck of AOS sandalwood. I like sandalwood colognes and such and when there was a coupon for $10 off at AOS I thought, I always wanted to try the soap and sandalwood is nice so I'll give it a shot.
So when I got the soap and opened it, I gave it a sniff and thought it was almost scentless. I also have a puck of the unscented AOS and it's the exact same brown color and it too is not very smelly, but in a different way (smells like soap). I tried smelling the sandalwood shaving cream, preshave oil, and aftershave balm and they all have hardly any smell at all.
So, are the AOS sandalwood products just very faintly scented? Did I get a bad puck? or do I just lack the scent receptors for their brand of sandalwood oil?

 

[nole1]

To my nose, the soap has a fairly strong clay/tallow smell when dry but when lathered the sandalwood does come out a little more.

 

[Quintar]

To my nose, the soap has a fairly strong clay/tallow smell when dry but when lathered the sandalwood does come out a little more.

Yeah that's the scent I get clay/tallow is a good description with a hint of wood. I shaved with it last night and the wood smell got more pronounced but it was still just a faint smell. I had always read that the AOS sandalwood had a really good strong smell so that's why I am confused.
I can smell the sandalwood in several of the colognes I have, and I have some DR Harris sandalwood splash and olagalla bay rum and sandalwood and they are strongly scented. That's why this seems weird to me. I haven't tried out the balm and oil yet, just opened them up and sniffed. I'll try them on and see if they smell more. I'll have my GF smell them too and see what she thinks...

maybe they changed their supplier or something since this is all brand new stuff?

 

[VT_Hokie]

I have the Lavender and love it. Very herbacious with strong tones of clay.

I also got a puck of the Sandalwood at the same time and put it in a dark kent wooden bowl. I used it once and haven't touched it since. The sandalwood scent in there is so overwhelming I couldn't stand it. It will be hitting the BST within the next day or so.

 

[Vlad]

I've never smelled much of any scent from their soaps, just clay. Their sandalwood cream, however, smelled great.

 

[Mike Schutz]

I've been using my AOS Sandlewood soap the last few days and the scent seems fine to me. The puck is about nine months old and about at the end of it's life but it is still wonderful to me. Great lather and great scent.

 

[Quintar]

Ok, so I've gotten home now and busted out all the AOS sandalwood items I could find along with DRH sandalwood aftershave and the olagala sandalwood.
I told my girlfriend to get ready for an experiment and went asniffin'

First up was the AOS sandalwood soap. still don't smell much, she says "smells like hotel soap" do you get any kinda woody smell? "nope"

AOS sandalwood balm, "smells like plain lotion"

AOS sandalwood shaving cream, "hrmm there's something there, kinda musty"

I put a drop of the DRH sandalwood aftershave on my hand and rubbed it in and a drop of the olagalla on the other. we could both smell the sandalwood. That one drop of the DRH aftershave on my hand after an hour is still potent.

I doubt 2 people have some kind of anosmia to sandalwood. I'm tempted to take the soap to work tomorrow and ask people how it smells...but I'm beginning to wonder if AOS got complaints about how strong the smell was or the source of their oil got too expensive and they changed it??

 

[azmark]

I love their sandalwood so that is strange because it pretty strong.

 

[inspiringK]

AOS sandalwood shaving cream, "hrmm there's something there, kinda musty"

I doubt 2 people have some kind of anosmia to sandalwood. I'm tempted to take the soap to work tomorrow and ask people how it smells...but I'm beginning to wonder if AOS got complaints about how strong the smell was or the source of their oil got too expensive and they changed it??

I hope they haven't scaled back the scent, I liked it as potent as it was(/is). You should have no doubts about the cream scent, maybe both you and your girlfriend are Super Heroes - impervious to the perils of Sandalwood

I was fortunate enough to be one of the first recipients of this year's Canadian Traveling box (the TOKYO part of it anyway). There were many creams and a few soaps, including P160, in the box. From the moment I got the box I could smell Sandalwood. After unpacking all the contents and trying to separate out the smells, it was clear that the AoS Sandalwood cream scent was overpowering all the other scents.

 

[andrewinman]

I wouldn't put it past them to cut back on the oils in their products especially since the economy and their being owned by P&G I believe it is.

 

[orchestrion]

I'd have a hard time believing that they were cutting back on the essential oils. Both the puck of soap I currently use and the cream that I used to have had plenty of a scent. Same with both the Lavender and Lemon soaps I've used. I'd lean toward chalking it up to differences in personal perception of the scent.

 

[gaj90027]

Very strange indeed, the soap is not as strong as the cream but the scent lingers on my brush for 2 or 3 days after using AoS Sandalwood.

 

[Quintar]

I took the soap to work and asked everyone in the place to smell it. First I just said "what does this smell like?" 10 out of 10 said "I dunno smells like soap." then I said "it's supposed to be sandalwood scented does it smell like sandalwood?" and most said not really or maybe a little bit. I asked "would you say it has a strong aroma?" everyone said no. One guy is a wet shaver who uses AOS products all the time and he said it didn't smell strong at all and just had a faint sandalwood smell. Another guy is from india and he uses sandalwood to grind into a paste and put on his face. He said it had a very faint artificial sandalwood smell.

So it appears it is not me, 12 people hardly smell anything in the soap. I'm tempted to contact AOS and ask if they have reformulated the sandalwood products...

 

[drumana]

I've heard of this - all of the AoS soaps smelling like the unscented version. That wasn't my experience though. The Sandalwood in particular was rather strongly scented. And the Lavender and Lemon smelled like lavender and lemon. I will say that they all had that underlying tallowy smell to them, but they were definitely scented. Hope they didn't change anything. The Sandalwood was nice - very incense like, crisp, dry.

 

[inspiringK]

I'm tempted to contact AOS and ask if they have reformulated the sandalwood products...

Please do, it seams like the next course of action.

Keep us posted. I just started seeing the bottom of one of my bowls this morning, so I have to decide what to fill it with

 

[Rudy Vey]

Yeah that's the scent I get clay/tallow is a good description with a hint of wood. I shaved with it last night and the wood smell got more pronounced but it was still just a faint smell. I had always read that the AOS sandalwood had a really good strong smell so that's why I am confused.
I can smell the sandalwood in several of the colognes I have, and I have some DR Harris sandalwood splash and olagalla bay rum and sandalwood and they are strongly scented. That's why this seems weird to me. I haven't tried out the balm and oil yet, just opened them up and sniffed. I'll try them on and see if they smell more. I'll have my GF smell them too and see what she thinks...

maybe they changed their supplier or something since this is all brand new stuff?

To me as well it did not smell like Sandalwood at all (and I am a Sandalwood freak, so to say). The scent was clay/tallowy/earthy and I could not detect any hint of Sandalwood. The clay/tallow scent was much stronger than the one from the un-scented version. I got rid of both as for me the scent of a soap is important. I have also the Lavender version and this is quite strong, much stronger than my DR Harris lavender.
No clue what this means, but some of us us here have a quite strong smelling sandalwood soap, others not. Maybe there was a mistake made when they packed it, and some of the un-scented pucks were packed as Sandalwood.....
When we had our NY meet-up in Jan, we went to the AOS store and there I smelled on the Sandalwood and it had no sandalwood smell at all, just the clay/tallow scent that my soap had.

 

[Quintar]

To me as well it did not smell like Sandalwood at all (and I am a Sandalwood freak, so to say). The scent was clay/tallowy/earthy and I could not detect any hint of Sandalwood. The clay/tallow scent was much stronger than the one from the un-scented version. I got rid of both as for me the scent of a soap is important. I have also the Lavender version and this is quite strong, much stronger than my DR Harris lavender.
No clue what this means, but some of us us here have a quite strong smelling sandalwood soap, others not. Maybe there was a mistake made when they packed it, and some of the un-scented pucks were packed as Sandalwood.....
When we had our NY meet-up in Jan, we went to the AOS store and there I smelled on the Sandalwood and it had no sandalwood smell at all, just the clay/tallow scent that my soap had.

I have an unscented puck as well and if I smell them side by side the sandalwood one has a slight "funk" to it that the unscented one does not. so it doesn't appear that its just a mislabeled puck, it seems like they added a smell but the smell is very very weak. Also the cream, aftershave balm and preshave oil are all weak. I rubbed some preshave oil on the back of my hand and let it dry out and kept sniffing it all day. it started out smelling like olive oil but after an hour i got a faint woody smell when it dried.
I contacted AOS and they emailed me back saying they were going to look into it and asked for my receipt and address. I haven't heard back yet but i'll put up any reply i get when i hear.