Facebook blamed for Pears cocking up their soap
By Mof Gimmers
A terrifying soap advert, yesterday
Recently, Pears’ changed the formula of their flagship soap. You’d think no-one would be arsed about something like that wouldn’t you? I mean, it’s just soap. The amount of ingredients were trebled which changed the look, smell and feel of it ‘beyond recognition’. Some users stopped self harming for long enough to type that this new bastard version had been made to ’smell and feel disgusting’.
Who said this?
Yep. It’s those ubiquitous users of Faecbook. Just like the Let’s Get Rage Against The Machine To Number One crew, another Facebook group campaigned for the return of the old soap.
The group, called ‘Bring Back The Original Pears Soap‘, which has a whopping 29 members at the time of writing, is generally saying ‘Urgh! It’s horrible! My skin is drier than a fanny full of cat-litter!‘
Apparently, complaints have been made to owners Hindustan Unilever Ltd which has seen Pears bosses agreeing to bring the old soap back in March.
If you’re at all interested, the old soap contained just eight ingredients – including rosemary and thyme extracts and also Pears Fragrance Essence – but these were ditched and replaced with Sorbitol, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Linalool, BHT, Cl 12490 and a whole bunch of other stuff you could also cut and paste from the Wikipedia page I’m currently getting bored by.
Basically, the main grip seems to be that the old bar smelled nice and the new one smells either of Tea Tree Oil or frankincense (the latter, convincing me that some of the complainers might be as old as the product itself).
Neil Rutty, the Divisional Managing Director for Cert Brands – the UK firm charged with marketing Pears – admitted that the company will do a u-turn on this and something closer to the old one will be lathering up your paws in no time at all.
He said: “You will be pleased to hear that although some changes were made in October 2009, Unilever India have listened to their customers and are revising the product again and it will be much closer to the original by March this year.”
He added: “It would appear that Unilever have not got the new formulation quite right at the moment, but from the samples I have seen we will be pretty much back to normal by March and consumers will only have the benefits of a greener product with improved moisturising qualities to enjoy.
Aren’t you glad I told you all this stuff about soap?
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Posted in Complaints January 7th, 2010 | 9 Comments
feral trolley of the week
*puts shotgun in mouth*
> The amount of ingredients were trebled which changed the look, smell and feel of it ‘beyond recognition’.
If the amount of ingredients was trebled, then surely you would end up with a bar of soap with the same composition, just three times bigger in volume.
Ha ha, seeing as it’s Pedant’s Corner down here…
Shouldn’t that be GRIPE.
*aware that needed a question mark.
*Points out that Pedants does not need an apostrophe.
….amount of ingredients not volume of ingredients
All those ingredients, but no pears. ASA take note!!
I’m scouring the stores looking for old formula bars. I scored 3 of them today! Whoohoo…
Yes, well, the new one certainly smells different, but that’s not the main gripe. The problem is that the old formula was LOVELY and did not dry your skin and cause problems that other soap did. And, since many of us methusalas who’ve been using Pears for decades, the gripe is that there was nothing wrong with it in the first place, so why change it? I had no idea I was so attached to my soap until I opened a box of the new stuff this weekend. But you know what, that soap has been in my hands and on my skin several times a day for a long, long time, and I shouldn’t have taken it for granted that it always would be. Note to self, start hoarding everything I like!!