Fuzzy Wuzzy was an odd soap from the 1960s. Shaped like an animal and packaged in an air-tight plastic pouch, the soap would produce “fur” when exposed to the air. The soap was sold in a carton shaped like a circus wagon, including a window that looked like cage bars, and contained a circus platform on the back of the box. It was a sort of staging area where kids were instructed to place their soap animal in preparation for the furry transformation that would soon take place. Once kids got the soap wet, they were instructed to wait 3 days, which seemed like an eternity to a kid. Magically, the soap grew fur, and when the bar dissolved, there was a prize inside for the kids. Some people wildly assumed that the product contained live mold spores, but in reality the soap’s “fur” was actually a form of crystallization called efflorescence — the migration of a salt to the surface of a porous material where it forms a coating. The animal figures were molded from tallow and fatty acids. Needless to say, the product was soon discontinued.
