Old Bath and Body Works truly was better than new BBW...

I know this may seem like an odd blog post, and I'm honestly not sure what category this would best belong to, but as someone who has been using soaps, lotions, and hand sanitizers from Bath and Body Works since 2013 when I was 7 years old and has found some old bottles laying around my room quite recently, I really do think I need to point out what's been obvious to me for a while now: New Bath and Body Works is nowhere near the same in terms of quality compared to old Bath and Body Works. 

And when I say "old" here, I'm not even talking about the 90s/2000s, I'm talking about 2010s BBW). As much as I would've liked to have grown up on Cucumber Melon and Blazin Blueberry and all the other cool shit from the 90s and 2000s, I can at least say that I got to experience Pink Chiffon, Dancing Waters, Vampire Blood, and Paris Amour during my younger years (the latter 2 of which, I still have the old style triangular Pocketbac bottles for that I've been refilling with newer stuff and I'm pretty sure the former 2 bottles may still be in one of my drawers somewhere).

I'm not even kidding when I say that they've seriously diluted their fragrances gradually over the past decade or so. I've had a strong suspicion since I was in middle school that their fragrances were slowly but surely becoming weaker and not holding up nearly as long as they used to when I was a kid and lo and behold, I seem to have proven myself correct many times in the past 7 years. The most recent times I've proven myself correct were upon refilling a mostly empty Pocketbac bottle of Fresh Sparkling Snow (which I'm pretty sure I got around December 2013ish or so) that I let my mom finish up before dumping some newer sanitizer into it and could still smell it quite strongly a few feet away as well as with the older bottles of shower gel and lotion of Sweet Cinnamon Pumpkin that I recently ordered from eBay and are probably from somewhere around 2010 - 2014ish (before they changed the bottle design to the current one in 2015) and boy do those have a strong, lingering fragrance you never seem to get with their newer products anymore. I've even scoured the internet to see if anybody else has noticed this phenomenon as well and have found some people on Reddit who share the same predicaments as I do, so I know it can't just be me and I'm not going crazy here (or at least not becoming any crazier than I already am) when I say that they really have gone downhill quality wise over the past few years or so.

Hell, I should probably mention that my 2nd grade teacher had a fragrance allergy, but that absolutely didn't stop little shithead 7 year old me from triggering her allergies on a daily basis from across the room with how strong those Pocketbacs I'd use were circa 2013 - 2014 until she eventually figured out the culprit was me and angrily threatened to confiscate them if I didn't stop using them in class (but even then, that still didn't stop me from coming to school drenched in strong smelling, glittery Disney Princess perfumes or acting grown up with the stench of my Teen Spirit Pink Crush deodorant all over my underarms, because like I said before, I was a little shithead back then as a kid). I know it's a terrible confession to make as I look back now as an adult woman, but I can't change what's said and done and I was still a child who didn't fully grasp the potential seriousness of allergies just yet.

With the newer Pocketbacs, it's like the fragrance is there for only a minute or so before it completely vanishes and you have to apply a lot of it onto your hands and rub your nose into them to smell anything at all, so while that may be great news for people who are allergic to fragrance, it's not so great for us non-fragrance allergy sufferers who would like to be able to actually smell what we're wearing for once and to have said fragrance actually last a decent amount of time. It's not even just the Pocketbacs, either. It's goddamned everything that they sell that has been effected by this fragrance weakening.

BBW has essentially become the Cadbury Egg of fragrances. You're paying more for products that are having their scents increasingly diluted, bottles you end up having to go through faster filled with shit that doesn't work as well, and bottles that are getting smaller (at least with the travel sized bottles). It's shrinkflation at its finest.

And speaking of shit that doesn't work as well, I've also happened to notice that they've discontinued all of their "shower gels" and replaced them with these damned "body washes" starting last year in 2024. 

If you're wondering what the difference between a shower gel and a body wash is (other than the name, obviously), essentially, their body washes aren't as stripping or effective at cleaning your skin as shower gels are. Read this if you really want to know more about the differences:

You may think that it's good that they're trying to reformulate their soaps with more hydrating, moisturizing ingredients (as if lotion didn't exist), blah blah, blah, but when you have combination skin, live in an area with hard water, and/or have trapped sweat under your skin from the fucking heat and humidity of summer (and just so happen to also live in a place that has warm/hot weather almost all year round like I do), you'd think otherwise, given that these ingredients are supposed to trap this shit inside of your skin instead of effectively removing it from your skin. It's no fucking wonder why I, my mother, and even strangers I've seen have all been dealing with these odd red bumps all summer long. I'm convinced that the quality of people's skincare product ingredients is doing this to them, especially since I haven't had to deal with this shit before, nor have I seen a bunch of strangers with similar weird bumps on their arms and legs around here. And using a small amount of that old bottle of Sweet Cinnamon Pumpkin over the past few evenings has really made me feel as clean as a whistle and has made it so I haven't been able to scrape off any left behind skin cells with my fingers after bathing.

I don't care what anyone says, give me my sulfates back and I'll be happy. Because people like me, living in the same places as me, exist on this planet too, you know, and I just want something that works and does what it's supposed to fucking do and doesn't require me to use up half the fucking bottle in one go to even try to come close to properly cleaning my skin off of everything at the end of the day and still be left with disappointing results (as well as having to buy more soap more often than I used to in the not so distant past). I don't use sulfate shampoos because my hair is color treated and all and I don't want to strip the dye off of it or anything, but I am still able to use sulfate body soaps from shoulder to toe. And while we're at it, give me my preservatives back too, because I want the shit I own to actually last a while as well. That's all I'm saying. I am NOT happy with whatever they're doing with their current formula right now. 

Honestly, who do they think they're trying to fool here? Kids who haven't lived long enough to see these sorts changes in real time or been nearly as observant as I have over all 19 years of my life? Because they sure as hell have stopped fooling me, and I think I've finally found the straw that broke the camel's back after years of remaining suspicious until now. I can finally confirm that it's not just my imagination when I say new BBW honestly sucks compared to older BBW and that they've truly lost their "magic" as of late, as have many other things in this crazy modern world that I'm forced to endure and try to work my way around. More proof that the 2020s do in fact, suck.

Anyways, here are some images I found online (not mine) of what the shower gel and lotion I got look like (looking closely at the labels, I'm pretty sure these might be from slightly different years due to slight differences used for the fonts of each, but it doesn't really matter):