No more Dr. Bronner craziness on labels?

My girlfriend had been complaining about the smell and feel of my favored bar soaps lately, so I stopped by a health food store to pick up some good-smelling Dr. Bronner’s soaps. Got some-- they’re still being made, and the g/f adores the peppermint and rose varieties-- but I was surprised and disappointed to find that the labels no longer have the famous Absolute Clean! All-One-God-Faith! screeds. They’re slightly kooky in that “we’re organic!” way, but not in the trademark Dr. Bronner sense. At least the bar soaps are stamped “All One,” but it’s meaningless without the theology.

Are those labels gone for good? Does the company no longer sell the Essene Scrolls? Do they no longer tout weird things like soap douches?

Huh. My current bottle of the peppermint soap is still covered in near-microscopic crazy. They do have an all-organic line now, with lame Papyrus-y graphic design. I don’t love those.

The bottles of Dr. Bronner’s I saw at American Apparel last month had the crazy.

anyone know of an archive of the labels?

According to wiki:

I wouldn’t be surprised if they were weaseling a bit by not composing new nutty labels for new products, though.

The bar soaps no longer have the religious ramblings, but the bottled soaps are nearly unchanged and the newer scents have new selections of the good doctor’s ramblings. Yabob is correct, however, that the new product lines they came out with a few years ago do not contain any ramblings whatsoever.

As far as the Essene Scrolls go, about two years ago, I decided to fulfill a longstanding (but obviously not very high-priority) goal of obtaining said scrolls, but noticed to my dismay that they were no longer advertised on the labels. I emailed Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps (no longer, alas, called All-One-God-Faith, Inc.) and was surprised to get a very nice email back from Dr. Bronner’s granddaughter! She had no idea what I was talking about, but after a couple of exchanges, she said that her Uncle Ralph knew most of the company history and would be very happy to talk to me if I would send her my telephone number. She also offered to send me a book of Dr. Bronner’s writings, the famed Moral ABC!

I gave her my number, and a couple of weeks later, I got a phone call from Ralph Bronner, the son of the late Dr. Emmanuel Bronner, Soapmaker and Essene Rabbi! Ralph chatted with me for the better part of an hour relating anecdotes about his father and asking about my life and interests and where I bought my soap. He asked for my address so he could send me some materials, and when I mentioned that I volunteered at a local community radio station, he said he would send me a CD of an artist he liked! When I gave him my address and told him the ZIP code, he responded excitedly, “Ooh, that has a lot of ones in it! We like ones!” Clearly, some of the family nuttiness survives. :slight_smile:

He didn’t have much to say about the Essene Scrolls, other than that they were slightly fancier versions editions of extracts from the Moral ABC booklet I already had, and that he vaguely remembered sending them out to people who ordered them when his father was alive. Apparently, many records were lost when Dr. Bronner passed away, including the recipes for all of the food products they used to make, which had to be discontinued because no one knew how to produce them! Dr. Bronner reportedly left boxes of papers behind that Ralph has been gradually sorting through ever since, but he’s quite elderly himself now, and it sounded more or less like no one else in the family had quite the same interest in preserving his father’s records.

You can see videos of Uncle Ralph on the Dr. Bronner’s website. (His late brother’s wife and children seem to be running the company now, so all mentions of him on the website call him Uncle Ralph, just like the granddaughter I emailed.) I watched them in preparation for his call, and he tells lots of anecdotes about his father in them, some of which he repeated in his phone call to me. He had an . . . interesting . . . childhood, it seems, as one might imagine.

There’s also a documentary movie about Dr. Bronner’s soap called “Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soapbox” that you can order from the Dr. Bronner’s website. It has lots of video of Ralph Bronner and gives a good sense of his personality and how the rest of the family view him and their late patriarch. (The late brother’s wife is very interesting, as she clearly appreciates all that the company has done and what her father-in-law accomplished, but, well, she married into the craziness, so it’s not exactly her craziness. She clearly sees the dark side of how Dr. Bronner raised his children and the pain that his madness sometimes caused.)

BTW, when the package from Uncle Ralph arrived, it contained a large number of reproduced newspaper articles about the company, two CDs, and a $50 bill with a note reading, “The $100 [sic] is for you and the hard-working employees of [the food co-op where I told him I buy the soap] to have a big party with pizza and organic beer!” :cool:

Unfortunately, the co-op manager never responded when I approached her repeatedly about the party, but she and the staff were all amazed by the story. I should get in touch with her again and tell her I still have the $50. This time, I’ll just giver her a date and time, rather than waiting for her to come up with one.

Column from Unca Cec on Dr. Bronner: Why the Weird Religious Ravings on Dr Bronner’s Soap?

Uncle Ralph is mentioned in the column.

Alan, that is a cool story and would certainly make religious choices easier:

Group A: “Pray and after you die you get a reward”.
Group B: “Give us a lot of your time and money and maybe eventually you’ll get Magic Powerz.”
Group C: “Use our soap. You’ll smell minty fresh eternally. Oh, and here’s 50 bucks, buy your friends some pizza and beer.”

Group C is missing some exclamation points, and contains too few sentence fragments.

What is a Canadian socialist doing shopping at a place called American Apparel?

AA’s products aren’t made in sweatshops or something? It’s all about improving the conditions of the working class (at least, that’s what my grandfather said).

Man I love Dr. Bronner’s soaps. Great stuff. Lavender is my favorite scent.

You gotta love such a high quality product that includes intriguing reading material right on the label. I mean, sometimes you really need to read up on the larger philosophical questions while you’re showering.

ALL ONE!

You can download pdfs of Dr. Bonner’s labels here.

I go there purely for the advertisements with the skinny, scruffy-bearded young persons in primary-coloured briefs.