Mysore Sandal Soap

A friend brought back a bar from India a few weeks back, and I have been using it daily since. The bar seems to last a long time. The scent is not perfumy or loud, just masculine and subtle. I do find it somewhat drying, but at this time of year, most things are. I tend to use it only on my face, and use another liquid soap for everything else, then use a balm after shaving and I am good to go. Highy recommend it if you can find it.

I just got four pucks of this soap and when I opened the first one.... oh, boy, does this thing smell good and as said above, REAL sandalwood. No clove, pepper or anything else. Just plain, simple, pure sandal.
Apart from the scent, well, it's a soap and cleans but tends to leave the skin dry, hence the low note on moisturizing.

Doesn't so much have a scent as stink like an arab khazi, completely overpowering and quite unpleasant. Had to throw it out as the whole house smelt.

Simply awful!!!

This is simply a great soap if you like the smell of sandalwood. I like the drying effect it has on my generally oily skin. I, so far, have found that it hepls me avoid heat rashes and agrees with my skin more than any other mass produced bar of soap.

When you couple all of that with the fact that it's the only soap that uses 100% sandalwood oil on the market, and the fact that you can probably by at your local indian grocer's for about 2$ a bar - you just can't go wrong.

Caveat emptor: this things really smell of sandalwood. I love the scent. Some guys might find it offputting

Price- pretty good- two 150g bars shipped for about $10 and change from Tom's Incense on Amazon.com. You may be able to find it cheaper, as I didn't look too hard. It's definitely more expensive than store bought bar soap when bought over the internet- this is almost certaily cheaper if you can find it locally (Indian grocer, etc), but I can't so far. My rating is for the internet price including the shipping.

Quality- Apart from the scent, I see no great difference from any other better than average hard bath soap. If it has fancy ingredients, I'll never know because there was no ingredient list on the box except for mentioning the EO and 'pure vegetable ingredients.'

Lather- I suppose average, I don't require mountains of lather provided the lather it does generate spreads evenly and cleans my skin. This it does. It ain't a shaving soap though.

Moisturizing- I find the soap a little drying as I do most bar soap, be it Dove, Ivory, or anything like that. In summer I expect it'll be fine, it is only in winter that I have trouble with bar soap. For reference, I would rate a '6' as 'requires no additional moisturizer'

Scent- what does sandalwood smell like? I don't know for sure, but this smells much more 'incensey,' somehow spicier than my QED shaving soap, which (I think) is scented with the same, or at least a similar, sandalwood oil. The scent of this soap is much more present that the QED. Of course, one is a glycerine shaving soap and the other a more traditional body soap, so there are probably many variables to account for that I am unaware of. There is also the base soap's smell, which is, well, soapy. The santalum album EO at the local organic store (although grown and harvested from who knows where) smells somewhere between the two.

Unlimately, no complaints about the smell. Different than I expected, but still very nice and very powerful. It lingers on the skin for a fair time, and I can smell it on my hands an hour later if they are within about six inches of my nose. It is growing on me as I use it, and I can smell it rooms away. Mysore in Karnataka is supposed to produce the finest sandalwood oil in the world according to Wikipedia, and this is a very woody, spicy sandalwood. Maybe they add other scents, (thus my 'incense' impression?) I don't know- the ingredients list is incomplete. Maybe this is how the finest sandalwood oil in the world smells. If so, that's one impressive tree.

Efficacy- smells great and cleans my skin. I'll ding it as it could moisturize better for my tastes.

Packaging- already in the trash. It's a small carboard box with nostalgic printing on it, the soap inside is sealed in plastic. Still the scent has found a way out!

Overall, I would buy it entirely for the scent. Other grocery store bar soap seems to work just as well for me as long as it's not absolute garbage. It claims on the box to be 'excellent for the complexion,' and that may be so, but after a few days I notice no difference. If you're trying it for the first time, I recommend getting it as cheaply and in as small a quantity as you can. You can get it in bulk on amazon.com (as of now...) if you like it.

I used this soap several times in Dubai. I'm not huge on Sandalwood, but it's an excellent soap.

I've been using this soap for a few years now. The scent is very, very fragrant. It's not for everyone, but I happen to like it a lot. Although they claim to use 100% natural sandalwood EO in the soap, I wouldn't be surprised if they add other fragrance components as well. The soap gets the job done. It's not a fancy luxury soap or the most moisturizing soap out there. It can be a little drying, so sometimes I will alternate my use of this soap with Pears glycerine so my skin doesn't get too dried out in the winter. Still, I really like this stuff. Enough that I bought a case of it. If you like the smell of sandalwood and don't mind strong scents, give it a shot. Re: what the previous reviewer said, the fragrance does mellow out after using it for a few days. It is very, very strong after the first use and for the first couple of days.


The following link indicates they have already started to buy sandalwood from other countries due to the shortage in India.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysore_Sandal_Soap

I bought this from a local Indian grocer yesterday for $2.50 Canadian.

Packaging is cool, simple box with neat artwork. Bar is wrapped in sealed wax paper (or something similar)

The scent is overpowering. I washed my hands with it and was able to smell the scent of the soap hours afterwards. I left the bar of soap open in our bathroom and had to move it to a different room before going to sleep. The scent was so powerful that we had to turn the exhaust fan on in the bathroom (ensuite bathroom). Today I realized the scent was too powerful for our household and threw the bar in the garbage (outside).

I gave the bar a value of 5 for the variables I could not rate due to the small amount of use I got from the soap.

Maybe this is great soap, but it is too strong a scent for me.

This is a great soap and the smell is wonderful too, though my friends and girlfriend don't particularly care for it.

The price is great at 1.25 a bar at the local Indian grocer.
Quality is top notch, nothing lacking.
My soap lathered quite well indeed.
I think the scent of this soap is great. I tried Honeybee Sue's sandalwood shave soap and found the scent to be very pungent and disagreeable but thsi stuff is fantastic.
Efficacy; It sure get's the job done.
I love the packaging. I can't say it any better than the author of the review.

Great soap. Buy some if you see it.

I agree with the OP's comments - if you're a sandalwood fan, then this is a MUST have.

Its got a deep, woody, warm sandalwood that envelops you in the shower. When I use it wash my hands, I can still smell the scent (faintly) hours later.

I get mine at a local Indian grocer for about $1.25 per bar and you can get it online for about the same.

I think this is very good soap, I find it kind to the skin and think it lathers just fine. If you're used to body washes or other products with surfactants, you might think this stuff doesn't lather well, but it lathers on par with any natural soap I've used. Its got lots of good oils in it and doesn't dry my skin - even in the winter.

This soap would be a good buy at double or triple the price given its sandalwood EO content, at the price it goes for, its worth stocking up - I've been using it regularly for years and always have a few bars around.

The company also makes a sandalwood talc that I'm trying to find a reasonably-priced source for.

In sum, if you like sandalwood, buy this stuff.

Great review.
I love the smell of that soap. Very inexpensive price.

When it comes to sandalwood soap, there are tons of options. A lot are expensive, artificial, or blended with other scents and ingredients. And as a result, people often have a false sense of what sandalwood REALLY smells like. But why should you pay $7, $8 or more for something branded with a "familiar" name that you think is sandalwood when you can get the real thing for a fraction of the price?

Mysore Sandal Soap comes straight from India, where the government soap factory of Karnataka harvests sandalwood oil from the forests near Mysore and manufactures a variety of products, and the soap in particular has been around for 90 years. This is the REAL thing, guys. Not a blended or concocted approximation with a powdery, barbershoppy-base smell. Just pure, natural, masculine sandalwood. It smells up the entire bathroom and once it settles on your skin, it lingers all day, leaving a warm, sensous, exotic scent without a "soapy" background. And this is why it's clearly superior to pretenders from C&E (which is nice but NOT sandalwood) and L'Occitane (which is essentially an $8 bar of Dial Gold).

And best of all, it can be had for around $1.50 if you look in the right place, either online or at an Indian grocery store. I've even seen it for .99 cents a bar at some online shops.

The bars are relativly small at about 75 grams...though a bigger size of 150 grams is available. Since it's a vegetable-based soap (no surprise since it's from India) don't expect the world's best lather. But if you use a pouf instead of a washcloth, you should get plenty of lather anyway. I do.

The only downside is that it's not moisturizing, and can dry the skin easily. But thankfully there are other varieties to choose from including Mysore Sandal Gold (with almond oil) which moisturizes just fine. The scent isn't exactly the same as the original on the bar, but it is on the skin. There's also Mysore Sandal Classic which, despite the name, is the newest incarnation and is glycerine-based. So plenty of moisture there.

And lastly, the packaging...they've updated it recently, but it still looks like something you could purchase on the shelves of an apothecary shop in Calcutta back in 1918. Very retro and classy. The soap itself smells stronly through the box, is sealed in wax paper, and comes stamped with the the elephant logo and GOV'T SOAP FACTORY, BANGALORE. Nice.

With the current "endangerment" of sandalwood, one imagines that products like this might be endangered as well. Right now they still make it to the original specs, but there might come a time when Indian sandalwood is subbed for other varieties like Autralian for this stuff, so enjoy it while you can!