Soy???: Although I’ll freely admit that I don’t exactly know what the difference between a soy candle and a regular candle even is, I picked this one up at Target because even off the shelf without being lit I found that it had a much deeper pumpkin smell than most other candles outside of that ridiculously overpriced place in the mall that I’ve smelled. Lit, its scent is quite rich, but not necessarily room-clearing … very pleasant, much akin to baking a particularly high quality pumpkin pie!

So I had actually heard of these guys a while ago – the idea is that they offer a new t-shirt design every single day, but they only continue to offer designs as long as they keep selling well.  And although I honestly don’t really wear a lot of printed t-shirts these days, when this little beauty was brought to my attention, well, needless to say I guess I just couldn’t say no…

Plus, it was only ten bucks SHIPPED on the first day it was released – you can’t beat that!!!

Anyways, it’s hard to say just how long it’ll continue to be around, but it’s still safely within The Top 20 Shirts right now as we speak, so if you like pumpkins and/or math, time is of the essence to jump on this amazing tribute to the bestest dessert to grace today’s dinner table!

Quick Post: A pretty basic candle, really – nice fragrance, but not particularly strong unless you stick your nose right down inside the candle, which I don’t suggest that you do! Still, a good, reliable candle for ambiance around the house if you happen to live with people who might not necessarily be quite as in love with pumpkin as you are…

First Glance: I know, I know – at first glance, this one looks shockingly similar to one of those bottles of hand soaps that I reviewed last fall, and I suppose if you base your intuition solely on the name, then that would technically be correct!  However upon closer inspection, you’ll note that this jack o’lantern-donning variety lacks those same weird exfoliating spheres that yours truly found kind of annoying in the previous offering, so frankly, I kind of like this year’s model better!

Also: Yes, that is very much an Octopus Dish Scrubber there accompanying our cheery bottle of hand soap by my kitchen sink.  Stay tuned for my next goofy blog, Love Me Some Cephalopods!, and I’ll be happy to tell you all about him…

Candlelight Commentary: I don’t mean to be a buzzkill or anything, but … is it bad if a candle smells better when it’s not lit than when it’s a’burning strong???

Commencement: So I guess to sum up my review … “Meh.”

Manly Caveat: Guys, you ever find yourself walking around one of those scented soap and body lotion stores without a single electronics store nearby in sight to take refuge in?  Once we’ve made our rounds and giggled at all of the peculiar-flavored scents there’s really not much left to occupy our wandering minds … that is, until we find something that interests us for a change…

The Choice: So as you can see in the picture, Basin actually had two different pumpkin shower soaps here for me to choose from – on the left, shampoo bars, and on the right were conditioner bars. I ended up choosing the former merely out of curiosity as to how one would actually wash their hair with a bar of soap!

The Shower: Surprisingly, it wasn’t that bad and lathered up pretty nice, filling my shower with an avalanche of pumpkin spice that made waking up slightly easier than normal!  Giving it the old college try, I used it for about a week straight, ultimately stopping because it honestly got hard to tell if it was actually cleaning my hair or not.  That, and it was kind of a pain to rinse out, in that on my last day I somehow managed to lather up all over again outside the shower upon putting my hair gel in, despite thinking that I had gotten it all out.  Oops…

FWIW: I’m pretty sure there are supposed to be some all natural benefits to using this shampoo as well, but hey – I was a guy in a soap store, so some of that stuff may have gone a bit over my head!  I did later notice some other pumpkin hand soaps at another Basin location (the shampoo was from the Downtown Disney location, however later on in the weekend we also visited the one in the Grand Floridian), so we’ll see if I happen to wander by there again while these things are still in season.  It’s fairly likely – my wife does adore their bath bombs…

…and body lotions, and bath salts…

Origin: Among many, many other things that we’ve discovered while cleaning out our house in preparation for moving next week, my wife found these cool pumpkin candles mixed in with a box of something-or-other.  Apparently she heard that I kind of have a thing for pumpkins, thus I found them happily waiting for me on my desk one morning.  And there was much rejoicing!

Disclaimer: What can I say?  My wife likes this store for obvious girly reasons, so whenever I find myself wandering its aisles while she’s looking for some new lotion or whatever, I do what I can to entertain myself!  Often times that results in me taking funny pictures of the various scents until the stores employees with their creepy headsets tell me to stop, but in this case, believe it or not I was an actual customer, too!

Taste Scents: Oddly enough, it’s actually the Creamy Pumpkin variety that has more pumpkin spice smell to it; if anything, the Sweet Cinnamon Pumpkin scent reminds me of most other random fruity lotions that they sell at that place.  This kind of surprised me because I have a candle of the latter I got last year and I really enjoy that … I was sort of expecting the soap to have a similar fragrance.
Texture: They’ve also both got those weird, little “exfoliating microspheres” in them like you sometimes find in body wash, which I’m not particularly a fan of because it always feels like I’m washing myself with sand, but who am I to fight a trend in anti-bacterial cleansing technologies?
Happy Ending: Although ultimately I actually prefer Creamy Pumpkin myself, I also pride myself as being an equal opportunity host, so please note that you will find both varieties at your disposal in my guest bathroom going forward, should you be visiting and find yourself needing to tidy up a bit!  That is, at least until my wife finds them and swaps them out for cherry or watermelon or some other traditional hand soap nonsense…

Curiosity: How does a flameless candle even work???
Exposé: That was basically the question that landed this little doozy in my cart while I was grocery shopping the other day because call me a guy, but I guess I just always thought that fire was a key component in how candles operate as a whole!  Needless to say, my curiosity got the best of me, and it didn’t hurt that it was a pumpkin-scented candle because otherwise I probably wouldn’t have really cared…
Impact: The scent, while nice, certainly doesn’t really do much to fill up a room like your traditional, fire-powered candle normally would.
Reason: This thing is pretty much just a mini Christmas light bulb seated in a column of wax, so I guess the only thing that really triggers the release of the scents in the wax is the heat emitted from the bulb itself … which in my experience wasn’t much.  I mean, I could smell pumpkin if I stuck my nose down in the thing and at least I could safely do that without worrying about my nose catching on fire, but still, if you’re looking to fill your home with the comforting scents of the fall harvest, just be a man and buy a real candle.

Awesomeness: Seriously, what better Christmas gift could a pumpkin-fan get than the opportunity to lather himself with pumpkin each and every morning?!
Caveat: Just as the picture shows, this delectable scent actually came as part of a set of several different food-scented shampoos, but which one do you think yours truly cracked open first?
Showery Aroma: like taking a bath in a pumpkin pie … without all of the uncleanliness
After-Smell?: Surprisingly, shortly after leaving the shower the pumpkin scent had pretty much dissipated, which was probably a good thing because although I loved the smells filling the shower during my morning rituals, I’m not so sure that reeking of pumpkin would be the best impression to make upon everyone who I encountered throughout the rest of the day!
Gratitude Due: A special thanks to my loving wife for finding such an awesomely pumpkin-i-fied Christmas gift.  May all of our Christmases together be merry and orange…