Soap box time! I was excited to see Fortune Cookie Soap‘s winter theme of the year… and they’ve gone with products themed after National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, a movie I personally try to watch every Christmas.

As per usual, their graphic designs are spot on. Sometimes I wonder if I just enjoy FCS‘ creativity more than their products!

I don’t understand these products at all. They’re called “Shower Steamers” but they don’t actually cause any steam in my shower. Sure, they smell nice… but that’s about it. It doesn’t do anything for my skin and I sure don’t get any kind of a fog in my shower unless I turn the water on burningly hot and open the window to let in the -5 degree air.

This stuff was wonderful! The Christmas Bonus scented (yeah… they haven’t told us what it’s actually scented with… we’re supposed to guess) deep conditioner is pretty amazing. To me, it smells of peppermint candy canes, and on the hair it feels like a thick paste. My hair feels especially soft and pliable after using this, but it’s really the scent I’m in love with. I got two uses out of the little pot they sent us.

Oh boy. This THING. (Hydrate Me in Sparky) The item itself is lovely – it’s a moisturizer body butter type thing that melts into your hand as you apply it to your skin. And good lord the scent is delicious (vanilla pumpkin waffles – AMAZING)… BUT… and this is an *enormous* but (*insert Kim K joke here*)…

It’s just a FREAKING MESS. Who the hell wants to use a body butter that is going to turn your body RED? It gooped red all over my hand, onto my leg and then when I gave up trying to rub it into my skin (it tinted me pink), I ended up wiping it off on my towel… which is now stained. (I sure hope it comes out in the wash!) This product is completely *useless* because of the added colour on top of the body butter. Like seriously, did they not test this before sending it out? It’s completely ridiculous and *totally* impractical. Not to mention that it will stain anything you sit on afterwards (like my brand new white sofa…).

DISLIKE.

Edit: I posted about my problem on their Facebook page and they responded by saying that they’ve removed the green and red Hydrate Mes from their order and are sending out different ones. They asked me to contact customer service to “resolve the issue”. In the end they apologized and offered me 10% off my next purchase. I won’t be taking them up on that though since the cost to ship up to Canada is insane!

Now this was interesting. Whipped Soap? Never even heard of it. But the texture was moussy and slippery and it was a pleasure to use. The Fried Pussycat scent was also equally appealing. I wasn’t entirely sure HOW to use it, so I just plopped a bit on my hands and slathered it all over my body. It probably would’ve worked better on a washcloth.

More OCD Hand Sanitizer. Comes in every box, so I’m left to conclude that this is either the most popular product they sell (doubt it) or the cheapest to make (I’m going with that one). I’m over the hand sanitizers at this point – I’ve yet to finish the one I got in the spring soap box many moons ago!

This is glorious. So glorious that I want to eat it. Cuticle butter scented like egg nog? Holy god, be still my heart. Slippery, slimey, oily cuticle goodness. Hard to go wrong with this product! Just… try not to eat it.

I love their whipped cream, and I was especially happy to try out a scent that I wouldn’t normally gravitate towards. Bend Over & I’ll Show You is especially tart since it’s scented with cranberries and oranges, with pine, spruce and clove. It’s a weird mix, but I really like it!

And the final product, usually the most interesting, was ultimately the most disappointing (even Sparky had some pizzazz to him). Compared to last quarter’s red sparkly soap, this was just… meh. It was supposedly scented with sweet almond and tobacco – to me it was just… soap.

And with this box, I’ve done an entire year of Fortune Cookie Soap’s soap boxes. I’ve decided to cancel my subscription just because subscription boxes just aren’t really cutting it for me lately. I cancelled Ipsy a while ago  and decided I’d cancel FCS after a year as well. While it was a fun box, ultimately the cost was just a little “out there” for the products I was receiving (particularly since I had to pay international fees). Although I do have to say I’m a biiiit jealous since they just recently announced their spring soap box is going to be Alice in Wonderland themed…

Fortune Cookie Soap‘s 2014 Summer Soap Box is candy EVERYTHING. If you’ve got a sweet tooth, you’ll basically want to eat everything that’s inside your box. (Luckily, they’ve even thrown in a piece of gum and a sucker – likely to avoid you munching down on your bath products.)

The smell of this box was glorious. As soon as I opened the flap I was in candy heaven.

Here’s a closer look at some of the products.

The first item I tried out was the  Rock Your Socks Off solid sugar scrub. The cube is on the small size, but I still cracked it in half and saved the second half for another shower. The scent is full on grape candy – that artificial grape scent combined with cups and cups of sugar. The sugar broke apart easily with a little bit of water (I wouldn’t try to scrub this on dry  skin) and broke down quickly. Loved the smell, but I’d kind of prefer the sugar scrub to be a bit more liquid – that’s a personal preference though.

Next up was the microdermabrasion scrub. I made the mistake of actually using two microdermabrasion scrubs that day (one in the morning and one at night), but suffered no side effects. The scent in the box, and the only one they appear to have on their web site, is Lemon Drop It Like It’s Hot. As the name suggests, it’s lemon-y with a hint of orange. The particles in this scrub are a little bit more coarse than some of the higher end ones I’ve used, but I actually thing it’s kind of helpful since it’ll scrub more intensely if you mush it around your face. Mixed amongst the small particles were a few larger ones – I’m not sure if this is intended, or if a few of the crystals just happened to stick together, but either way it definitely added an interesting texture to the wash. With a price tag that is significantly less than most microdermabrasions, I’d definitely suggest trying this out if you’re interested in the concept but not the high cost associated with other brands.

The Blow Me! Talkin’ Smack Lip Scrub is a bazooka gum with a hint of Fun Dip flavoured lip scrub that isn’t too tightly packed together in the container. It’s about standard for a lip scrub really, so if the scent appeals to you and you like the price, this is worth picking up. It left my lips feeling tingly and fresh (and doesn’t taste bad either!).

I love glitter. Like seriously love it. Glitter in a convenient spray bottle is just pure unadulterated pleasure for me. I have a few other scented glitter sprays from Bath & Body Works, but I am ALWAYS happy to have more of them. Their Sparkle Me in The Sweet Spotis quite literally a sweet scented glitter spray bottle of glory. It has more of a sweet fruit scent and it’s fairly light. I wore it to work yesterday (yep, sprayed myself head to toe in it) and the glitter particles (tiny and not chunky) stayed put all day and no one complained that I smelled like TOO much of anything. Winnar!

I’ve personally never really latched on to the “I need to sanitize my hands after I touch everything under the sun” regime that most people seem to follow these days, so receiving another hand sanitizer (they had one in last quarter’s box) after I haven’t even used up the one from last time is a little on the boring side. HOWEVER, I know there are a lot of people out there that feel like they practically bathe in hand sanitizer every day, so I’m sure these are for you germaphobes. FCS’ OCD Hand Sanitizer in Lollipop Your Cherry thankfully smells more like real cherries than the horrific artificial smells-and-tastes-like-cough-medicine flavour that usually passes as “cherry-scented”. At the end of the day, it’ll sanitize your hands and it’ll smell good while doing so.

Ooo a wax tart! I wasn’t even aware FCS had these. As the name suggests, Sweet Dreamsicle smells like creamsicles. I’ve popped it into my bathroom warmer, but it hasn’t had a chance to actually melt out yet so I can’t comment as to the throw of the scent. It did smell lovely when I sniffed it though!

I love their Whipped Creams, but this scent just isn’t for me. Captain’s Berried Booty(loooove the name) smells like cardboard fruit loops. I was going to smear in on my legs to test the scent for wear time, but the one little dab I got on my hands was enough to steer me away from using it.  The bloody thing lasted for hours and I barely got anything on me! If you like fruity-scented cereals, you’ll love this. Me however? I’m avoiding this one!

And the piece de resistance – their namesake soap. Lick Your Lips fortune cookie soap smells like it looks: like peppermint ice cream with chocolate in it. This is really lovely and the soap itself is, as always, beyond adorable.

My favourite products for this box were the microdermabrasion scrub and the sparkle me spray. Those are two products that I know for sure I’ll use all the way through and enjoy them thoroughly. Scent-wise though, my picks would be Lick Your Lips and Lemon Drop It Like It’s Hot, purely based on personal sniffer preferences.

As I’ve said before, their shipping to Canada is way too high for me to even consider ordering anything from them to my Canadian address. (Oddly, the shipping to Canada for their soap box is less than half the price of even a regular order from them…) So with that being said, I do have a $10 off coupon code for the first person that leaves a message for me on this blog post (and actually wants it!). There are zero strings attached to this – I just don’t want the coupon code to go to waste since I won’t be placing at order this time around. So if you want to place an order with Fortune Cookie Soap, snag $10 off while you can! There’s also no minimum purchase required with this code either. Enjoy!