Kmart's $4 retro bathtime treat hits big
A tiny bath product no bigger than your thumbnail has sent mums into a frenzy of excitement on social media – and you’ll only have to splash out $4 to get your hands on your very own.
Kmart has continued its seemingly endless run of cult buys with the release of a range of scented ‘bath pearls’.
That’s right, the very same fragranced little blobs of oil you were obsessed with as a child.
Vanished from shelves
Was there actually a bathroom in the ’80s or ’90s that didn’t feature a glass container full of these oily wonders, which started as an innovative product sold by The Body Shop and ended up hitting the mainstream?
At one point it seemed a bath just wasn’t a bath unless you’d transformed the tub into a slippery slick of Dewberry-smelling gloop.
Then, presumably outpaced by the growing sales of bath bombs by The Body Shop’s arch-rival store Lush, bath pearls vanished from the retail landscape.
They were quietly missed, featuring sporadically in Reddit threads and the occasional nostalgic tweet, until now.
And after one mum posted a photo of her new bath-pearl stash in a popular Facebook group, women across Australia have united in their excitement over the discovery that Kmart has revived an old favourite.
Nostalgic hit
“I loved these as a kid when taking a bath!!” wrote one. “You’ve brought back so many memories.”
“I’ve been randomly checking at the body shop for these for the last 20 years hoping they’d bring them back,” another admitted.
The sight of the shimmering orbs triggered a wave of memories for many.
“Aaaah yes, i remember the oil ring around the bath and the goopy ball that got stuck in the plug hole,” one woman reminisced.
“Those were the days.”
If you’re keen to take a slippery, scented trip down memory lane, the Kmart revival pearls come in four different scents: coconut & apricot oil, strawberry & peach, juniper berry & hibiscus, and passionfruit and guava.
No word yet on whether Kmart will sell Dewberry pearls any time soon.
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