The sugared body polish by Not Soap Radio is a shower/bath treat for softening up rough skin and preparing for shaving from the neck down. it's also a treat for the senses with an appealing variety of scents available to choose from. I am reviewing the one titled "Meditating In A Zen Garden." Anyone can use this product as long as they aren't sensitive to any of the ingredients and/or sensitive to smells, and I think it would make a great gift item for many occasions.

Keep in mind, it isn't called "sugared" just to sound appealing. Sucrose really is the first ingredient, so keep it away from your nether regions to avoid issues. This is for external use only. On that note, don't eat it either. This isn't an edible massage product or anything.

This is also not for facial use. I tried this just for the sake of research since I like a nice, rough scrub on occasion and sugar hasn't aggravated my acne yet but it was an extremely stupid idea and my face is still broken out from this. So, don't repeat what I did. Get a specifically facial scrub for facial purposes.

This product comes piled up in a somewhat solid mass in its container. It doesn't have a whole lot of moisture in it. It's about the consistency of packed, wet sand only made out of sugar crystals. If you push your fingers down into it, you can squish it down and leave dents but it stays together well. It stayed in one solid block until it, well, melted.

It has a gritty texture to it from the sugar and cranberry seeds, which is so great for smoothing down skin that is starting to flake. It's very thick, and that is nice since it lets you use only a small amount to cover a large area. It took far less than a small handful for me to exfoliate my back, thighs, and chest in the shower. Of course, it also means it takes a while to wash it off, especially all the cranberry seeds. It took me forever to wash those all down the drain.


If you touch it just to feel the texture, your finger feels greasy after but it doesn't leave a coating if you use it as intended and wash it off after lightly scrubbing your skin.

The smell is delightful. The fruity notes hit me first when I smell it, swiftly followed by a bit of ginger and sweet flowers. It's strong but not overwhelmingly so and is what I would consider a soothing yet invigorating scent. I think the blend of scent elements in this particular product is perfect and I wouldn't change a thing about the scent. I fully intend to buy other products with this same scent so I can use them all and layer it.

Speaking of layering, if you want this smell to stick around, you should probably get the matching body spray or something because this product didn't leave much of a lasting smell on my skin compared to other beauty products I own unless I didn't wash it all the way off and brushed the sugar and seeds away instead. The scent is more for the shower experience and relaxing than perfuming your body it seems. That's fine with me, sometimes I want to use it and wear a different scented product after and I haven't had it stick around long enough to really clash with anything yet.

In the description for the solid parfum in this same scent, the scent is described as a "blend of lotus flower, cooling greens, ginger, and hint of melon." That seems about right to me.

Here's the only problem with this product: This sugar scrub basically melts away into a liquid if the weather is even a degree over 80 Fahrenheit. I assumed, since the reviews and package said this was to be used in the shower, that being left at room temperature would not kill it since most people use warm water when they shower. Not so! I wasn't concerned when this product got more and more moist in just a few days as the weather warmed up, but recently I found to my dismay that it had completely melted into a liquid before I even got a chance to use it properly. I put it in the fridge to no avail, and then the freezer. It eventually thawed into a consistency where it can be used again and seems to be fine but the mixture of ingredients definitely shifted, making a thick coating on top with the sugar semi-solid underneath. After using it a couple of times it looks about like it did when I got it but I think the moisturizers in it are what shifted to the top. I definitely would've put this product in the fridge early on for safekeeping if I had an inkling for even a second that this was what was going to happen to it because it freaked me out. There was nothing on the package that warned me about this melting so easily and I have never had a scrub do this to me before. I even did a Google search about sugar scrubs melting and found nothing. I really thought this was designed to be used in a bathroom which will probably get warm and steamy but this product failed me as soon as the temperature got warm. Oddly enough, when used in a hot shower after I got it to solidify again it took quite a while to start getting moist again much less start melting. I just don't understand this product's reactions to temperatures!

The packaging is colorful and unique. The clear container has a black lid on it with a bright green and purple label. It says "I'm not here, I'm really meditating in a zen garden." Off to the side of a little graphic of an Asia-styled arch: "Sayonara noise, stress hectic life. Stop distractions. Be still. Mind clear. Feel the smooth sand, coarse rock. Breathe in, exhale slowly. Soul cleansed. Reality transcended. Enlightenment achieved." At the bottom of the green circle: "Reality is simply what you make of it. NOT SOAP, RADIO sugared body polish." There's a small graphic of a gate on the label.

Considering that I have known people who actually are Buddhist, I was at first a little weirded out by the idea of a company using the sort of spiritual imagery and language that Not Soap Radio used on this product to sell a beauty product. It does help add to the escapism part and I much prefer colorful packaging like this over boring and I certainly don't mind being reminded to relax, I just think it would have maybe been better to tone the Zen references down a little and add some more vacation-related imagery instead since this particular product line seems to be about escaping to physical places (Like the Tuscany beach scent!). That's just my humble opinion though and I didn't find it offensive or anything.

On the side label of the container, also purple and green, are images of a stylized lotus flower and bamboo.
The front says "Exfoliating, moisturizing, life-energizing sugared body polish with cranberry seed." The back has the ingredients list.

Ingredients: Sucrose, butyrospermum, parkii (shea butter) fruit, oryza sativa (rice) bran oil, cetearyl alcohol, caprylic/capric triglyceride, stearic acid, polysorbate 20, fragrance, tocopheryl (vitamin E), vaccinium macrocarpon (cranberry) seeds, phenoxyethanol, caprylyl glycol.

I used this product with my hand, as that allowed me to control how rough it felt to some degree. It was too much like sandpaper if I wasn't gentle. After use, I noticed my skin felt softer and the rougher, acne-prone areas were a lot smoother. I liked the idea of cranberry seeds as an exfoliater a lot even if they were a little harder to wash away than the granules of more ordinary scrubs.