TABAC Original: My First Shave with a German Classic
Hello everyone, welcome back. I’m trying TABAC Original for the first time.
A few weeks back, if you follow wet-shaving groups or online discussions or Instagram in the community, you probably saw the chatter: TABAC is stopping production of their shave soap. People were concerned. Turned out to be a false alarm. From what I understand, someone had a communication with TABAC customer support or someone close to the company, and the message got garbled along the way. The actual change: TABAC is moving toward making the shave soap available only in the porcelain bowl format. The shave stick will continue, but without the plastic sleeve - just a wrapper. That’s it. The soap in the porcelain bowl is staying, at least for now. Nothing dramatic, nothing disappearing.
I got onto TABAC because I was talking with friends in Europe about the whole situation. Some of them love it. And my friend Brett from Make It a Great Shave was surprised I had never smelled or used it. So this bowl is here thanks to him - he sent it my way so I could try it and share the experience. Generous as always, Brett.
The Packaging
The porcelain bowl is what gets you first. White, clean, simple design. The logo reads TABAC Original, and on top it says 1959. Classic presentation. There is nothing about this that would look out of place in any decade since - it would have looked fine on a shelf in 1959 and it looks fine on a shelf in 2026. I hope they never touch it.
One thing to be aware of: the lid has no threading. It just rests on top. Tilt the bowl sideways and that lid is gone. The lid is plastic, so it will survive plenty of drops before anything happens to it, but just keep that in mind when you carry it around. Don’t say nobody warned you.
Inside is a hard soap puck with clear TABAC Original branding. Brett has used this a couple of times already, but the embossed lettering is still clearly visible. Old school. Clean. One of those objects where you genuinely can’t tell what decade it’s from, and that’s the point.
One thing I couldn’t work out from the packaging: TABAC apparently switched their base from tallow to a non-tallow formula at some point - possibly glycerin-based. I have no idea which version this is, and there’s nothing on the container that tells you. If the tallow question is a deciding factor for you, I can’t help you here. My guess is that if TABAC found it appropriate to switch, performance should stay roughly the same. We’ll see.
The Scent
Ask someone who loves TABAC to describe the scent and a lot of them will just say “it smells like TABAC.” That’s not them being unhelpful. It really is that specific.
Brett mentioned chamomile and something spicy when he reviewed it on his channel. That tracks with what I’m getting. My own read: old-school clean soap, the kind from thirty or forty years ago. Something floral or sweet in there, mixed with something herbal and a bit spicy. Hard to pin down further without more experience. Lathered up on the face it opens a bit more - a herbal, tea-type quality mixed with sweetness. Still unexpected for a shave soap, at least compared to everything I’ve used before.
Here’s the honest take: my first reaction was “this is a weird smell for a shave product.” I was genuinely put off. But I left the bowl on the shelf and sniffed it every day or two for a couple of weeks, and somewhere in there my reaction softened. I got conditioned to it. Stopped being weirded out, started appreciating it. Still not my personal top choice in the scent category, but the sharp “oh, weird” reaction is gone.
My wife smelled it and said “nice and clean.” I’ve seen plenty of people online say their partners hate this one. Mine didn’t. Scent is subjective, and maybe that helps you calibrate.
Loading and Lathering
For the brush I’m reaching for the my Cream Soda. Lovely synthetic knot, very soft. Works well for face lathering and bowl lathering both. I figure the brush matches the look of the TABAC label anyway.
I don’t use hard soaps all that often, but when I do, I go generous with the load. Right away the lather starts flying off the puck - that’s always an encouraging sign if you’re not a frequent face latherer. The lather needed a little more water to loosen up, but even early on the consistency was creamy. Felt good on the face. Cushiony. I probably overloaded a bit - looking at how much lather this base gives you, it’s easy to go too hard. Sorry, Brett, there’s still plenty left.
Once I had it on my face and started working it in, the scent opened up. A bit more freshness, more of that herbal-spicy character. Better on the face than straight from the container, at least for my nose. That shift surprised me.
The Shave
An iconic German soap. An iconic German razor made sense. The Muhle R89 - regular version, not the stainless steel one. Inside: a Gillette Silver Blue on its third and probably final use. I’m going over about two days of growth.
The slickness surprised me. This is a mass-market product available worldwide, not an artisan small-batch soap. I wasn’t expecting much from the performance side. But the slickness from this base is excellent. After my first pass I could rub my fingers across the skin and still pull up a thin layer of lather from the residual. That’s a good sign. Whatever this base is, you don’t need to worry about slickness.
I got two weepers on the second pass, but those spots have been giving me trouble for days regardless. Nothing to put on the soap.
The against-the-grain pass was quiet. I was mostly thinking about the lather.
The Aftershave
Finishing up with the matching TABAC aftershave lotion. Same porcelain aesthetic on the bottle - no ingredients listed, classic-looking. Out of the bottle the scent shifts slightly from the soap: more alcohol comes through, and it leans a bit more spicy, maybe a touch more cologne-like. Still the same core under there - clean, old-school, masculine. The best summary I have is clean masculine soap with a slight cologne lean.
The splash went on nicely. Good skin feel. Slightly tacky at first, but it absorbs. The dry-down is solid.
That’s TABAC Original. Packaging worth keeping even after the soap runs out. A scent that takes a few encounters to appreciate. Performance that’s better than you’d expect from a soap you can find at any European pharmacy. Thanks to Brett for making this one happen - go check out his channel and Instagram if you haven’t already.