Mathmos Astro Metallic Lava Lamp Review: New Astro Metallic Yellow

If you're thinking about buying a lava lamp, let me tell you: choose the original. Yes, Mathmos is more expensive than most of those copycat lamps out there, but you won't regret it. Never has anyone copied the exact formular of the original. Mathmos lamps have a very long life (if you treat them nicely), they have the perfect running performance of the wax and overall good quality. The wax itself is beautiful and performs for years and years while most of the cheaper ones will be broken in half a year or even perform badly from the start. Not all of them, but there are many really bad ones out there, so by choosing Mathmos you choose quality and you'll notice that.

By the way: You'll have a great customers service and you'll always have the chance to buy spare parts for your lamp if needed, even in 10, 20, 30 years plus many of these lamps become a collector's item over the years and if you keep them in good shape, you'll always be able to sell them second hand for a good price, if you don't want the lamp anymore (but really, you must be crazy then 😄).

It's always exciting for me when Mathmos launches new lamps, new colours and new editions. When the Astro Metallic was launched (was it in the beginning of this, or in the end of last year?), I was very looking forward to those.

What's special about the Astro metallic? Well it's a normal Astro lava lamp, but with a silver/mirror-like varnish covering the bottle, which is supposed to become translucent when the lamp is running.

Well, I think they could have added a special base and cap to the lampe and not simply just use the usual ones. Do you remember the Oak and Marble ones for example? Weren't they awesome? Or the flocked ones from the 90's...well I would have been satisfied even with a little print or a different colour, but it's just the usual base/cap. Why I'm not really happy with that? Well, especially because you are forced to buy the whole thing and couldn't just simply order a replacement bottle, even if you already have a huge amount of bases and caps like these at home.

If you don't have a choice and have to buy the whole thing if only the bottle ist what you need, they could at least make the base/cap differ from the usual ones in some way. I have the same complaint about the "Pretty Green"-Astro edition, but I'll tell you about the Pretty Green lamps in another post, back to the Astro Metallic:

When the red and blue lamps first came out, I was very disapointed with them. Because of the dark colours chosen (the deep red and the dark blue), you couldn't really say what's going on inside the lamp when running. Especially the blue one is a pain, even when the room is really dark, you can't see much if anything at all - no fun in my eyes and nothing like you were expecting from the product pictures.

The red one is o.k. in a dark room, but at daylight it hardly makes a difference if it is switched on or off. My thought on these always was: Why didn't they choose brighter colours, like yellow or bright orange which would shine through in a better way?

My disapointment even grew, because both of my lamps, the red as well as the blue one, have quality issues like spots on the silver varnish and always keep in mind: Mathmos lamps don't come cheap. You can't scratch the spots off, because you would damage the silver paint and when the lamp is running, those spots look like black dots. It's hard to get that on camera in a good way, but I tried and hope you can see on the pictures what I mean. One of my two metallic lamps hat issues so bad, I even exchanged it, but the new one was nearly the same.

Though I'm a huge fan and collector of Mathmos Lamps and a sucker for limited editions, I was thinking of returning those completely (I obviously didn't, though I think I should have...but a collector's heart is not a rational thing you know?). Well, when the yellow one came out like two weeks ago or something, I thought I'd give these metallic lamps another try. Yellow ist a much brighter colour and I thought this might shine through the metallic varnish better.

The Lamp arrived in the usual packaging, a very fitting mailer box with the Mathmos box inside. The box is nothing special, but the usual one all regular Mathmos lamps come with. Inside that box you have the instruction booklet and two more boxes, one with the bottle and one with the base, cap and bulb. Nothing unusual here as well. Different to the normal Mathmos bottles, the Metallic bottle is wrapped with thin paper to keep the varnish from scratching. Notice that the surface on these bottles is really fragile and though mine is brand new and just out of the box it does have lots of small scratches if you look closely.

The base works with the newer lamp style, not the round bulbs like the older ones and the bottle itself is also a newer one with the little overhang at the bottom to keep it in place on the base.

On the box itself you have the usual printings of the current bottle colour range and what I think is pretty exciting is, that - though it didn't show up anywhere else so far - the Astro Metallic is showcased in Red, Blue, Yellow...and Orange! I hope this means they'll release an orange one somewhen in the future, too.

I'm very surprised with the new lamp compared to the older blue and red ones, because it seems, Mathmos themselves were aware of the previous issues and did something about it. The silver varnish is much thinner than on the older bottles and as you can see on the pictures, you can even see through it when switched off. Not much, but if you look closely, you can see the background dots shining through on the picture below. I think the "old" more mirror-like lamp looks much more beautiful when turned off, that's for sure, but I think the thinner "new"varnish will work much better, when the lamp is running - we'll see.

Missing on the newer bottle ist the "Mathmos"-printing. I really miss the "Mathmos"-printing on the bottle itself, as I'm a fan of little details like that. I also miss the Mathmos printing on the base and/or cap, but this isn't an issue with this edition in particular, because they skipped that a long time ago. Anyway, I'm really looking forward to running this lamp. As the bottle ist very cold and the water still foamy from transportation, I will let it rest a few hours, 'til it reaches room temperature. Always treat your Mathmos lamps nicely and gentle you know, they will return the favour with a long life and problemfree working.

Well, let's jump some hours into the future. I now have run the lamp and let me tell you: It's stunning and I love it. The Yellow wax is shining beautifully and bright through the silver paint and the mirrorlike varnish even reflects the bubbles on the inside, so it looks even more exciting. By the way: I'm very happy yellow wax found it's way back to the Mathmos range, it's so bright and shiny, I love it. I hope they'll resurrect the white wax sometime in the future, too: to me the white wax / blue liquid combination was one of the best colour combinations from the past...but back to the Astro Metallic again:

For the pictures, I chose the red one to compare it to the yellow one. As you can see, It's hard to get the yellow colour on camera correctly and on most of the pictures it seems a bit orange or amber, but believe me, in reality it's bright and shiny yellow, no orange at all. I ran both lamps exaclty the same time and the red wax ist bubbling just as good as the yellow one, but...as you can see on the pictures, you can hardly see if it is bubbling at all. To be honest, at the pictures, maybe because of the flashlight, it even looks better an more transculent than in reality. The red colour just isn't bright and strong enough to shine through the thick silver varnish used for these older bottles in a good way. I chose the red one for this comparison, because...believe me...the blue one is even worse.

I'm very curious, if the current range of red and blue are still the same or if they changed the varnish to the thinner one like on the yellow lamp. I'm a collector, but I'm not that crazy I would buy the blue and red lamps once more, without knowing for sure. Dear Mathmos, if you ever read this, I won't mind if you sent me free replacement bottles for my red and blue ones, if the current range uses the newer bottles with the thinner paint ;)  Look at the following picture, doesn't look good, does it?

My conclusion: Yes, I really like the yellow Astro Metallic. A real bummer for returning customers is, you have to buy the whole thing with the usual base/cap even if you don't need it. Wouldn't be an issue to me if the base/cap was something special too, or you maybe at least had a colour choice from the heritage range for example, but you haven't. If you don't own a regular Mathmos Astro yet (but who doesn't): A perfect set for you.

Would I recommend this lamp. Well, this really relies on your personal taste. The yellow one works fantastic and I personally really like it. It's a beautiful collector's item and fans will love it. If you don't own a Mathmos lava lamp so far, I would pick one of the regular lamps as you have a really good choice of wax/liquid colours and base/cap colours as well (regular silver or gold, blue, black, copper in the heritage range).

Whatever, if you want a Mathmos lamp, but the Astro seems too big? What about an Astro Baby or the beautiful new Mathmos Neo? You don't have a place to put it, not enough free space? What about the brand new Mathmos Neo Wall to hang on your wall? I already have 3 of them and let me tell you: they are awesome. You see, there's no excuse not to buy a Mathmos lamp - every home should house at least one lava lamp...I can't even imagine living without. Joking apart: I'm addicted 😂

Well, somewhen in the future I'll tell you about all of those other Mathmos lamps I mentioned above and even about more. Be sure not to miss it by hitting this "Follow" link. I mostly write about Yankee Candles and stuff in german, but all my Mathmos blog entries will be in english as well as my Masters of the Universe posts. You're a fan of 80's toys reloaded and haven't read any of my Motu-posts? Go ahead, you find all of them "here". 

P.S.: At the very end of this site, I but added a few pictures of the blue one for you, so you can see how bad that one is. Keep in mind: It's running...can't really see much what's going on inside the lamp? Me neither...

From time to time I do some Zavvi Z-Box unboxing, too. The boxes include some great superhero and comic stuff. You find these posts by using the "search this blog" function on the upper right on this site when in desktop mode. Have fun and thanks for stepping by 😊

Here are some pictures of the blue one...not recommended...if you buy this, get the yellow one ;)