When Goop goes bad

It had been a year or more since I’d needed the cleaning power of Goop, but need it I recently did, so I dug out my mostly-full 14-ounce container of orange-scented Goop-with-pumice. To my surprise, I found that the lid had cracked and its top had separated from its rim. Of course, it would’ve been far more unpleasant if the bottom of the container had failed instead.

The hand cleaner itself had separated into a sludge (the pumice, mostly, I suppose) and a syrupy fluid, both dark green. All other things being equal, I’d ordinarily have simply mixed the sludge and liquid back together and scrubbed my hands with the stuff. A cracked lid, however, gave me pause. The container of Goop had not been sitting out in a spot regularly exposed to harsh sunlight, so the paranoiac in me wondered whether some interaction between the cleanser and the plastic might have led to the latter cracking. Unlikely as that seemed, I had no way of ruling it out. And when I tried to recall what the cleaner had looked like when I’d last used it, I drew a blank.

Out of an overabundance of caution, I disposed of the stuff.

I’ve never seen Goop on sale anywhere else in the city, so next week I’ll try my luck at the shop where we bought that tub a few years back. Of course, Hong Kong being Hong Kong, they’ve almost certainly stopped selling Goop and any employee who ever saw it on the store’s shelf has probably moved on long ago, but I’ll give it a shot anyway.