ILast spring, one of my favourite brand collaborations of 2023 was cosmetics chain Lush, which teamed up with Nintendo to create a range of Super Mario-themed products. It was a riot of brightly coloured shower gels and super-sweet fragrances, including a divine Princess Peach body spray that I’m still using today because gender-based perfume rules be damned.
Now, Lush has launched a new range of video games Celebrating 15 years of MinecraftThere are 12 items in the collection, including easily the most literal bath bomb Lush has ever made – a block of TNT – as well as grass and lava blocks, a Creeper head-shaped shower bomb, and a Diamond Pickaxe bubble bar, which is actually quite heavy despite its diminutive size.
The collection is apparently the result of a year-long collaboration with the game’s developer, Mojang, and has been a popular project among the company’s employees. Lush Concepts creative director Melody Morton is a regular gamer – and she’s not the only one. “We have a lot of Minecraft players in the company, so there were a lot of references and resources to draw on when it came to product, creative and messaging,” says Kalem Brinkworth, the creative director of Lush’s collaborations team.
How keen you are to try them will depend on your passion for the game – and also on the strong scents Lush is known for. “Choosing fragrances for products is often the final piece that ties everything together, so we all like this part,” says Brinkworth. “Some of the items had a clear and obvious fragrance direction – for example, the Grass block bath bomb – it had to smell clean, fresh, green and, well, grassy. We developed a freshly cut grass fragrance a while back, so this combination was a given from the start.”
According to Brinkworth, some of the other items required trial and error with multiple scents. “We look at the color of the bath bomb, the properties of the item, and determine the overall feeling we want to evoke—often, that leads us to the perfect scent.” The TNT bath bomb is an absolute explosion of ylang ylang and jasmine and turns your bathroom a vibrant red, as if you’re immersed in some sort of hippie horror movie. In contrast, the Creeper block has a delicate lemongrass scent, which belies the creature’s sinister role in the game. The Totem of Undying is a bar of soap with Brazilian orange and bergamot oils, which some might find cloying, but as someone who likes to smell like fruit salad gum, I approve.
Lush isn’t the only one combining cosmetics and games: a couple of years ago, ColourPop Cosmetics had a great variety of Animal Crossing: New Horizons makeup, while Fairy Tale Co. is launched A perfume based on the fighting game Guilty Gear. If you want to get really weird, Capcom has released several colonies Based on their zombie horror series, Resident Evil: I have no idea what they smell like, and honestly, I don’t want to know.
But what I think really works about this collection is the way they’ve thought about the form factor. Most of the collection is cube-shaped, so you can stack them next to the tub and then You can hit them with the axe. There is also a Lush Bath Bombs add-on for Minecraft: Bedrock Edition available as a free download via the Minecraft Marketplace. It allows you to make your own bath bombs to use in the game. I could have used all of this a few years ago when I was trying to get my Minecraft-fanatic kids to take baths. Other desperate parents should note that if they have kids who want to smell like a Creeper or an Ender Dragon, they will have to hurry, as the set is only available until the end of August.