and othersLast spring, one of my favorite brand tie-ins of 2023 came when cosmetics giant Lush teamed up with Nintendo to create a range of products based on Super Mario. It was a riot of brightly coloured shower gels and super sweet fragrances, including an amazing Princess Peach body spray that I still wear because I don’t give a damn about gender-based perfume norms.
Rush has released a new video game series. Celebrating Minecraft’s 15th AnniversaryThere are 12 items in the collection, including a TNT block, the most literal bath bomb Lush has ever made, as well as grass and lava blocks, a creeper head shower bomb, and a diamond pickaxe bubble bar, which is pretty heavy despite its small size.
The collection is the result of a year-long collaboration with game developer Mojang, and has been a popular project among the company’s employees. Melody Morton, creative director at Lush Concepts, is a frequent player, but she’s not the only one. “We have a lot of Minecraft players within the company, so we had a lot of input and resources to draw from in terms of product, creative, and messaging,” says Kareem Brinkworth, creative lead on the Lush collaboration team.
How much you want to try these will depend on your love of the game, and Lush’s famously rather strong scents. “Choosing the scent for a product is often the last part of putting everything together, so we all have fun with this part,” says Brinkworth. “Some items had a clear and obvious scent direction. For example, the Glass Block Bath Bomb needed to smell clean, fresh and green – just like grass. We developed a freshly cut grass scent a while back, so this combination was in the cards from the start.”
Brinkworth says some of the other items required trial and error with multiple scents. “We look at the color of the bath bomb and the properties of the item to determine the overall feeling we want to evoke, and that often leads to the perfectly matched scent.” The TNT bath bomb is an explosion of ylang-ylang and jasmine that paints your bath a vibrant red, like you’re immersed in a hippie horror movie. In contrast, Creeper Block has a delicate lemongrass scent that belies the creature’s sinister role in the game. Totem of Undying is a soap made with Brazilian orange and bergamot oils that some people might find off-putting, but as someone who likes to smell like fruit salad chews, I love it.
Lush is not the only company to combine cosmetics and gaming. A few years ago, ColourPop Cosmetics had a great selection of Animal Crossing: New Horizons products. While applying make-up Fairy Tail Co., Ltd. is established A perfume inspired by the fighting game “Guilty Gear.” If you want a truly unique perfume, Capcom released several Colognes. It’s based on the zombie horror series Resident Evil. I have no idea what it smells like, and honestly, I don’t want to know.
But what’s really cool about this collection is the way it thinks about form factor: Most of the pieces are cube-shaped, so you can stack them up next to your bath. You can also hit them with an axe. The Lush Bath Bombs add-on for Minecraft: Bedrock Edition is also available to download for free from the Minecraft Marketplace, which allows you to create your own bath bombs to use in the game. I found this really useful a few years ago when I was trying to give my Minecraft-obsessed young sons a bath. For any other desperate parents out there, remember that if you have kids who want to smell like a creeper or the Ender Dragon, you’ll need to hurry up and buy one, as the set will only be available until the end of August.
Source: www.theguardian.com
