Every year I’m tasked with coming up with stuff for BBP’s Holiday Gift Guide and every year I look to outdo what I did the previous year. It’s mildly difficult to find new and interesting stuff that jives with my esoteric sensibilities, but that’s the box that I’ve created for myself.
It’s also worth noting that this is my annual notice for you to SHOP SMALL. Support your local comic shop, bookstore, artists market or WHATEVER. Just try and avoid funneling money to the Great Satan that is Amazon.
So, with all that in mind, it should be known that I am a fancy lad and do enjoy a good scented soap. Who doesn’t like to smell nice, right? Maybe it’s because I have a mild phobia about smelling bad or maybe it’s because I realize that the human body (specifically my human body) is capable of producing a myriad of scents so something must be done to offset them.
I also enjoy a good and weird video game. I don’t know if it’s due to the rapid onset of age and irrelevancy but I don’t quite get as much out of the big budget Triple A video games as I used to. Sure, they’re great for some mindless entertainment but if I’m making a huge investment of my time into a game I at least want it to mean something.
Which finally brings us to Kentucky Route Zero, an odd indie game which was released in parts over a period of several years. After it was completed and subsequently ported to systems like the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, I finally had the chance to play it and was instantly taken with it. Heck, I even went so far as to feature it in BBP’s 31 Days of Horror last year! What did I have to say about it?
…it’s truly astounding how a game that’s point and click and text-driven can evoke feelings of creeping dread in the player. Well, in me in this case. The game is odd and obtuse and doesn’t offer any easy answers. Kentucky Route Zero exists in its own dreamlike reality and it stuck with me for long after I finished playing it.
Since writing that I’ve played though the game at least twice more, but this isn’t an ad for that game (even though you should totally play it). When I get interested in something, I start searching for MORE of it. While the game itself is great, I had to see what else was out there. I cannot recall if it was the Kentucky Route Zero subreddit or an inspired Etsy search but I was pleased to find out about SlippyBois, a “chaotic soap sudsery” that, among other things, had some great KRZ items.
Earlier this year I purchased some of their awesome KRZ stickers and a couple of the Hard Times Coffin soaps. Here’s a description of the soap:
THE SOAP: Crystallised casket from Hard Times Distillery, with glow-in-the-dark details and mossy copper back. All rendered in soap. THE SMELL: Kentucky bourbon whiskey aged in a coffin, with notes of graveyard dirt. This is the top-shelf stuff, now!
It’s amazing how good this stuff smells and upon receiving it I now understood the concept of having fancy decorative soaps with which to adorn my bathroom…probably why I bought two. It could also possibly be the best soap ever because it GLOWS. IN. THE. DARK. That should be the law for all soaps.
In a rare moment of forethought while prepping this entry, I reached out to SlippyBois proprietor Zenobia Frost regarding the soap and its creation and they had this to say:
“SlippyBois is my soaping hobby; I let off steam by playing with conceptually strange designs. Kentucky Route Zero has punched me out of many creative droughts, so I decided to craft … Hard Times-themed soap. I hand-blended a ‘coffin-oaked whiskey’ scent, with notes of graveyard dirt and – like the boys down at the Distillery – the bar’s crystalline textures glow in the dark. VINUM MEMORIAE MORS!”
You can purchase your very own Hard Times soap here, visit their Etsy shop here, and follow SlippyBois on Instgram here.
