Ring bombs — bath bombs that dissolve to reveal hidden jewelry — are popping up all over Facebook and Instagram in promoted posts and video ads. Which ones are worth your money? Find out by following along as I try out and review ring bombs from all over the Internet! Find all Ring Bomb Bonanza posts here. 

The Company: Jewelry Jar Candles & Bath Bomb Bling

Want to support a small family workshop while soaking in the tub? Here’s the ring bomb maker for you. Jewelry Jar Candles & Bath Bomb Bling is a literal mom-and-pop operation. Its owners are a married couple who personally make every item to order.

The Canadian company has a very functional, fairly no-frills website. It’s easy to navigate and find what you’re looking for, with no pop-ups for special offers or strange navigational hurdles. If you’re shopping from the U.S., the first thing you’re going to want to do when you get to the site is look for a little Canadian flag in the upper right corner with a drop-down arrow next to it. That’s where you can convert the currency on the site into U.S. dollars (or currencies from other English-speaking countries). I’m embarrassed to admit how long I spent using Google to convert prices manually from CAD to USD before I noticed this feature.

Besides bath bombs and candles with either rings or necklaces, Jewelry Jar Candles offers shower steamers and wax melts with jewelry, as well as products targeted at men and kids. You can opt for a guaranteed sterling silver ring or take a chance on a ring that could be plated with another metal. Depending on the exchange rate at the time, the jewelry bath bombs run around USD$13.

I had a discount code when I placed my order, so in addition to my bath bombs I ordered a couple of shower steamers and a kids’ bath bomb for my daughter. I was impressed at the number of ways the kids’ bath bomb could be customized — type of jewelry, age, etc.

The great thing about ordering from a small family business like Jewelry Jar Candles is — well, supporting a small family business! The downside is that delays may arise that wouldn’t necessarily be an issue in a larger company. In my case, my order was delayed because of a death in the owners’ family. The owners were great about communicating with me, though, and letting me know exactly what the issue was. Because they were so proactive with updates (and honestly, because they just experienced a loss, and what kind of asshole would be a jerk about that?), the delay caused me zero irritation — unlike when a Fragrant Jewels order sits in “processing” for nearly two weeks with no explanation and then magically ships out the day after I write and ask to cancel if it’s going to take so long (true story).

The Bombs

Every item of “Bath Bomb Bling” I ordered arrived hand-wrapped and clearly made to order, right down to the customizations noted by hand on my daughter’s bath bomb. I ordered two adult bath bombs, both of which I believe were seasonal/special edition scents, as they’re not currently available on the site: Mystic Lilac and Strawberries & Cream.

Mystic Lilac was incredibly fragrant — maybe one of the most fragrant bombs I’ve tried, but in a very pleasant way, and not at all overpowering. It was a little soft and crumbly when I unwrapped it, and when I dropped it in the tub, the ring popped right up to the surface as the bomb disintegrated almost immediately. It left behind a little fizz, a hint of cloudy lilac color in the water, and crumbles all over the bottom of the tub that dissolved slowly. The fragrance stayed strong for a long time, and my skin was very moisturized after the bath — it just seemed as though the bomb maybe hadn’t cured long enough.

If Mystic Lilac was slightly disappointing (it would have been close to perfect if it had just held together better), Strawberries & Cream was an absolute mind-blower. For starters, this bomb (advertised as “jumbo” and containing two rings) was HUGE. It was also very fragrant with a soft strawberry scent, and it fizzed in the bath tub for a long, long time, leaving the water pink and fragrant and my skin incredibly moisturized. The rings inside were wrapped in foil (no plastic bubble), so there was just a ton of bath bomb there. I could easily have cut it in half and made two baths out of it. (I have zero regrets about using it all at once. ZERO.)

I have to add a note about the other items I ordered, because they were really great as well. My daughter’s bubble gum-scented bath bomb came with a super cute, age-appropriate adjustable ring. And the shower steamers that I ordered in eucalyptus scent are just wonderful. I mean, nothing can really replicate a eucalyptus steam room (the one in the Bellagio spa might have saved my life on a Vegas trip once), but this is probably as close as I’ll get at home, and there’s jewelry inside.

The Rings

As a small business, Jewelry Jar Candles buys its rings from a jewelry wholesaler, so the designs aren’t custom to the company, but I don’t think that’s totally unusual in their business — in fact, I’ve pulled practically matching rings out of a Pearl Bath Bomb and a Bubbly Belle bomb. The rings from my Jewelry Jar bombs are high-quality sterling silver rings with nice-looking gemstones, and I’ve worn them a few times already. They’re among some of the better rings I’ve gotten out of bath bombs.

There was one exception. One of the rings in my Strawberries & Cream bomb seemed, at first glance, really pretty. Valued at about USD$122 (more about that below), on closer inspection it proved to have a damaged stone. The ring had been bagged inside its foil wrapping, so it couldn’t have been water damage; it must have come from the wholesaler that way.

Disappointed, I emailed Jewelry Jar customer service. The disappointment didn’t last long. Less than an hour later, I had a reply from one of the owners that they would forward the issue to their supplier and send me a new ring. When I got back from vacation 10 days later, there was a new ring waiting for me in the mail.

The Gimmick

Jewelry Jar Candles’ ring reveals work very differently than other ring bath bomb companies. On their website, they explain that they buy their jewelry wholesale and each wholesale shipment contains one ring valued at $5,000. It’s placed randomly into a product, so they don’t know where it ends up.

Rather than being packed with a code that you enter on a website, Jewelry Jar Candles rings come with a slip of paper printed with an appraisal.

The owners make it clear in their FAQs that the jewelry appraisal is not their area of expertise:

We are not jewelers.  We sell candles with jewelry in them.  We purchase our jewelry wholesale and use their recommended retail value as our appraisal.  

Personally, I thought the recommended retail value of my rings was a little high (besides the USD$122 ring I mentioned above, I got rings valued at CAD$120, $130 and $280, or about $92, $99 and $215 in USD). While they’re nice rings, I can’t see anyone paying that much for them. But I appreciated Jewelry Jar Candles’ transparency in how they get to those estimated values, and as I’ve mentioned previously in these reviews — if you want to buy fine jewelry, go to a jewelry store, not your bath tub.

The Bottom Line

Jewelry Jar Candles & Bath Bomb Bling is a company I feel great about shopping with. The products are excellent and the price is better than some of the bigger players in the ring bomb game. The rings are lovely. It’s a small, family-run business. And the timely, personalized and super-responsive customer service puts it over the top. I’ll definitely be buying from them again.