Those of you in the UK will have heard of the "health and beauty" retailer Superdrug, for those outside the UK, they are a store similar to that of Walgreens. When I was walking past recently, I spied a new set they had on offer... A traditional style shave set. I went in and had a look to see it was only £5! A pretty decent offer for what was inside, so I decided to pick it up and do a review for you guys
What's inside?
Here is the set: Contains a fairly generic brush, a soap, an "aftershave" and a face cloth.
After opening the box I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the brush. Despite its appearance, its actually a fairly soft brush, unlike the usual bristle ones that you can pick up from the shops here, and I was a little more hopeful about its performance and feel on my face.
The soap is a strange one. Its glycerine based (an obvious move to make it vegan friendly) and the scent... my first thoughts were "clean... like a freshly cleaned bathroom". It has no disenable smell, it just smells fresh and fairly pleasant.
The cloth is a cloth and the aftershave is a very generic moisturiser style, no real scent but its fine
The Shave:
I was originally going to do the shave with my go to setup: A Yaqi Final Cut with a Treet Carbon blade, but then I considered who this kit was actually for: Beginners who's razor would be one of the ones that come up when you search "Safety razor" into ebay or amazon. So I had a look through my collection and decided on something a beginner might buy: The Gillette sterling razor that can be picked up for around £5. Its a nice little razor that is often sent with a few blades, but as those are long gone, I decided to pair it with a Gillette Nacet blade for the closet to "brand new" experience someone who gets it might have.
I began my typical lather process only to discover some odd behaviour with the soap... the lather that was forming was creating small, pearl like clumps of lather on the brush and dish instead of a large, singular blob of lather like normal (pic 1). To see whether this was the fault of the brush or lather I tried the sets soap with my regular brush: A Yaqi husky knot synthetic and tried the brush on a soap I know lathers amazingly: La Barbiera's sweet orange soap. The problem of the "pearls" did also happen on the new brush (although not as much as before) (pic 2) whereas the set's brush performed perfectly well with the new soap (pic 3). The soap was fairly heavy on the face, even with a lot of extra water but it still performed fine as a soap and did the job fine.
Overall conclusions:
If you are into shaving and already have the items this kit contains then I see no reason as to why you should buy it. The soap is nothing special and the brush, while nice and better than some other cheap brushes, Is not worth the £5 and having the rest of the kit.
However this kit is not designed for us, it is designed for those who have never shaved with a brush and soap before and is meant as a gift set. For that purpose I think is a very nice little set, maybe to someone younger who is just starting to shave, or just as an introduction for someone who may be on the fence. The soap is a 125g tub so should last for a long while and combined with a cheap razor like the one used, could make for a nice little starter set.
What's inside?
After opening the box I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the brush. Despite its appearance, its actually a fairly soft brush, unlike the usual bristle ones that you can pick up from the shops here, and I was a little more hopeful about its performance and feel on my face.
The soap is a strange one. Its glycerine based (an obvious move to make it vegan friendly) and the scent... my first thoughts were "clean... like a freshly cleaned bathroom". It has no disenable smell, it just smells fresh and fairly pleasant.
The cloth is a cloth and the aftershave is a very generic moisturiser style, no real scent but its fine
The Shave:
I was originally going to do the shave with my go to setup: A Yaqi Final Cut with a Treet Carbon blade, but then I considered who this kit was actually for: Beginners who's razor would be one of the ones that come up when you search "Safety razor" into ebay or amazon. So I had a look through my collection and decided on something a beginner might buy: The Gillette sterling razor that can be picked up for around £5. Its a nice little razor that is often sent with a few blades, but as those are long gone, I decided to pair it with a Gillette Nacet blade for the closet to "brand new" experience someone who gets it might have.
I began my typical lather process only to discover some odd behaviour with the soap... the lather that was forming was creating small, pearl like clumps of lather on the brush and dish instead of a large, singular blob of lather like normal (pic 1). To see whether this was the fault of the brush or lather I tried the sets soap with my regular brush: A Yaqi husky knot synthetic and tried the brush on a soap I know lathers amazingly: La Barbiera's sweet orange soap. The problem of the "pearls" did also happen on the new brush (although not as much as before) (pic 2) whereas the set's brush performed perfectly well with the new soap (pic 3). The soap was fairly heavy on the face, even with a lot of extra water but it still performed fine as a soap and did the job fine.
Overall conclusions:
If you are into shaving and already have the items this kit contains then I see no reason as to why you should buy it. The soap is nothing special and the brush, while nice and better than some other cheap brushes, Is not worth the £5 and having the rest of the kit.
However this kit is not designed for us, it is designed for those who have never shaved with a brush and soap before and is meant as a gift set. For that purpose I think is a very nice little set, maybe to someone younger who is just starting to shave, or just as an introduction for someone who may be on the fence. The soap is a 125g tub so should last for a long while and combined with a cheap razor like the one used, could make for a nice little starter set.