Virgil – The Man's Guide

Bob. If you have absolutely no idea what Bob is, then it truly blows my mind that my social media feed isn’t the same as everyone else’s. So I see Bob a fair bit, but I suspect that is because I actually bought Bob and tested it for a solid month. A product I was so excited about — one of those products that pops up and you immediately believe this is going to be me for life now. Well, I was so very disappointingly wrong.

What’s a Bob?

For the confused folk still in the room, Bob is basically a piece of plastic you wash yourself with. Marketed as a refillable body wash that is eco-friendly, good for your skin, smells great and is easy to travel with. I was fucking hooked.

Before I get into the actual review, I have to thank Bob. I had been using bog-standard Tesco cheapest body wash and, at the time, was making a conscious decision to switch to soap, but hadn’t yet — until Bob. I am not an overly eco-friendly man. I recycle my waste into the appropriate bins — yes, even food. I walk when I can, and if the opportunity to save wastage or reduce the overuse of hard plastics appears, I’m taking it. I would say these are just modern cultural changes we have taught ourselves to try and be better, rather than me just being a hippy. So Bob gave me the final push to end my rampage of body washes and find real soap to use. Thanks, Bob.

Bob is a clever design: it’s sleek, it’s smooth, compact and Batman-looking. It comes with a holder to stick on your shower wall and two soap refills. I paid £30.99 including delivery for the “shower pack”. I thought this was reasonable, as I was getting the unit and holder, along with two bars of premium-quality soap — after which the refills would be £12 for four bars a month. This should have been a red flag. A bar of soap a week — now I wash more than the average man, but that seems more than necessary. Then I saw the bars.

So an average bar of soap, say Imperial Leather, is around 100g, and you get four bars for £2. A premium brand like The Black Stuff is around 140g, which is roughly £8 a bar. Bob’s refills are 41g, so for £12 you’re getting 164g a month, coming in at 13.6g of soap per one pound coin. So above premium pricing. This is when an age-old argument comes in: everyone wants to be more eco-friendly, but not everyone can afford to be.

Take your soap, pop Bob open and fire it in. Bob has a clever spring mechanism that pushes your soap up with a simple click. The soap fits snugly in its holder, surrounded by rubber exfoliating bristles.

The bars of soap in my pack of two were The Ordinary Man and The Morning Man. All the soaps boast good pH levels, are vegan, moisturising and have a high lather. That’s all good, but really the two things we want from a soap are scent and, most importantly, lather. Bob lets us down on both. Scent-wise, I preferred the lime and peppermint Morning Man, but it was fairly subtle. But even that aside, all we really want is a good, thick, soapy lather that makes you feel scrubbed and squeaky clean. Bob just doesn’t do it. Even with this rubber-bristle, exfoliating design, it just doesn’t lather. You might get a bit under your armpits, but trying to get anything anywhere else is a genuine chore.

For a product I was so ready to change my life for, I soon became fed up with even using it. I got to the stage where I removed the soap from the holder to try to get a better scrub with it. I genuinely believe this has some sort of potential, but Bob needs to remember: for all the bells and whistles, for all the taglines of good ethics and GQ mentions, Bob is punting low-quality soap at premium prices. I think the tagline is clever in terms of being sustainable, but really all bars of soap are. Buy a plastic travel box for it and you’ve got your own personalised Bob.