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Why are soaps more popular than creams here?

Castle Forbes, XPEC, TAOS, 3 T's, ect..

Those do typically have better scents in my experience, and more variety. There are plenty of rose scented shave creams, for instance, but I can't think of any rose scented shave soaps.

Years ago the typical triple-milled shave soap was more redolent of beef tallow and any delicate fragrance notes were muted by that. It wasn't a medium known for fragrance.
 

Raven Koenes

My precious!
I like soap, but Cyril R Salter Shaving Cream is dope. The scents are fantastic and the lather is the bomb. It's as slick and the post shave feel is great. My favorite is CRS French Vetiver. For around $14 US for a 165g it's a steal.
 
Cheaper with a wider variety and longevity.

Exactly. Pricewise, you're just paying for the soap, not the water.
Also, the variety of scents is mind-boggling.

I suspect that people who prefer creams to soaps have a bad lathering technique.

There I disagree with you. Personally, I find it harder to get good lather from a cream than from a triple-milled soap puck. I get there eventually, but I have to work harder and use more product with creams than with soaps.
 
There I disagree with you. Personally, I find it harder to get good lather from a cream than from a triple-milled soap puck. I get there eventually, but I have to work harder and use more product with creams than with soaps.

If you like face lathering, triple milled soap is easy, especially if you use the soap every day.
 
When I found there is life beyond cartridge razors I started with a cream that my wife bought me at AOS in the mall. Loved the smell. That was when I found B&B and started to do research. I realized that using a cream is easier because you skip the step of having to load the brush. So, not wanting to make thing more difficult for myself so early on, I stuck with creams. And I bought a lot of them. Mostly TOBS but also Musgo Real and Proraso. Then I decided I felt comfortable enough with the process to try a soap. Once I tried a soap that led me down that rabbit hole and I started buying soaps. What I've found is that I much prefer tallow based soaps. There aren't many creams that have tallow, if any, so I just feel that soaps provide me with more slickness and cushion and better post shave feel. I still use creams when I am pressed for time and can't afford the extra minute or so it takes to load a brush. Some of the creams will be replaced when they are done but some won't be. If the performance is there and I really like the scent, I'll buy more. TOBS Grapefruit is one of those. It smells insanely just like real grapefruit. I love the scents of the 3 Musgo Real creams I have and the performance is really good as well. I'm not happy how much they cost now so when I finish a tube I'll assess whether it's worth it to buy another tube then. I actually bought backups for my 4 Proraso creams a long time ago. But I don't use it that much so what I have will probably outlast me. I also love AOS Sandalwood. Good protection and a great scent. That will be replaced. After all my boring diatribe I guess what I'm trying to say is that many people start with creams and then graduate to soaps. But I'm not so sure soaps get more love in general. I'd say it has more to do with where each person is on their classic wet shaving journey.
 
Sometimes I load less with a soap and end up with a sub-par lather. Never experienced that with a cream. Put the cream in the bowl add water swirl swirl swirl done.
 
If you like face lathering, triple milled soap is easy, especially if you use the soap every day.

Nope. Early on, I made the mistake of trying to face lather with a pure badger travel brush from AOS, using their Shaving cream. My neck was a bright fluorescent pink for two days. I learned from that mistake. Now I usually build my lather in the mug, or in a bowl. When I travel, I sometimes take a small vintage-handled Maggard synth and a stick of Tabac. That, I can face lather. But at home, I find WMS in a mug to be far easier.
 
Nope. Early on, I made the mistake of trying to face lather with a pure badger travel brush from AOS, using their Shaving cream. My neck was a bright fluorescent pink for two days. I learned from that mistake. Now I usually build my lather in the mug, or in a bowl. When I travel, I sometimes take a small vintage-handled Maggard synth and a stick of Tabac. That, I can face lather. But at home, I find WMS in a mug to be far easier.

I have that small AOS pure badger brush. My wife bought it for me in a kit that started me on this road. It's a pretty scritchy brush. I never did the face lathering thing and have always bowl lathered so never experienced the irritated face issue. But I never liked the scritchiness and small size of that brush. It now sits in a bin under the bed with a whole bunch of other stuff I no longer use. One day I'll go through it and start to sell some of it or PIF it.
 
I have that small AOS pure badger brush. My wife bought it for me in a kit that started me on this road. It's a pretty scritchy brush. I never did the face lathering thing and have always bowl lathered so never experienced the irritated face issue. But I never liked the scritchiness and small size of that brush. It now sits in a bin under the bed with a whole bunch of other stuff I no longer use. One day I'll go through it and start to sell some of it or PIF it.

Yeah, some people like the scritch, so I PIF'ed it.
 
I can't seem to get a good slick creamy lather with cream, always feels more airy and less protective to me. And like many have said, more of a variety with all of the artisan soap makers!
 
I had shaved with an injector or cart & canned foam/gel for almost 40 years before switching to a DE. When I began using a DE 10 years ago, I bowl-lathered creams my first 2 years. The DE was easy to learn, lathering was not. Be it me or my well water, I never could get a consistently, good lather with creams. Once I found that face-lathering soaps gave me more control over my lather, I ditched the creams, bowls and scuttles.
 
Sometimes I load less with a soap and end up with a sub-par lather. Never experienced that with a cream. Put the cream in the bowl add water swirl swirl swirl done.

That's a problem I have frequently with soap, especially the hard kind. It's hard to judge how loaded the brush is with some soaps, and the loading can vary depending on how dry the soap is that day.
 
Nope. Early on, I made the mistake of trying to face lather with a pure badger travel brush from AOS, using their Shaving cream. My neck was a bright fluorescent pink for two days. I learned from that mistake. Now I usually build my lather in the mug, or in a bowl. When I travel, I sometimes take a small vintage-handled Maggard synth and a stick of Tabac. That, I can face lather. But at home, I find WMS in a mug to be far easier.
Yikes. I can feel the redness all the way from here. Pure badgers + cream are No for me.
 
There's no real "artisan" creams, as creating a product that won't dry out involves either airtight tubes or petrochemical emulsifiers. You pretty much have to have an industrial setup, which means anybody looking to get into the shaving cream business has to be decently capitalized.

OTOH, anyone with a crock pot and an inkjet printer can create and sell shaving soap (and looking at places like Maggard's, most of them do). So there's a much wider base of artisan makers that have cropped up as wet shaving gets more popular. There's simply a much, much wider variety of bases and scents.

Also, creams are kind of "middled out." They were originally created to make it easier to shave than loading shaving soap with a brush. Nowadays, anyone looking for an easy shave is more than likely using aerosol.
 
Have never tried shaving cream in a tube. Don't remember seeing it on store shelves. However, shaving cream in a tube is what the Apollo astronauts used.

My guess is that canned shaving cream rapidly took the market share from tube shaving cream, while shaving soap users were mostly those who hadn't migrated over to shaving cream. Maybe shaving soap in a tube is simply a novel concept to many wet shavers today.
 
There's no real "artisan" creams, as creating a product that won't dry out involves either airtight tubes or petrochemical emulsifiers. You pretty much have to have an industrial setup, which means anybody looking to get into the shaving cream business has to be decently capitalized.

I've bought shaving cream from small businesses selling off eBay. The cream comes in cosmetic tubs. The business brand I purchased from (Love My Skin) sells mostly to women, but they do make some men's fragrances, as well.

All you need is a stick blender, a hot plate, beakers, pipettes, and some raw materials you can purchase off Amazon. It's really not that different from making moisturizers or lotions.

Also, creams are kind of "middled out." They were originally created to make it easier to shave than loading shaving soap with a brush.

Creams have been around since at least the 1840's. (this thread has a few scans of old newspapers mentioning endorsements for shave creams and photos of old shave cream pots). They were originally created because people demanded ways to shave that were more luxurious and didn't irritate their skin as much as many of the shaving soaps of the day did, which often contained an excess of lye. Concern about sensitive skin is not a new thing at all.
 
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I can't seem to get a good slick creamy lather with cream, always feels more airy and less protective to me. And like many have said, more of a variety with all of the artisan soap makers!

You need to make sure your brush is just damp. Then very very slowly add dribbles of water. In the beginning it will actually be pasty, similar to soap. Then as you add more water the consistency will slowly get to the same point that you can get a soap lather to look like. No bubbles. Soft peaks. And that all important sheen. Gotta have the sheen. If you start to see bubbles after you've been working the lather for a while then you may have added too much water. The nice thing about creams is the error can be corrected with more product. If you learn how to work up your cream lathers to look like your soap lathers, you'll be more inclined to use your creams. I should add that I bowl lather so I can watch it very closely. If you face lather I suppose you can put a small dab of cream on the brush and work that into the lather on your face. But I'm not a face latherer so don't listen to any face lathering advice from me.
 
I have yet to try a cream. Many opinions say soaps last longer so that is what I went with...I may have to try a cream for fun.
 
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