LUSH Sunderland offers Toby’s Magic Cow bath bomb session for families

A £5 slot at LUSH Sunderland turned Toby’s Magic Cow into a compact lesson in how a bath bomb goes from mold to tub. The in-store session, at Unit 30 in The Bridges Shopping Centre, was aimed at ages 4 and up, with bookable places and walk-ins accepted only if space remained.

The appeal was simple: a short, low-commitment craft that gave families something they could actually use later. LUSH’s Toby’s Magic Cow is a vegan Lush Community creation, inspired by a letter from a young customer who asked for a special magic cow for her younger brother Toby. The product page describes it as a bath bomb that sends up a sparkling rainbow of colour, with popping candy, Milky Bath fragrance, patchouli oil, Brazilian orange oil and coconut milk powder doing the heavy lifting on scent and texture.

That ingredient list is exactly why a session like this works as a beginner’s workshop. It shows how a bath bomb is built around a few recognizable pieces rather than a mystery formula: a softening base, fragrance oils, a playful crackle, and a moulded shape that has to hold together long enough to dry. LUSH says its compounders press bath bombs by hand into custom moulds, and that is the part newcomers can most easily copy at home afterward, even on a small scale. The lesson is less about fancy equipment than about getting the shape right and leaving the bomb alone long enough to set.

The practical advice attached to the session mattered just as much as the novelty. Guests were told to wait 24 hours before using the finished bath bomb, then drop it into warm water and let it fizz. They were also reminded to store it in a cool, dry place. Those are the kind of small fixes that keep a first bath bomb from crumbling, softening too soon or fizzing before it ever reaches the tub. For anyone planning a home version, the takeaway is clear: mold carefully, keep moisture out, and give the finished piece time to cure.

The workshop also carried a recycling angle through LUSH’s Bring It Back scheme. In the UK and Ireland, customers can return qualifying plastic packaging to shops for 50p off the bill, including the plastic mould on this product. That detail made the session feel less like a one-off craft hour and more like a neat introduction to how LUSH links product play, packaging and reuse.

There is a bigger story behind the counter, too. LUSH says co-founder Mo Constantine invented the first bath bomb in 1989 in Dorset, and the company received the bath-bomb trademark on April 27, 1990, now marked as World Bath Bomb Day. LUSH says it has since made more than 500 bath bomb designs and sold over 350 million worldwide. Toby’s Magic Cow, marked on the product page as an Allure Best of Beauty 2023 winner, fits neatly into that history: a cute character bath bomb, a real hands-on demo, and a very approachable first step into the fizzing side of the craft.