About

Bath Bomb Parodies are a series of multi-panel photographs in which various non-dissolvable objects are placed into bathtubs as if they are “bath bombs,” a type of aromatherapeutic soap product that fizzles once placed under water. The series can be seen as a mockery of an emerging photo fad on Tumblr where people share photographs of the bath water as it changes colors after the placement of a LUSH brand bath bomb.

Origin

The “bath bombing” trend first began on Tumblr during the holiday season in December 2014, when many users on the microblogging site began sharing photographs of the color-changing bath fizzies that they had presumably received as gifts. As the photo fad continued to spread throughout the month, it became only a matter of time before people began parodying the phenomenon.

On December 30th, 2014, Idkitstommy^[1] submitted an image of him placing a photoshopped clip art of a cannon ball into a bathtub, followed by an image of a destroyed bathroom featuring the caption “i love my new bath bomb from lush.” Within the first 48 hours, the post accumulated more than 104,700 notes.

On December 31st, the official account of Tumblr on Twitter linked to Idkitstommy’s parody image with the hashtag #bathbomb and a caption suggesting it may be “the last meme of 2014.”

Is this the last meme of 2014? #bathbomb http://t.co/aCYqWPIT6B
— Tumblr (@tumblr) December 31, 2014

Spread

That same day, a number of additional parody images staged in the same vein emerged on both Twitter and Tumblr under the hashtag #BathBombs. Also on December 31st, the parody photo fad was picked up by BuzzFeed^[2] and The Daily Edge.^[3]

Controversy

The fad also caused a negative reaction from bathing enthusiasts and other groups on sites like Tumblr, who have been claiming it to be misoginist^[10]^[11] or attacking the hobby.^[12]