OK let's just get all this out of the way. Pears isn't shaving soap and I know it. The ingredient list isn't my favorite ( hello SLS and PEG-4 ). I have ridiculously easy water to create lather with, AND I am positive my whiskers are easy to shave and the skin on my face is robust enough that I'm comfortable shaving with less than stellar products.
Setup - I've been wet shaving for over a decade and back in the days of my initial forays into shaving there was scuttle-butt about the then current Pears soap formulation being a decent enough pre-shave product. That tidbit had stuck in my head, and at some point when I was in a Dollar Tree one day looking for Yardley's bar soap I saw they had some Pears and I purchased a few. I went home and tossed them in a bucket of random bath soaps I keep in the washroom and pretty much forgot about them. This morning I was rummaging around and saw one of the boxes and thought I'd toss it in the shower where I actually do face prep for my shave ( I keep a synthetic brush in there and usually actually lather my face with either glycerine soap or whatever shave soaps I'm just trying to get rid of ... I keep it on my face for a few minutes then rinse it off before exiting the shower and then using my actual shave product ).
So this morning I start lathering the Pears with the super-cheap no-name synthetic I keep in the shower and thick yogurty lather is just exploding out of this thing. I'm confused because I wasn't expecting that. I apply it to my face and commence with the rest of my shower. However, at this point my brain is clicking along just kind of replaying the lather creation I just observed and I scrapped my plans for using my 'real' shave product today.
So I exit the shower with my Pears, grab my presoaked Vulfix brush, and commence loading heavy. Since this is new to me I'm deciding to definitely bowl lather so I start that process. The lather is thicker than I see from a lot of non-shave products I've tried this with, but it has some of the tell-tale characteristics you see when you do ... apparent bubbles and just a notch-less 'weight' or 'thickness'. It handles all the water I add to it well which is good because I tend to load these kinds of soaps extremely wet to make sure they have plenty of slip, and because in my experience they tend to dry out faster than traditional shave products. When I'm happy with the lather I apply it to my face which is always a telling point ... some of these 'wash' soaps have lather that just falls apart on the face even if you think it looks good in the bowl. Pears held up fine though, so I began my shave.
The end results were I simply had a functionally good shave. Don't get me wrong it wasn't a life-changing experience or anything like that, but it was a shave with no hiccups or mishaps. In fairness, I have to report I was using a RR SLOC razor with a Walgreens 'German' Personna blade, and for me that is a combo I really have to do something ridiculous with to create problems. The lather performed well, and I did my typical three pass shave with touchups. I'd say the Pears provided adequately in most of the areas I look for from a shave soap without really standing out in any area. I'd lump it into the same category as a lot of low-end shave soaps that don't have some of the fancier ingredients and that lean on the SLS and glycerine content to do the heavy lifting. Slip and glide of the razor was spot on without being top tier and I may have noticed just a touch more drag while buffing than I might but it was manageable. Post shave feel was nothing to write home about, but it certainly wasn't a negative.
Will I use this again to shave with? Truthfully probably not. It doesn't do anything better than my already existing collection of products and the scent isn't nice enough to make me want to use it for that purpose. I don't particularly like using products with synthetic detergents ( SLS ) if I can help it. If I just have to shave with a $1 soap I'm probably going to reach for the Yardley's Shea Buttermilk bar and call it a day .... BUT .... if I'm ever in a place where Pears was my only option I at least know it works.
So another experiment for Shave Science has been completed. Pears does work ( at least for me ) as a viable shave soap that I wouldn't hesitate to use if needed.
Setup - I've been wet shaving for over a decade and back in the days of my initial forays into shaving there was scuttle-butt about the then current Pears soap formulation being a decent enough pre-shave product. That tidbit had stuck in my head, and at some point when I was in a Dollar Tree one day looking for Yardley's bar soap I saw they had some Pears and I purchased a few. I went home and tossed them in a bucket of random bath soaps I keep in the washroom and pretty much forgot about them. This morning I was rummaging around and saw one of the boxes and thought I'd toss it in the shower where I actually do face prep for my shave ( I keep a synthetic brush in there and usually actually lather my face with either glycerine soap or whatever shave soaps I'm just trying to get rid of ... I keep it on my face for a few minutes then rinse it off before exiting the shower and then using my actual shave product ).
So this morning I start lathering the Pears with the super-cheap no-name synthetic I keep in the shower and thick yogurty lather is just exploding out of this thing. I'm confused because I wasn't expecting that. I apply it to my face and commence with the rest of my shower. However, at this point my brain is clicking along just kind of replaying the lather creation I just observed and I scrapped my plans for using my 'real' shave product today.
So I exit the shower with my Pears, grab my presoaked Vulfix brush, and commence loading heavy. Since this is new to me I'm deciding to definitely bowl lather so I start that process. The lather is thicker than I see from a lot of non-shave products I've tried this with, but it has some of the tell-tale characteristics you see when you do ... apparent bubbles and just a notch-less 'weight' or 'thickness'. It handles all the water I add to it well which is good because I tend to load these kinds of soaps extremely wet to make sure they have plenty of slip, and because in my experience they tend to dry out faster than traditional shave products. When I'm happy with the lather I apply it to my face which is always a telling point ... some of these 'wash' soaps have lather that just falls apart on the face even if you think it looks good in the bowl. Pears held up fine though, so I began my shave.
The end results were I simply had a functionally good shave. Don't get me wrong it wasn't a life-changing experience or anything like that, but it was a shave with no hiccups or mishaps. In fairness, I have to report I was using a RR SLOC razor with a Walgreens 'German' Personna blade, and for me that is a combo I really have to do something ridiculous with to create problems. The lather performed well, and I did my typical three pass shave with touchups. I'd say the Pears provided adequately in most of the areas I look for from a shave soap without really standing out in any area. I'd lump it into the same category as a lot of low-end shave soaps that don't have some of the fancier ingredients and that lean on the SLS and glycerine content to do the heavy lifting. Slip and glide of the razor was spot on without being top tier and I may have noticed just a touch more drag while buffing than I might but it was manageable. Post shave feel was nothing to write home about, but it certainly wasn't a negative.
Will I use this again to shave with? Truthfully probably not. It doesn't do anything better than my already existing collection of products and the scent isn't nice enough to make me want to use it for that purpose. I don't particularly like using products with synthetic detergents ( SLS ) if I can help it. If I just have to shave with a $1 soap I'm probably going to reach for the Yardley's Shea Buttermilk bar and call it a day .... BUT .... if I'm ever in a place where Pears was my only option I at least know it works.
So another experiment for Shave Science has been completed. Pears does work ( at least for me ) as a viable shave soap that I wouldn't hesitate to use if needed.