Farewell to Mitchell's Wool Fat (MWF reformulation)

He got it here:
https://store.mensroombarbershop.com/search.php?search_query=Mitchell's+Wool+fat&Search=

Edit: as did I. They probably have between 100 and 150ish pucks of the old tallow formula left.

 

Ouch. The shipping on that has got to be as much as the cost of the soap itself... unless you found somewhere local to order from? I thought there were a few MWF sellers in Australia?

 

That makes way more sense. Tallow Tabac has been gone since summer of 2021.

 

I was digging into the history of Camwrap, (official distributor of MWF) and stumbled across this in one of the deeper pages on their site.

"Michael (Thomas) Keeble, who started the Thomas Keeble Wool Fat Soap Retail Mail Order service, is still personally answering your calls, and always enjoys a chat while providing kindly quality service to potential first time buyers and long-time loyal customers and friends, some of the latter having been WFS users for over forty years!"

(I'm not going to post his number, as he probably doesn't want to be deluged with irate customers, and he now knows what he needs to know).

So I gave him a call, and he did personally answer the phone. I had a very nice chat with him, and he was totally unaware that a change had been made in the formula. Finding this out caused him some distress, and he's going to look into it.

I figure if anyone has enough clout to get Mitchell's to end this madness, and go back to the original formula, he certainly does.

When the official distributor, and the driving force behind the creation of the shave soap, is unaware of a formula change, you know the company done ****ed up.

Edit: It wouldn't be so bad, if the new formula was good. It's not good. It might still technically be a "shave soap," but it's no longer a top tier shave soap. If a stearate isn't one of the top two ingredients in a shave soap formula, vegan or tallow, it's not a great soap anymore. I challenge anyone to find a top tier shave soap that doesn't have some form of stearate as one of the two primary ingredients. There actually might be a few, but I doubt it.

In fact, the new MWF formula is very similar to the Lea shave stick formula that they used right after they switched to a vegan base (blue stick), which is generally recognized as being very sucky. This is different than their current stick formula, which, although still vegan, is recognized as being much better than the blue stick formula.

 

I don't think the official response from Mitchell's to one of the vendors has been posted in this thread yet.

"The previous formulation with a soap noodle base containing tallow is no longer being produced. The base of the soap is changing, but not the wool fat (lanolin) content, this is exactly the same as always.
There were some formulation changes required due a change in ingredient availability and this new formulation continues to maintain the high quality products our customers expect from Mitchell’s. The quality and feel of the product is paramount and we're happy that you'll see consistent performance."

 

Camwrap (U.S. based company) does still have stocks of MWF tallow formula shaving soap. They are a bit old fashioned, so no ordering availability online. You can phone in an order here:

251-405-0032

The price is $15 for two pucks (edit: $15 per puck in a 2 pack plus postage, so not a great deal, unfortunately) of MWF shave soap. It can also be ordered in a 12 pack for a reduced price per puck, which I failed to get the price for, for which I apologize.

He doesn't know the exact date of the introduction of the shaving soap, but recalls it was in the 80's. He doesn't know what the original 1893 formula was, and always heard it referred to as "the secret recipe." Also said if "Graham were still alive, he wouldn't be happy they were reformulating the soap."

I told him that was a good price for the shave soap, and that I would be sending some business his way.