This balm comes to you from a brand by the name of 100% Pure. That should be pretty self-explainatory as to what type of products this company sells. Which, in theory, is a great thing, right? Uh, yeah, until you actually give the product a go..
PRICE: $8.00 at 100% Pure. I’ve also seen this sold on the Bath & Body Works website (but I don’t think it’s sold there anymore, so don’t ask why I’m even mentioning it).
PACKAGING: This is what originally caught my eye and made me want to give it a shot. It’s an adorable .5oz stripe-y squeeze tube covered in an adorable cursive font. Honestly, I can’t read a single thing on the tube itself (I can’t see it because of the colors used — they clash too much for my color-blind eyes), but who cares. It’s adorable, and I like it.
TEXTURE/GLIDE: The applicator is one of those slant-tip plastic applicators. And okay, maybe this would be a lot easier if I actually used that, but I don’t. Those things always make application a little uneven, in my experience, so I just stick to squeezing a little bit on my fingertip and going from there. First of all, the glide is good, but has almost a watery consistancy to it. You’d never know it when squeezing it out of the tube, though. Straight out of the tube, it almost seems a little too solid. But the second it touches your lips, it transforms into a very thin, almost watery mess. The texture is very thin, and very light, and adds a pretty wet-like sheen to your lips for a few minutes before it really sinks into your lips. I mean, you could sit there for a few minutes and really rub it in with your finger, but who wants to do that? You shouldn’t have to. I should also add that the flavor of this balm causes your lips to tingle to the high heavens. Let’s get a little more into that now, actually..
SMELL/FLAVOR: When they call this a mint balm, they’re not kidding. At all. This might actually be the mintiest lip balm ever. In the world. And I really don’t mean that in a good way. When this stuff first comes out of the tube, the strength of the mint is actually pretty offensive. After I had this on my lips for a few seconds, not only did my sinuses burn like a (bleeeeep), but my eyeballs felt like they were screaming and begging for mercy. Holy cow. I mean, really, mint is all well and good, but good gravy.. I will say, though, that it does freshen your breath. And your sinuses. And your eyeballs. And I haven’t asked my fingernails, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it freshened them as well.
LASTING POWER: This is the first balm I’ve used where the smell lasted longer than the balm itself. No joke. This is so thin that your lips just kinda suck it up almost entirely after just forty-five minutes or so, but that mint really lingers.
INGREDIENTS: Organic Butters of Cocoa1, Shea2 and Avocado1, Organic Oils of Sweet Almond1 and Rosehip3,Vitamin E (a-tocopherol), Organic Peppermint1 and Spearmint1 Essesntial Oils, Organic Peppermint Flavor4 (taken from 100% Pure)
OVERALL: Packaging, good (well, mostly — I still can’t read it, but whatever). Everything else, bad. I mean, honestly, I don’t even find it to be all that moisturizing. It irritates way too much, anyway, to make any of it’s moisturizing qualities at all worth it to me. Especially for that price. I mean, eight bucks isn’t too much, in my book, if the product is worth it. Hell, I’ll pay way more than that for a really, really good balm (hello La Mer), and I will be able to justify every penny spent on that balm based on how good it is. But two bucks, eight bucks, twenty bucks.. It’s all way too much if it’s a crappy balm. But I’ll still give it one and a half lips. For the packaging. I’m being generous here.
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