Thread: For the Doctors in the house...

I have a craving to try the old vintage old spice shave soap if I can find a fully wrapped unopened puck of it on ebay. Is that sanitary - ie if it is still in the orinal plastic wrap, should I feel confident it won't give me cooties?

Im no doctor, but it is soap, rinse it off before using and it should be ok.

Personally I wouldn't waste the effort for the old spice soap. A bar of Williams or VDH will perform about the same.

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

Personally I wouldn't waste the effort for the old spice soap. A bar of Williams or VDH will perform about the same.

Really? I heard others say it's better than MWF. Every fad has its champions, but I would've thought something with that kind of following would be better than Williams, the low point on the tallow scale, and VDH is (I think) a cheap glycerine soap.

Should be ok if sealed and unused, but I'd worry it'd be dried up.

A still-sealed puck should be fine to use. I had one and liked it pretty well. You can probably expect the scent to have faded with time. The shave was not one that I preferred over MWF, D.R. Harris or Tabac, so I ended up trading it away.

Not an MD but I do train infection control nurses. No bacteria can live long on dry soap: the osmotic effect of the soap would dehydrate them. With that said, there are some spore forming bacteria that can survive very long periods in a dry state: notably Tuberculosis, Anthrax , and Diptheria. Very unlikely any of these would be a contaminant in a bar of unused soap! Anthrax is very rare, as is Diptheria, nowdays. Soap is heated during manufacture to the point that I don't think any organism could long survive, in an environment of hot lye! My .02.

louee,

I don't have any Old Spice soap, but do have a box containing a cake of Colgate Shaving Mug Soap. It's yours if you want to go mano-a-mano with the suds gods.

If there's something growing on it, you could just take a thin layer of the soap off. Water or some kind of grater might work. I don't know if something could grow into the soap. If it has cracks or holes in it, it might be something to consider. There was a thread a while back about viruses living on old razors. I think somebody said they usually die off in a couple of days. You could use some antibacterial soap to get anything that's left. Maybe some surgical soap?

On a different note, it seems strange to recommend cleaning soap with soap. I've never heard of anybody using soap to clean soap before. Then again, before I found this site, I've never known anybody who went through the trouble to get really nice shaving soap, either.

Old spice aftershave has alcohol in it doesn't it? Maybe you could use some of the aftershave to not only kill the germs, but to add some smell back to it?

Originally Posted by Bruce

louee,

I don't have any Old Spice soap, but do have a box containing a cake of Colgate Shaving Mug Soap. It's yours if you want to go mano-a-mano with the suds gods.

I've heard of Colgate shaving soap. Was it a competitor with Old Spice back in the day? Did it give you the same "swagger"? Oh wait, that's the new Old Spice marketing campaing. They ought to add a straight razor line to go with that marketing campaign - it'a all about manliness, and what is more manly than straight razors!? [well, other than bay rum of course]