Review (3/5): Product packaging concerns
The name “Honey Bee Smooth Bath & Body Scrub + Moisturizer” just evokes good thoughts, doesn’t it? If you love honey, it just sounds amazing. I know I love honey and I love using it or having it in my beauty products, so I was looking forward to receiving this product to test it out.
There are some actual product packaging concerns that really should be addressed by the company that makes this body scrub. First off, the jar is pretty sturdy, I’m not going to dispute that and it’s amber, which is always good in helping keep out UV rays. The ONLY seal is the Amazon barcode label (One of the photos shows the label, but I cut through it, it was intact when it arrived - so that was not the issue). There was no shrink wrap seal, neither was there an inner seal, nor one of those inner lid liners. This jar also does not have ANY other labeling except for that Amazon barcode and the top label with their website URL. This was a standalone jar, no box. There is no product information on the jar, no ingredient list, no product name, no manufacture or expiration dates. This brings up heavy red flags for me – quality control especially.
The product description sounds rather amazing, right? Ok, keep in mind what I previously mentioned about quality control. In their description they advertise that you can EAT it. I’d recommend against it because of the lack of quality sealing. It would be one thing if this were given to me by someone who I knew personally that had made the product, but since this is coming from a company that I don’t know and that doesn’t have anything other than the description on Amazon, I’m not sticking this product in my mouth. I know the anti-bacterial properties of honey, however, that doesn’t mean that it can’t be contaminated by anything else -1) it’s not pure honey, there are other ingredients within, 2) who knows the health/sanitation practices of this company, right?, 3) with there just being the barcode label as a seal, who’s to say that someone couldn’t have tampered with it in the warehouse?, and 4) their only label – the one I mentioned with their website URL – if you go to the URL, it comes up with:
“This webpage is not available
ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED”
I don’t know about you, but without anything reputable to back up the product or company, I find it very hard for me to trust this.
ALL of that aside, if you can look past those packaging and trust issues, getting to the actual product…
When you open the cover, it does have that very rich strong scent of honey. The brown sugar and other ingredients have settled to the bottom, so some stirring was necessary — the honey is also pretty solid, so a cosmetic spatula (not included) was not adequate enough to stir it. Once you do stir it, the scent of the brown sugar comes through. Because it’s honey, it’s really sticky, and like any sugar scrub, it has that gritty sugar texture which is great for exfoliation. If your skin is dry when you apply, you may have a tough time spreading it, to avoid this, moisten your skin prior to smoothing this along.
It does its job at exfoliating, removing a layer of dead skin, but I didn’t expect that it wouldn’t. The product itself is good, leaves the skin smooth and smells good – I used it on my leg.
It’s not proprietary though, since there are a ton of DIY tutorials on how to make sugar scrubs out on the web nowadays. But if you’re not into making your own and if they change the packaging and labeling and get a working website up, then this would be the way to go.
I really hope that they get the concerns I mentioned in the beginning straightened out. It would have been a decent product all around if not for those issues. If they do, then I'd be more than happy to bump the rating to a 4. This product was given to me complimentary in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.