Sydney Sweeney’s Dr. Squatch Soap Ad: The Bathwater Stunt That Sold Out
The Dr. Squatch soap ad starring Sydney Sweeney leaned into bathwater jokes, dropped a limited bar, and sold out fast. A masterclass in stunt marketing that outsmarted every serious competitor in the category.
Take Me There, Scotty ↓The campaign at a glance
- Brand
- Dr. Squatch
- Product
- "Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss" soap
- On sale
- June 6, 2025
- The run
- 5,000 numbered bars at $8
- Result
- Sold out in under a minute; heavy earned media (brand-reported)
Catch up
Missed the beat? The bathwater soap stunt, in one minute.
- Oct 2024A viral Dr. Squatch spot with Sweeney fills its own comments with bathwater jokes.
- May 29The brand listens and announces "Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss," a 5,000 bar run at 8 dollars each.
- Jun 6The bars go on sale, sell out in under a minute, and crash the site.
- Jun 2025Bars appear on eBay and StockX with asking prices in the hundreds.
- LaterA follow up giveaway draws about a million entries for 100 bars, and the brand claims billions of impressions, all company reported.Latest
The Dr. Squatch collaboration is the cleanest example of a new playbook: take an internet joke, package it, and sell it back to the people who made it. A limited soap marketed around Sydney Sweeney’s bathwater produced exactly the reaction the brand wanted, which was disbelief, jokes, and a sell out measured in seconds.
What they actually sold
The product was called Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss. Dr. Squatch announced it on May 29, 2025 and put it on sale on June 6, a run of 5,000 numbered bars at 8 dollars each, sold with certificates. It was a medium grit exfoliating bar with a woodsy scent. The brand marketed it as containing her actual bathwater, which is a claim from the company rather than anything independently verified, and worth treating as marketing.
The meme it came from
This did not come from nowhere. It followed a viral October 2024 Dr. Squatch spot with Sweeney where fans joked in the comments that they wanted her bathwater, and it deliberately echoed Belle Delphine’s 2019 "GamerGirl Bath Water" stunt. The company simply listened to its own comment section and manufactured the punchline as a numbered collectible.
How fast it went
It sold out in under a minute and the site crashed. Bars quickly appeared on eBay and StockX with asking prices from a few hundred dollars to more than 700, though those are individual listings rather than clearing prices. A follow up giveaway drew about a million entries for 100 bars. Dr. Squatch has claimed the campaign generated on the order of 10 billion social impressions, up to 74 billion earned media impressions, more than 100,000 new Instagram followers, and roughly a 20% week over week revenue lift. Those are all brand reported figures, so read them as the company’s scoreboard, not audited numbers.
The backlash and the real story
Plenty of people called it gross, and Sweeney later said the criticism came mainly from women, a framing that trade press argued was itself a bit sexist. The more interesting read is that the soap was never the point. Around 40,000 dollars of direct sales bought billions of impressions, which means the product was a media generation device. Scarcity did the work, and a woman turned her own male gaze meme into money before anyone else could.
