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Strike Gold Shaving Pass Around

Box has landed. Dude! That’s a big box for 5 soaps!

On first sniff I’d use all of these. None of the scents are polarizing to me. I’ll need to look at the scent notes. I was surprised that three of them are fairly sweet and even Old Hickory has a sweet note. Teddy was the stand out by being much more lightly scented.
 
Rushmore - Opening notes of balsam, verbena, orange peel with apple and cinnamon give it a bright, fruity start. Then middle notes of evergreen, fir, mistletoe, cranberry, sugar, and myrrh deepen the feeling of standing in a forest, which is further solidified with base notes of pine, sandalwood, balsam fir, and incense.
My tub impression - The scent notes help pull the individual scents out for me. Originally mostly sweet and fruity, I'm getting the apple followed by some of the pine, but still fairly sweet. I think this will be enjoyable tamed down by lathering.

Teddy - Top notes of wild lavender, lemon blossom, and acai berry are married to mid notes of yellow iris petals, pink peony, and white magnolia. All of this is laid on a dry base of gilded amber, creamy vanilla, soft sandalwood, and cotton musk.
My tub impression - This is the softest of the soaps. I get a soft lavender with some of the cotton and sandalwood. Maybe a touch of the amber and vanilla adding depth.

Kennedy - This complex aroma has top notes of aldehydes, ozonic effect, metallic effect, violet leaf, neroli, cardamom, black pepper, and fresh ginger. Then a heart of beeswax, cyclamen, linden blossom, lavender, and leather will evoke the fresh cut flowers in the cut crystal vase by your side. The base of gurgum wood, patchouli, myrrh, cedarwood, tonka bean, oakmoss, white musk, honey effect, old wood effect, vanilla, and amber.
My tub impression - Again sweet. I can see the ozone and rounded sweet floral notes. I'm not getting any amber or cedar. I would say more of a stronger aquatic sweet fresh scent. But not that nasty Tide smell Chad likes.

Old Hickory - This Old Hickory aroma is a unisex fragrance with fresh top notes, floral heart notes, and a musky, woodsy base. Fresh, herbal citrus at the start blends into rose, oakmoss, grapefruit in the middle. It all rests on sandalwood, blonde woods, amber, musk, and tonka.
My tub impression - From the tub this is my favorite. Again hard to distinguish individual notes. I can see the grapefruit and a sweet leathers with a touch of citrus.

Nixon - A sweet and sour blend of lemon and sugar cane.
My tub impression - Candy. Super sweet. And it ain't lemon. Maybe like an orange Starburst.
 
2020 shave #16 (DE:0 SE:1 Str:15 Cart:0) - 533 days of consecutive shaving
Blacklands Vector "Merlin" w/ Schick Proline (1)
Stirling synth
Strike Goal Rushmore
Alum
Thayers Lemon
Nivea 2:1
Calvin Klein Euphoria

First, the razor. I was really drawn to using the SS again, but have a distant memory that reminded me how awesome a shave Merlin gives. And boy howdy he did! The first pass on the cheeks was actually not as smooth as my SS shaves which surprised me. But in the end there ain't a scrap of nuttin' left and I'm feeling ultra DSBBS. Sure is satisfying.

Next the soap. Wasn't sure which to start with from the pass box so just started at the top of my random list. This was a medium soap in softness. Easy enough to scoop, but not croapy. I mentioned the tub smell to me was sweetness like apple with a pine after note. Around 4/5 strength which I appreciate. Lathering was straight forward with it taking a decent amount of water. Now, I'm far from the best latherer here, but I got what looked like a slick wet lather vs the picture perfect whipped cream lather. It could have needed more water and more work, but again I ain't the best at that. On application the scent didn't change a lot. I would go would a pine jolly rancher. I'm really curious what everyone else will say. When 4 out of the 5 soaps have a similar sweetness to me, I'm starting to think I'm just picking up one of the ingredients in a way different manner than most do. Performance was interesting. Or lets say unique. To give it a rating I'd put it at Sterling level wherever you like to rate them. What was different was I felt it had a ton of cushion, but not a lot of slickness and I don't know if I can describe it better than that. It was as if the first stroke in an area was very well protected, but then as if all trace of soap was gone after that. I did have no troubles going back for more strokes and there were no issues with irritation, but the minute vibrations in the razor felt like something I'd envision being associated with shaving an alumed area. As you saw I did get a lovely shave, no alum sting. But here's the weird part. I'm thinking this soap has no post shave residual slickness but then when I'm rinsing off, it took a lot of water to rinse all the slickness away. I don't know if this was skin food stuffs I should have left on my face. If I really needed a ton more water in my lather. We may find out tomorrow.
 
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