About

Bath Bomb Parodies are a series of multi-panel photographs in which non-dissolvable objects are thrown into bathtubs as if they are bath bombs, a type of aromatherapeutic soap product that effervesces once placed under water. The series can be seen as a mockery of an emerging photo fad on Tumblr in which people share photographs of the bath water changing colors as the fizzy soap products dissolve in the tub.

Origin

The "bath bombing" trend first began on Tumblr during the holiday season in December 2014, when many users on the microblogging site began sharing photographs of the color-changing bath fizzies that they had presumably received as gifts. As the photo fad continued to spread throughout the month, it became only a matter of time before people began parodying the phenomenon.

On December 30th, 2014, Idkitstommy^[1] submitted an image of him tossing a photoshopped clipart of a cannon ball into a bathtub, followed by an image of a destroyed bathroom featuring the caption "i love my new bath bomb from lush." Within the first 48 hours, the post accumulated more than 104,700 notes.

LUSH Bath Bombs

The bath bomb, a type of bath fizzies typically sold as a dense mixture of soap ingredients, essential oils and aromatic scents, was invented by Mo Constantine, the future co-founder of UK-based cosmetics retailer LUSH, in 1989. Since the introduction of the aromatherapeutic bath fizzies (initially under the brand name Cosmetics To Go, and later, LUSH cosmetics), the bath bombs have become one of the best-selling and most iconic bath products sold by the company.

Spread

On December 31st, 2014, the official account of Tumblr on Twitter linked to Idkitstommy's parody image with the hashtag #bathbomb and a caption suggesting it may be "the last meme of 2014."

That same day, a number of additional parody images staged in the same vein emerged on both Twitter and Tumblr under the hashtag #BathBombs. Also on December 31st, the parody photo fad was picked up by BuzzFeed^[2] and The Daily Edge.^[3]

On April 25th, 2015, the YouTube based Let's Play group, The Creatures uploaded a video of them using 50 Lush brand Bath Bombs in an inflatable pool which they had set up in their office building (shown below). As of July 2015, the video has nearly 2 million views.

Controversy

The parodies also prompted some negative reaction from bathing enthusiasts and other groups on sites like Tumblr, who claim they are making fun of the hobby out of jealousy^[10][11] or are being sexist^[12] as bath bombs are commonly considered to be female-oriented.

Notable Examples

Resurgence on Vine

On April 24th, 2016, Viner Pastatute^[13] shared a video clip of a watermelon being tossed into a bathtub as if it were a bath bomb, with the caption "LOVE my new Lush bath bomb." Within 12 days, the Vine clip garnered more than 14.1 million views.

Beginning on April 29th, a few days after Viner Pastatute's clip went viral, hundreds of similar videos in which people throw a variety of random objects into their bathtubs surfaced on the video-sharing platform, including home appliances, electronic devices, upholsteries and grocery items (shown below), with many of them accruing more than a million views in the first week. As of May 8th, there are more than 500 video clips tagged under #bathbomb on Vine. To browse more examples, please refer to the video gallery.

Search Interest

External References