So here you have a new shower tool aimed at men by Dove. It seems like the formula for aiming grooming products at men is: 1) Make it gray or black 2) Make it smell like pine trees or rich mahogany 3) Stamp “Men” on it.

The general encouraging of dudes to properly wash themselves is a good thing, especially for any ladies who might encounter them. However, looking past the man-friendly design and often very funny marketing, do the products really live up?

To go with all the new all purpose cleaners aimed at men (See Axe, Old Spice, Nivea, and now Dove), these companies have started producing manly looking cleaning tools, because obviously men are too dumb to use a wash cloth or a bath sponge. We need something that looks like it should be used to polish our car or sand the deck.

Product Overview

That is where the “Active Clean Dual Sided Shower Tool” comes in. That’s quite a mouthful. That’s what she said (sorry, I digress). Essentially, that is code for a plastic tool with a soft loofah for lathering on one side, with a rougher scrubbing sponge on the other, all surrounded by grippy gray plastic. The idea is that you put body wash on the soft side to lather up, and then give yourself a little scrubbing with the rough side to remove dirt and dead skin, etc.

The Big Problem

The shower tool has a major flaw, one that if women knew about might have them running for the hills. I am going to try to put this delicately. The size and inflexibility of this tool makes it absolutely impossible to clean some hard to reach areas that exist on every man. The areas in question should be of the utmost concern to any man or woman who could potentially end up in any such intimate situation with any owner of this product. It was tough to clean the underarm area with this thing, let alone areas with even less space to maneuver… if you know what I mean.

The Little Problems

Putting the “big” problem aside, this thing still doesn’t work very well. The outer plastic makes is tough to squeeze, and hence hard to generate any real lather. The same problem applies to properly rinsing it when you’re done. The cleaning surfaces are limited, so while testing this thing I felt like I was trying to wash myself with a tennis ball.

Conclusion

After trying this thing once, I returned to using my plain old bath sponge, which works better in absolutely every way. If you must buy the body wash that smells like jet fuel because the Old Spice guy told you to, I guess I can’t really blame you, he makes a good case. However, stay away from all the gimmicky man-washers like this piece of junk.

A funny commercial for a similar product by Axe