Five colourants. Blue 1, carmine, Red 28, Red 33 and Red 40, plus mica and titanium dioxide for pearl, in a body scrub, which is a palette a lipstick would be proud of and which exists here for one reason: so the cream in the jar is the pink of the raspberry on the label. Add a synthetic raspberry fragrance, since raspberry seed has no scent of its own, and a papaya extract for a second exfoliation story, and what emerges is a product designed to be looked at and smelled before it is used, from an era when a fruit scrub was expected to be a dessert. That is not a crime, and a body scrub is the least consequential place in a routine to indulge it; but a review has to say which of the two, the jar or the skin, the formula actually serves, and the honest answer is that the skin gets a decent buff and the jar gets everything else.
The buff is the real part, and it is good. Whole raspberry seed is small, hard and irregular, a firmer grit than sugar or jojoba beads, and the corn kernel meal beside it is softer, swelling slightly in water so the scrub feels fuller in the hand and buffs rather than scrapes; together in a light caprylic/capric triglyceride and glycerin cream, they slide over wet legs and arms, take the roughness off elbows, knees and the backs of the arms in a minute, and rinse to skin that is smooth and faintly softened rather than stripped. Two or three uses a week for a fortnight makes a visible difference to rough, dull body skin, and a walnut of product per use means the eight-ounce jar lasts about three months for fifteen dollars, which is inexpensive. The fifty-nine reviews on the brand's site, at a 4.1, praise exactly this, and their complaints are the honest ones: the seeds scratch thin or freshly shaved skin if pressed, the grit is sparse in some jars, the scent is strong and artificial, and the shimmer leaves a trace in the shower. The technique matters more than with a sugar scrub: wet skin, a light hand, circles rather than strokes, and a minute rather than five, after which the grit has done all it is going to do and further rubbing only reddens.
The papaya needs to be dealt with plainly, because the copy leans on it. Papain is a protease that digests keratin under sustained warm contact, and it is unstable in a preserved, water-based cream; a scrub applied to wet skin and rinsed in a minute or two gives it neither the stability nor the time, and the dual exfoliating power of the label is one power and one name. That matters less than it would on a face product, since a body scrub is judged on the buff, but it is the kind of claim that a reader who has bought enzyme products on the strength of a papaya leaf should learn to discount.
The tail is the brand's usual set with the colourants on top. Fragrance, undeclared beyond the word; diazolidinyl urea, a formaldehyde-releasing preservative; methyl and propylparaben; and carmine, which is insect-derived, so the scrub is not vegan, and Red 40, which is an occasional sensitiser. Because the brand publishes the list alphabetically, nothing can be said about how much of anything is present, which for a rinse-off body product matters less than it would elsewhere and still leaves the assessment resting on how seed scrubs behave in general. On resilient body skin none of this will show; on eczema-prone, psoriatic, reactive or freshly shaved skin, the fragrance, the formaldehyde releaser and the hard seed are three reasons to buy a fragrance-free scrub with rounded beads, or better, a leave-on lactic acid or urea lotion, which smooths without scratching and treats keratosis pilaris rather than polishing its tops.
That last point is worth stating for the many buyers who will pick this up for bumpy arms. A seed scrub buffs the tops off keratin plugs and makes the skin feel smoother for a day or two, which is satisfying and harmless with light pressure, but it does not reduce the plugs, and rubbing hard at them makes them redder; the treatment for keratosis pilaris is a leave-on keratolytic, with a scrub like this as an occasional supplement.
On price, fifteen dollars for eight ounces is under two dollars an ounce, and three months of use makes it about five dollars a month, which is cheap for a scrub that works. Nothing in the jar costs anything, the colourants and fragrance are the most elaborate part of the formula, and the value is fair for what it is: a large jar of effective, sweet-smelling grit for resilient skin. For the reactive, the sensitive and the vegan it is fifteen dollars towards the wrong jar, and for anyone who wants the enzyme half of the promise it is a jar that never had one.
