Oh No, I Want This $18 Super Mario Bath Bomb

What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I be happy with what I have? The sun is shining, the jasmine outside my window has erupted in fragrant blooms, and one of my snuggly kitties is snoozing next to me as I type.

So why do I want this $18 Super Mario Bros. two-in-one question block bath bomb and soap from Lush?

Oh, wait, I know why. It’s because marketing works on me. It’s because my brain is a squishy, malleable pile of Silly Putty that gets a new desire imprinted on it every time retailers dangle a shiny object in front of me. Damn you, Lush, you know that I grew up playing Mario and I love bath products! Damn you to the deepest pits of lava in Bowser’s castle!

Some details about the $18 bath bomb, so you’ll maybe see where I’m coming from here: it’s a bath bomb shaped like a question block, and when you drop it in water, it dissolves to reveal one of six different soaps shaped like Mario Bros. power up items. Have you been yearning, since you were a child, to scrub your armpits with a fire flower or an extra life? Now you can! Assuming you get the fire flower or the extra life, that is. You might get a plain ol’ power up mushroom, and damn it, you’re already big.

Of course, Lush doesn’t just want $18 of your money. They want all your money, so there are other offerings, too, like a gold coin soap ($8.75) and a Luigi shower gel that smells like apples ($12.50, except it’s already sold out, losers). There are also shower jellies ($9.50), which shows that I’ve fallen behind on the latest Lush technology, because I can’t tell at first glance if those clean you or make your water fizzy or what.

Here’s a confession that would make my 7-year-old Mario-playing self weep: I don’t even take baths anymore. My condo has one of those cheap bathtubs that feels like it’s about 5 inches deep, and one of my kids has pooped in it multiple times, and my cats like to leap directly into it from the litter box, so whenever I look at it I just feel vaguely sad and ill. I got a Lush candy cane bath bomb as a Christmas gift, and it smells amazing, but all I ever do with it is take it out of the bag and sniff it.

I haven’t mentioned the Princess Peach body spray yet, have it? It comes in a little Windex bottle, and it’s $45. That’s half of $90, and more than twice as much as $22. To put it another way, if I set aside a dollar a day, it would take me 45 days to save up for the Princess Peach body spray (and that’s not counting sales tax or shipping).

Do I want it? Hell yes, I want it. I want to wear it when I see the Mario Bros. movie and spend the whole time surreptitiously smelling myself. But unless Lush starts accepting the little moths that fly out of my wallet in lieu of American dollars, I’m not getting it anytime soon. The tragedy here is that I’ve become the stern parent to my own inner child. The little kid in me wants to hold a real question block in my hands and then watch it magically reveal a prize. The adult in me is clucking my tongue and reminding me that money doesn’t grow on trees. So what if everyone else is buying it? If everyone else jumped off a cliff, would I do it, too? Don’t I know I had to walk to school uphill both ways in the snow? When I grow up, I’ll understand the value of money.

Oh well. Maybe I’ll satisfy my craving for the trappings of my lost childhood by buying something random on Amazon. After all, they’re apparently shipping things in Mario-themed boxes.

(featured image: Lush)