I’m always interested in finding new and better consumer products and I recently found out that there is an organization called Product of the Year who solicits votes from consumers and names winners based on quality and product innovation. Being an uber-consumer myself, that’s awesome, so, I decided to try a few of the winners. First one, Softsoap Coconut Scrub bar soap.

I really thought this was a good item to try because the marketplace is inundated with body washes and body gels and all kinds of other modern advances in personal hygiene cleansers. I’m not sure anyone uses a good old bar of soap anymore. I do, so, trying this was a happy medium.

And it was. Softsoap brand is made by Colgate-Palmolive and they’ve done a great job of creating a bar soap that does the job of cleansing while offering a scent and texture that are useful. The new way of body washes can tend to be overwhelming with scent combinations and special emolients. On the other hand, traditional bar soaps sometimes smell like Ajax, but, this is a nice, mild scent.

Another thing I liked about this soap is that it has a scrub element to it. So it’s soap, but, the scrub element gives you an extra sense of clean. And you don’t have to pull out one of those body poofs or a loofa scrub brush to exfoliate, which, is good for your skin. So, no more heading into the shower with a tool box.

And the cost savings was another plus. I bought a box of 4 bars of soap for $3.99 whereas a 10oz bottle of body wash could cost $5.00 easily and not last as long.

So, old-school rules the shower in 2012! Go buy a box of this soap, give it a try in between your favorite body wash and maybe you’ll be a convert. And for those of us who never left the bar soap world, its a nice way to modernize from standard Ivory soap. You’ll be surprised how much you like it.

That’s one consumer product of the year down and 20 to try. Stay tuned…