The Body Shop Grapeseed Body Butter

Perhaps it's the connotation of butter as comfort food, or the self-indulgence of treating your skin so richly. Maybe it's just fun to say. For whatever reason, there is something about The Body Shop's Body Butter that is very appealing, despite its eyebrow-raising price.

Body Butter comes in a smooth, short plastic tub that is easy to open when your hands are clean, but tricky to close once they've been greased up with Butter. A humble suggestion: a textured container. The grapeseed scent is light and pleasant, and the moisturizer is very effective. Maybe even too effective, as up to two hours later, your skin may still feel a bit greasy to the touch. The Butter itself is creamy and smooth, so that a little goes a long way, but the website specifies that each flavor will feel and smell slightly different, and will benefit different skin types. Besides Grapeseed, Body Butter is available in Blueberry, Cocoa Butter, Sesame, Olive, Coconut, Shea, Mango, Nut, and Papaya.

The Body Butter is pretty stiff, so it's understandable why they chose the packaging that they did. A pump or squeeze bottle would just be too much work. One drawback, though, to the tub packaging is that using your fingertips to scoop up the product often results in unwanted Butter underneath your fingernails. If you keep 'em short, then it's not a problem, but we don't like having to dig for it. If you keep make-up spatulas handy, that's ideal.

The last thing to consider when buying anything from The Body Shop is that they have built their business on being environmentally and morally conscious. Their values are described in detail on their website, but our favorites are "Activate Self Esteem" and "Against Animal Testing." We appreciate these new breed of companies, and we like Body Butter. The primary drawback is the value; we would have given a much higher score if The Body Shop cut the price in half.

• purchase price - $16.00
• availability - The Body Shop

Unique Reviews overall rating: 89 out of 100

view all reviews