Body Creams & Lotions

Pump bottles, tubs and the cream bought for stretch marks:

most of what gets listed comes in a few shapes, and the shape tells you more than the brand. The everyday lotion lives in a big pump bottle and is the one families buy in multi-packs. Thicker creams and body butters come in tubs or squeeze tubes and get kept for elbows, knees and heels. Scented body creams from the mall fragrance lines are bought to match a body mist or a perfume, so the scent name is the whole point, and the matching bottle sits under fragrances. Then come body oils, cocoa butter sticks and the firming or stretch-mark creams bought during a pregnancy and rarely finished. Sunscreen and after-sun aloe have their own shelf under sunscreen and self-tanners, and body washes and scrubs sit in bath and shower.

The English label on a lotion bottle:

so much of what stands on Panamanian shelves was made for the US market that the words deciding the choice are often in English, under a small Spanish sticker from the importer. A lotion is the thin kind that comes out of a pump, while a cream or a body butter is the thick kind that lives in a tub. Fragrance free and unscented are not the same promise: an unscented bottle can still carry a masking fragrance to cover the smell of the base, so if perfume bothers you, fragrance free is the one to look for.

A litre pump bottle against a scented body cream:

with body lotion the price runs the opposite way to the size. A litre family pump bottle of an everyday label costs from about $7 to around $17, and bought as a twin or triple pack each bottle works out cheaper than that. A scented body cream or body butter from one of the mall fragrance lines costs around $20 to $25 for a bottle a fraction of the size, and people who love a scent tend to buy several at once. That is why a sealed scented bottle holds its value better than a big everyday one, and why a sealed spare from a pack is fairly priced against what one bottle of that pack cost rather than against a single bottle on the shelf.

A locked pump and a band around the neck:

are what to look for on a lotion listed as new. Many big pump bottles leave the factory with the pump twisted down and locked, often under a plastic band or film around the neck, and a pump that is already up has been primed. Tubs and tubes should have foil or a liner under the lid. Many US-market lotions carry only a batch code stamped on the base or shoulder and no expiry date, so a missing date is not a warning sign by itself. A lotion that has yellowed or darkened, smells rancid instead of like its scent, or comes out thin and watery is one. A well-known bottle with a pump that does not match or will not lock, or with the print rubbed off, may have been refilled, especially if what comes out smells nothing like the scent on the label.

The spare bottle from a multi-pack:

is about the most believable thing anyone can list, so say it came from one. Give the size exactly as printed, in fl oz or ml, the full product name and scent, and whether the pump is still locked. Photograph the front and back of the label, the batch code and the neck of the bottle so the band or the locked pump shows. If a tub has lost its foil, or a pregnancy cream was opened once and put away, say so in the first line of the listing, along with when it was opened and where it has been kept. A buyer coming in from David to collect will want to turn the bottle over in their hands and see the pump still twisted down before paying, so leave a sealed bottle sealed until then.