Guest Post! Aquafina Hydrating Lip Oil

Oh, guest posts. How I've missed you. We've got a backlog of these, so look out for a bunch of reviews from your fellow readers. Today's poster is MALE, fancy that. He's the mythically-aliased Pyramus, who'll be giving his review through a chink in the wall:

I am a guy who is a hopeless lip-glop addict; I have them in every room in the house, in every knapsack and coat pocket; if I accidentally leave the house without one, I have to buy one to have with me. I go through a lot of lip glop, and when I see an interesting one that 1) looks as if it might work well and 2) isn't girly, I can easily be convinced to give it a shot, since I'm always afraid they'll discontinue whatever one I happen to be using at the time. Last week I found a couple of Pepsi-branded oddities at a local dollar store and bought one of each (Ed. note: the second review will be posted shortly).

Price: $1.00 at the Dollarama, which is a chain of Canadian dollar stores. If they have them at a dollar store in a small Canadian city on the east coast, they must have them in a whole lot of other places, too, unless this is really the end of the line, where discontinued and presumably crappy products come to die (which wouldn't surprise me).

Appearance: Shiny. The packaging is printed on shiny silver-and-blue cardboard, the cap of the tube is a pearlized water blue, and the squeeze tube itself is gleaming blue plastic. The applicator is a slanted plastic thing with a big hole in it- probably my least favourite way to apply lip glop.

Glide: Like Teflon. The product is extremely slick and shiny, and the applicator practically slides right off your lips, leaving a thick, heavy coating of shine, as if you'd had your mouth upholstered with patent leather. (It's hard to control the amount you apply, since this is a thick liquid in a very supple, easily squeezed tube; the texture is like Blistex Lip Infusion only much, much thicker.) If you put on a tiny dab with a fingertip and circle your mouth with it, the shine is reduced to almost nothing, and the slickness is minimized, but even so, this is a very slidey, glidey product. I should have read the package: "maximum hydration and shine", it promises, and I don't know about the hydration, necessarily, but the shine? Maximum.

Flavour/Smell: Sugared Vicks Vap-O-Rub. It's described on the package back as a "clean, deliciously crisp flavour experience", so I guess that given the brand name (Aquafina is a bottled water marketed by PepsiCo), I was expecting "fresh mountain spring water", but it's really "overdose of menthol", which makes your lips tingle (and burn a little) soon after you apply it, and they don't stop tingling for a long time, either. Some people love this tingly mintiness; not me, though I can put up with it if I have to. But why would a product boast "calming botanicals" if it also contains enough menthol to make you think your lips are swelling up? They don't feel very calm!

Lasting Power: A while, if you don't lick your lips, which you probably will, because the product is pleasantly sweet, even though there are no sweeteners of any sort listed on the package.

Product Pluses/Minuses: Pluses- inexpensive. Strongly mentholated, if you like that kind of thing. Unbelievably shiny, if you like that kind of thing. Slightly scary name. Minuses- unbelievably shiny. Hard-to-control applicator.

Rating: 3 out of 5 tubes. Too menthol-y, too shiny.