At exactly 12:00 p.m. ET on June 6, 2025, chaos broke loose online as thousands of fans across the U.S. from Brooklyn to Beverly Hills flocked to Dr. Squatch’s website to snag one of the 5,000 limited-edition bars of “Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss,” a soap made with actress Sydney Sweeney’s actual bathwater. Within seconds, it was gone.
“We saw checkout times shoot past 250 minutes. The site crashed multiple times. It was nuts,”
said John Ludeke, Senior Vice President of Global Marketing at Dr. Squatch.
“This was bizarre, unexpected, and meant to get guys thinking more deeply about what they’re putting on their bodies.”
The soap, priced at $8 per bar, sold out in the time it takes to microwave a burrito leaving thousands empty-handed and plenty more wondering: did Americans really just buy bathwater soap from a celebrity.
The whole thing started in 2024, when Sydney Sweeney appeared in a playful Dr. Squatch commercial, lounging in a bubble bath. What began as a cheeky promo quickly spiraled into something more surreal. Fans jokingly demanded her bathwater some said they’d use it for plants, others swore they’d splash it in their morning coffee.
“When your fans start asking for your bathwater, you can either ignore it, or turn it into a bar of Dr. Squatch soap,”
Sweeney laughed in a May 30th NBC News interview.
So, they did just that. During the ad shoot, a separate tub of purified water was prepared. Sweeney took a dip, the water was collected and filtered, and a few treated drops were blended into each soap bar just enough to spark conversation without triggering the FDA.
Each bar of Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss includes pine bark extract, exfoliating sand, shea butter, and those infamous few drops of Sweeney’s tub time. The scent profile? A woodsy blend of pine, Douglas fir, and moss a nod to her Pacific Northwest roots and the kind of fragrance that smells like a hike through an Oregon forest.
Every bar came with a certificate of authenticity and was limited to one per customer. But that didn’t stop scalpers. Within hours, the bars popped up on eBay, priced between $100 and a staggering $2,999.
Social media had a field day. X lit up with everything from “I need this” to “Put every buyer on a watch list.” Reddit threads dissected the ethics of celebrity bathwater. Some fans called it a fun, creative stunt. Others were grossed out.
Sweeney, now 27 and best known for her roles in Euphoria and Anyone But You, wasn’t fazed by the haters. “Honestly though,” she said at the Echo Valley premiere in NYC,
“I think it’s more fun to see everybody else talk about it.”
Whether you think it’s brilliant branding or just plain bizarre, there’s no denying it: Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss tapped into something uniquely American celebrity worship meets meme culture with a healthy splash of FOMO.
As for what’s next, Dr. Squatch hasn’t ruled out future collabs.
“If you thought this was wild, just wait.”
Until then, one thing is certain: somewhere in America, someone just paid $1,000 for a bar of soap. And it might just smell like the future of marketing.
