Taylor's Reformulation

thegrayson · Post by **thegrayson** » Mon May 17, 2010 6:21 am

A while back I finished a tub of Taylor's Eton College cream that I picked up from their store in London after checking out the scents of all their creams. I made it last most of a year alternating with Proraso and l'Occitane Cade. I stocked up on some goodies last week and was surprised to see my Taylor's cream arrive in a dull blue tub. Reformulated, paraben free shaving cream. On opening it I was instantly dismayed. It smelled all wrong. Still clean and soapy but the overtone of fragrance I was used to was gone, replaced with something else, not unpleasant but from what I was used to simply wrong. It still lathers and shaves well at least. I even checked the old tub to confirm what I had noticed.

Has anyone else noticed a change in the scents with the new formula cream?
It will be a few months yet before I get back to London to check them out and I am not about to pay €8.50 per tub plus p&p just to experiment.

BullGoose · Post by **BullGoose** » Mon May 17, 2010 7:47 am

One of my customers recently made the same comment on the change in scent with Eton College cream. hmmmm....this is interesting. Unfortunately I do not have any old pots to compare scents.

Gatorade · Post by **Gatorade** » Mon May 17, 2010 10:48 am

About a year or so ago I had the same experience with the Shave Shop line. Except the old formula was in the tubes and the new in the pots. After exchanging emails with Barry Klein he told me to order direct from Taylors and in the notes ask for the old formula. They sometimes have the old stuff on-had at the Home Office.

Nitrox · Post by **Nitrox** » Mon May 17, 2010 5:35 pm

I've recently purchased the Almond which I never had of the old formula, the lavender and the rose scented creams.
I've shaved with the lavender and the almond but am not thrilled with this reformulation. The rose looks lighter in colour to my old tub, which is a good thing and smells pretty close to the old one. The lavender is about the same colour but the scent is not as strong as the old tub I finished off a while back. My sense of smell is not the greatest but I can barely smell the new one whereas as soon as I opened the tub of the old one, I could smell it from far away.
The lather to me does not seem to be equal to the old formula at all. It is more difficult to build the lather and it seems that it is not as slick as the old stuff. I find the lather to be very thick, and it is not dependent on how much water I used. Could it be the lack of parabens? The shaves are still very good, but to me there is something different and missing in the new formula, other than the parabens of course. It's not a fluke either as I have had and still have all the different Taylor's cream scents before this latest reformulation and they all performed the same (exceptionally), no matter the scent.

rustyblade · Post by **rustyblade** » Mon May 17, 2010 6:06 pm

Is this May 17, 2010? We have Gatorade-Charlie posting and are talking about Taylor reformulations.... This is very 2006.

TRBeck · Post by **TRBeck** » Mon May 17, 2010 6:08 pm

Soaps.

(seriously, excepting reformulated Floris and Penhaligon's, even the newer formulations from every brand, cheap or high-end, are great, and they last forever)

Regards,

Gatorade · Post by **Gatorade** » Mon May 17, 2010 6:23 pm

rustyblade wrote:Is this May 17, 2010? We have Gatorade-Charlie posting and are talking about Taylor reformulations.... This is very 2006.

Maybe it is just a glitch in the system and when the subject of Taylor's reformulation came up my post went up on it's own?

Was that 2006? It couldn't have been that long ago.... Oh wait, it could have been.

thegrayson · Post by **thegrayson** » Tue May 18, 2010 3:02 am

The reformulation was in 2006? I bought the old stuff in Taylor's shop on Jermyn St, London in February last year.

Aztecface · Post by **Aztecface** » Tue May 18, 2010 4:17 am

All the creams have been reformulated once again, a new company makes them and the tubs have changed appearance. All Taylor's creams are now Paraben-Free.

95% · Post by **95%** » Tue May 18, 2010 5:39 am

I'm happy with or without parabens, and refrigerate all my creams. I figure that a wet, creamy medium is an ideal enviroment for microscopic critters to be fruitful and multiply. Ditto soft and tallow-based soaps. The performance of the cream is unaffected by refrigeration, as long as I take it out of the refrigerator a couple of hours ahead.

thegrayson · Post by **thegrayson** » Thu May 20, 2010 6:39 am

I suppose I'm not that bothered with reformulation as a whole. It hasn't made any real difference to my shave. Was just wondering if anyone else had noticed a change in the scent of any of the creams? Maybe the scent hasn't changed at all and my original tub simply had the wrong lid and wasn't Eton College to begin with.

notthesharpest · Post by **notthesharpest** » Thu May 20, 2010 10:32 am

95% wrote:Ditto soft and tallow-based soaps.

I wonder about the tallow-based idea. I have three tallow-based soaps that are thirty years old or more. None show any growth of anything - after thirty years I'd think they would have if they were going to...

95% · Post by **95%** » Thu May 20, 2010 12:37 pm

notthesharpest wrote:
95% wrote:Ditto soft and tallow-based soaps.
I wonder about the tallow-based idea. I have three tallow-based soaps that are thirty years old or more. None show any growth of anything - after thirty years I'd think they would have if they were going to...

That's interesting. Are they hard soaps, and are they highly scented? I'm thinking that the absence of water in a soap would hinder spoilage, as would strong perfume, which would act as a preservative. But that's only guesswork.

We have had a few reports by Gordon and others of Cella going bad, but I don't recall any other product being affected. Refrigeration is probably not necessary, but I do it anyway for peace of mind.