The Saturday photo did not work for some reason, so I am doing that shave again this morning.
The Rooney Style 3 Size 1 Super Silvertip made a very nice lather from Van Yulay Hercules shaving soap, which is available in any of more than 300 fragrances. I am partial to vanilla, so I got the Tonka Bean Noir. (Tonka beans provide a vanilla fragrance, and they are also used in the Paul Sebastian aftershave I picked this morning.)
Hercules seems to have more glycerin than some other Van Yulay soaps. The ingredients of Hercules:
Deionized Water, Glycerin, Sorbitol, Sodium Cocoate, Sodium Stearate, Saponified oils of Soy Bean-Safflower-Stearic Acid, Goat milk, Coconut-Palm-Manteca-Veg Olive-Emu-Grapeseed-Almond-Castor Oils, Honey, Sea Salt-Kokum-Mango-Coco-Shea-Butters, Amino Acids,Chamomile, Calendula, Polyquats, Liquid Silk, Marshmallow Root, Allantoin, White Kaolin Clay, Silica Powder, Vitamin E, and Fragrance.
Like all Van Yulay soaps, the ingredients are interesting and apt to include some puzzles. (What, for example, is Sea Salt butter?) The soap is not vegan—as you see, the soap contains manteca (lard) and emu oil.
UPDATE: The web site has now been altered. The hypen after “Sea Salt” in the above copy-past has now been altered to be “, “, so Sea Salt is now an ingredient by itself, no longer included as a butter. I do find the Van Yulay ingredients list in general could profit from a keen editorial eye. They tend to include errors of this sort. Also, I was informed that the “Extracts” are of various things, and which things is proprietary. This is bad news for those with significant allergies, but the information will not be divulged as to the sources of the extracts. I did recommend that “Extracts” be changed to “Proprietary Extracts” or “Various Extracts.” /update
Compare the ingredients to their Achilles shaving soap:
Stearic Acid, Coconut Fatty Acid, Palm Stearic, Castor, Potassium Hydroxide, Glycerin, Tobacco Tea, Aloe Vera, Coconut-Emu-Tallow-Meadow Foam-Borage-Argan Oils, Kentucky Bourbon, Sodium Lactate, Herbal Ground Tea, Calendula, Extracts, Poly Quats, Allantoin, Silica, Bentonite Clay, Glycerin Soap, Tobacco Absolute, Mica and Fragrance.
The mystery ingredient in this list is “Extracts”—of what, there is no clue.
Both soaps are quite good, and I did like the tonka-bean fragrance of the Hercules version I bought.
Three passes with the wonderful iKon 101 left my face totally smooth, and a splash of Paul Sebstian aftershave finished the job.
Filed under: Shaving
