Mitchells Wool Fat Shaving Soap is no longer Tallow based

[luvmysuper]

Luxury Shaving Soap Refill - SB2 | Kent Brushes

Treat yourself to our Luxury Shaving Soap from our Shaving Soaps & Creams collection. Guaranteed to create a rich lather for the ultimate shaving experience.

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Having heard the news, I ordered 4 pucks last week.
My options were to get MWF or Kent.
I ordered Kent so as not to reward MWF for the need to order.

 

[PLANofMAN]

Having heard the news, I ordered 4 pucks last week.
My options were to get MWF or Kent.
I ordered Kent so as not to reward MWF for the need to order.

Hope you don't wind up with the new formula, and have to go through the hassle of returning it.

 

[Keyvan]

This new stuff is good, I’m doing a 180 turn. How good? I’m not willing to say it’s on par or better with the previous formulation, but I would be content with shaving with it exclusively if didn’t have access to other stuff.
Summary, I got BBS with 2 passes + cleanup, and going against the grain on the second pass. Shave was irritation free, without a hint of blood. Rinse was easy without leaving residue. Post shave feel was good, I could have skipped the after shave.
My method was to load the brush damp, with all water removed. Swirled the puck for 20 seconds and ended up with too much soap.
Initial lather on my face, and then 2nd pass lather (2nd picture) which was hydrated properly and was very protective.
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I’m a fan

My experience is similar to your in some ways, but differs in others. My non-tallow formulation just arrived and I lathered it up and performed a shave. Due to the fact that synthetic brushes work better for me with the newer soaps, I used a Yaqi Sagrada Tuxedo. I removed most of the water from the brush and loaded for about 45 seconds. I can tell you that 45 seconds of loading is way too much for this soap.

The lather that formed became very yogurt like after I face lathered and watered it down for a couple of minutes:



I proceeded with the 1st pass. The lather was very cushioning and protective, but it was not very slick and had little residual slickness.

I decided that I may have overloaded the brush, so I watered down the lather for the second pass and further worked it on my face. The images below attempt to capture the state of the lather on the second pass:



The slickness did improve a bit. This soap is a marvelous source of abundant and cushioning lather and it has a very broad tolerance to the amount of added water.
When I first saw the lather and its density, I was very excited about the soap. I can say that it is a good soap that can be used to create mounds of lather. Nevertheless, it falls short of MWF Tallow in slickness, residual slickness, and post-shave feel. In terms of slickness and residual slickness, both Haslinger Sheep Milk and Pre de Provence (one of my favorite vegan soaps) are better. MWF tallow is far better!

If MWF improves the slickness, I would say that the new formulation would be in the top tier of soaps. Unfortunately, the shortcomings are accentuated by the excellence of the original formulation. Otherwise, this is a very good soap.

 

[luvmysuper]

Hope you don't wind up with the new formula, and have to go through the hassle of returning it.

I have it already. It's all old version.
I'm a bit amused by the Kent label though...

"No animal has suffered in the preparation of this product"
Do they know where tallow comes from?

 

[ZeelandsRoem]

"No animal has suffered in the preparation of this product"
Do they know where tallow comes from?

During the preparation of the soap, the animal was already dead and processed some time before.

 

[luvmysuper]

During the preparation of the soap, the animal was already dead and processed some time before.

Yeah, that's kind of like getting a leather jacket that says the same thing!
Or a butcher shop cutting steaks out of a side of beef they had delivered.

 

[ZeelandsRoem]

Yeah, that's kind of like getting a leather jacket that says the same thing!
Or a butcher shop cutting steaks out of a side of beef they had delivered.

Indeed. These "anti animal cruelty"/"environment awareness" movements are somehow forcing manufacturers and sellers to come up with all kind of (crazy) marketing ideas, some which are carefully using certain terms to give the impression they are "animal/environmental friendly" even if they are not entirely.

This just reminded me of the barbeque I had two weeks ago, where my partner thought it was a good idea to invite some relatives. We explicitly told them it was a barbeque and they quickly showed up, some even saying they are starving. When the food was being served, the reactions I got were "eww, is this meat?", "eww, is this made with milk", "eww, is this having butter?".

 

[luvmysuper]

Indeed. These "anti animal cruelty"/"environment awareness" movements are somehow forcing manufacturers and sellers to come up with all kind of (crazy) marketing ideas, some which are carefully using certain terms to give the impression they are "animal/environmental friendly" even if they are not entirely.

This just reminded me of the barbeque I had two weeks ago, where my partner thought it was a good idea to invite some relatives. We explicitly told them it was a barbeque and they quickly showed up, some even saying they are starving. When the food was being served, the reactions I got were "eww, is this meat?", "eww, is this made with milk", "eww, is this having butter?".

"Do you have a Vegan option?"

"Yeah, stay home."

 

[Mr. Shavington]

I have it already. It's all old version.
I'm a bit amused by the Kent label though...

View attachment 1666466
"No animal has suffered in the preparation of this product"
Do they know where tallow comes from?

All the Kent soaps list tallow in the ingredients, but if it shows batch number 9265 under the ingredients list it is the new non-tallow soap. Mitchell’s supplied batch 9265 to Kent with incorrect labelling and yesterday Mitchell’s finally admitted to the error after wrongly telling Kent that this batch was tallow.

Kent has found about 1,000 older production soaps in their warehouse and if you have batch 9265 they will exchange it for an older tallow puck if you contact them.

Kent will have to sort out with Mitchell’s what is to be done with the 4,000 batch 9265 soaps they have, which are wrongly labelled and are confirmed to be the new non-tallow formula.

9265 is the first non-tallow batch for Mitchell’s and Kent soaps, so that’s the key number.

 

[Kalie]

@Kalie there has been some discussion on "bad batches" of various lot # of MWF and Kent soap pucks recently reported. This does not refer to veggie vs tallow mislabeling issues, but rather just a bad or dud soap base.

Have you experienced any complaints with regards to bad soap batches, prior the mislabelled ingredient fiasco, which you have addressed and confirmed.

See below for reference:

Hello,
I haven't had any customers contact me regarding this batch number; I think occasionally there can be the odd one or two that don't seem to fire up; perhaps this is the end of the mix? I'm not sure, though. Up until now, the soaps have not caused any problems Don't forget to order sooner rather than later if you need some guys, as they are starting to go out the door pretty quickly!

 

[ChriWilson]

I’m guessing when he mentioned an old batch, perhaps 9027 or the like.

 

[luvmysuper]

All the Kent soaps list tallow in the ingredients, but if it shows batch number 9265 under the ingredients list it is the new non-tallow soap. Mitchell’s supplied batch 9265 to Kent with incorrect labelling and yesterday Mitchell’s finally admitted to the error after wrongly telling Kent that this batch was tallow.

Kent has found about 1,000 older production soaps in their warehouse and if you have batch 9265 they will exchange it for an older tallow puck if you contact them.

Kent will have to sort out with Mitchell’s what is to be done with the 4,000 batch 9265 soaps they have, which are wrongly labelled and are confirmed to be the new non-tallow formula.

9265 is the first non-tallow batch for Mitchell’s and Kent soaps, so that’s the key number.

It's far far earlier than 9265!

 

[Frito Ray]

"Do you have a Vegan option?"

"Yeah, stay home."

Or point to the lawn.

 

[PLANofMAN]

I have it already. It's all old version.
I'm a bit amused by the Kent label though...

View attachment 1666466
"No animal has suffered in the preparation of this product"
Do they know where tallow comes from?

That just means that no animal was killed just to make the soap. The animal was killed for it's beef/pork, and the tallow is a waste product.

...or that the animal was killed humanely, and didn't suffer at all. Either interpretation is...well...open to interpretation.

 

[zoidberg]

That just means that no animal was killed just to make the soap. The animal was killed for it's beef/pork, and the tallow is a waste product.

...or that the animal was killed humanely, and didn't suffer at all. Either interpretation is...well...open to interpretation.

I think the suggestion is that didn't use animal testing in developing the product.

 

[CzechCzar]

No, it's not that good. I'd not waste my money. La Toja stick is so much better and it has no tallow now, either. I do like to use La Toja. Most sticks just aren't good nowadays with all of the reformulations (Arko was never as good as La Toja so we won't go there, but it isn't terrible). MWF was so good, though, that I didn't worry much about other soaps.

La Toja is quite good, as is the tallow Speick stick.

Good morning everyone,
I work here at Kent Brushes, and we are looking into this issue with our SB2 Shaving soap immediately. We contacted Mitchells on 31st May 2023 to confirm the rumours of the formula change in their own product and confirm the formula they were using for our branded soap still included Tallowate; they confirmed our soap was not yet affected as they did not have the ingredients in stock yet.
We are now sending the current batch away for testing, and I will update you with the results as soon as soon as we have them.

We appreciate your patience whilst we look into this problem,
We are disappointed that we may not have been given an honest reply when we checked this out last week,

Thank you for your understanding,
Kalie

Hello again,
Mitchells have just replied and confirmed that, in their error, they had not informed us that batch number 9265 had been involved in the new formulation; they have not updated the labelling they provide on the product to us or informed us that this change would be happening, they also mentioned that they did not expect that there would be such disappointment with the change of ingredients our product and their own.
We are very sorry that this product has been sold with incorrect ingredient information, please do contact us directly if you would like to arrange to return any recent orders from batch 9265.
We are updating our website as we speak,
Thank you,
Kalie

This level of customer interaction from Kent is just outstanding. I use my Kent comb every single day, and have purchased them as presents they are so good. Equally impressed with the Kent Shave brushes.

I think it does confirm that:
- Mitchell’s failed to inform Kent about reformulating the Kent soaps
- When Kent asked about the rumours last week Mitchell’s falsely told Kent that they had not produced any of the new soaps yet
- Mitchell’s shipped new formula soaps to Kent with the old labels, misrepresenting the ingredients

We could ascribe that to gross incompetence, that Mitchell’s didn’t think about all the Kent soaps and that the respective Mitchell’s staff didn’t know that their own company had changed the formulation. I think it’s more likely that Mitchell’s made a big mistake and then tried to conceal it from Kent. Or perhaps Mitchell’s contract with Kent doesn’t allow them to change the formula unilaterally and they tried to hide it rather than risk losing the order.

Lots of possibilities. All of them reflect very badly on Mitchell’s. Result is Kent sitting on thousands of falsely labeled soaps, which are not what Kent had ordered from Mitchell’s and may be unsellable due to the labelling.

If there is any good news here it is that Mitchell’s are now hearing from many quarters how much of a problem their replacement of tallow is.

Really appreciate your honesty and directness.

Normally in the US a blatant labeling mistake like this would result in a product recall. Although I believe the FDA has the authority to seize mislabeled products under certain circumstances.

I'm still trying to wrap my brain around what a colossal screwup this is on MWF's part.

Per the above comments I am honestly contemplating submitting a complaint.

Outstanding contribution from Kent that will no doubt buy them a lot of well-deserved good will.

I don't own any Kent shave brushes but I am very loyal to their brand when it comes to combs and hair brushes. If you are fed up with cheap combs / brushes and just want to buy something that's quality then forget about it, you won't go far wrong.

Kent combs are the very best.

If MWF improves the slickness, I would say that the new formulation would be in the top tier of soaps. Unfortunately, the shortcomings are accentuated by the excellence of the original formulation. Otherwise, this is a very good soap.

So, if they add tallow back in??

 

[Keyvan]

La Toja is quite good, as is the tallow Speick stick.



This level of customer interaction from Kent is just outstanding. I use my Kent comb every single day, and have purchased them as presents they are so good. Equally impressed with the Kent Shave brushes.



Per the above comments I am honestly contemplating submitting a complaint.

Kent combs are the very best.

So, if they add tallow back in??

That would work

 

[Lord NSIC]

Or point to the lawn.

Living in the local area of PETA Headquarters, I must apologize for their radical attitudes/approach. "Being vegan, is like celibacy, it's a tough road, and some become just a little bit rabid in our attitudes towards "meat eaters," me, I just want a hot dog" ~Rich E., a coworker who was vegan not by choice, but it was the only way he found to control his diabetes. One girl my youngest son dated was vegan with the goal to lose weight, so we did our best to accommodate (except my birthday cake; line drawn) but she didn't like leafy vegetables, so she ate a lot of vegan french fries (she fell short of her goal). While accommodating her, we discovered a vegan chocolate chip cookie recipe utilizing coconut milk--think Mounds/Almond Joy bar in cookie form; great with a tall glass of ice cold cow's milk. Bottom line: I'll respect anyone's dietary choice as long as they reciprocate, or it's my birthday.

 

[ChriWilson]

La Toja is quite good, as is the tallow Speick stick.

Vegan Speick is surprisingly good. If you were not already familiar with the tallow stick, you wouldn't notice a thing.

I echo what most here have already commented in that there is a slight reduction in slickness and post-shave feel; but the end result is pretty damn good - I would guess that to be the aim for the newly formulated MWF

 

[Loner16]

Actually, I'm a bit surprised that 32 pages of discussion has not been sufficient to bring a response from a spokesperson at Mitchells... They must be aware by now of this discussion?