Archaeology Soap (aka dinosaur soap, aka paleontology soap)

archeology soapOver the past week, we've seen a lot of searches for "Archaeology Soap," probably in response to one of our favorite sites (no kidding, not just saying that), Bored Panda.

Since we always endeavor to keep our fingers on the pulse of what people are looking for, I wanted to take this opportunity to settle the archeological investigations into Archeology Soap.

A couple years ago, I pitched the idea of soap that melted away at different speeds, revealing two dinosaurs, to ThinkGeek thinking "omg this is going to be so awesome! Archeology soap!!" They also thought it was very awesome, and we went on our merry little way, handmaking the soap in what can only be described as an "incredibly painstaking" process. You can see part of the process in this rare archival photo. My mom even came to help us wrap it!

But you see, I am not an archeologist or, as it turns out, a paleontologist (you are probably as surprised as I am... not at all).

In my enthusiasm for dinosaurs in soap, I completely overlooked the difference between archeology (the study of human remains) and paleontology (the study of dinosaur remains). It turns out that people in those fields of work are beyond passionate about the distinction between those two and took multiple opportunities to inform us and ThinkGeek about our error.

It hurt me in my little feel-feels. Yeah, I know. I shouldn't let the angry paleontologists get to me, but I do.

ThinkGeek was very gracious about the error and just apologized on their site, no big deal. Except it was a big deal. And to this day, continues to be a big deal. A REALLY BIG DEAL. Just go check out the comments on the product.

dinosaurs at nightSo if you are coming to find out if we will ever make another run of this glorious soap, which had multiple layers of different kinds of soap, so that it would "erode" at different speeds, no, we will not.

The soap was SO SODDING COOL. It was beyond cool. It was awesome. It took so much work. Every bar was more than 13 oz and it smelled like dirt -- but not, like, dirt dirt, like rich, diggable earth. Every bar had two hand-placed dinosaurs in it, and each bar was hand-cut to exactly the specifications that would preserve the dinosaurs. It was a very technically complicated project. The whole operation took up our whole shop for the entire month of December.

Yeah, we totally dug it.

And yeah, that was totally a paleontology joke.

 

So if you're looking for Archeology Soap, well friend, it probably won't happen again.

And if you're looking to tell us we're wrong about the name, yeah, I know.

Thank you for reading this far down, and for your enthusiasm for this fully awesome soap.

We have a whole bunch of other really amazing soaps, including these really funny ones. Please consider supporting our tiny little enterprise, even though we are luddites.

Leave a comment

Cheryl

I’d love the update on more Archeol/Paleo and Astronaut soap too, please! Thanks!