Review: Hurraw! (Lemon, Grapefruit, Mint, Black Cherry Tinted)

Hey, it's 2014! What's up??

A while ago (like... months!) I got this fistful of beauts from Hurraw! Their packaging is lovely and they have a nice variety of flavors, mostly for $3.79 (a few are $4.29). Some of the products themselves are colored -- i.e., the grapefruit wax is the color pink! This is pretty unusual, as far as I've seen in the world of vegan lip balms! I hate to be so shallow, but the fact that their balms have color really excited me!

I wish I could review each of these scents in depth, standing on their own, but truthfully, I just haven't been using any of them. Because they're so cute, with their bright colored labels and nice design, I wish I liked them a whole lot more! They're... okay...

Sometimes I think whether something like a balm or a gloss is good or not is purely personal preference, both scent and texture-wise! These just unfortunately don't work for me. They are very thin-feeling on the lips. They go on exceedingly slick and slippery. If you like a thinner, lighter, very slick balm, these might be for you! They are very buttery-smooth and silky-soft when you're applying! By far the softest I've tried! Actually too soft, for me. I don't feel like I can use much pressure or I might crush the product, and I don't like the feeling that the product is slipping off my lips. That's how thin it feels to me... like it doesn't have much cling.

This is entirely just personal preference as to what I like to feel on my lips and what I don't. Everyone's different! And since lip balms are the only lip products I use, I am a bit picky.

The lemon scent uses lemongrass, which I suspect is why it is too sharp-smelling -- like a lemon-scented cleaning product -- for me. It's less citrus juice-y and more grassy and green, or something. The smell really icks me. I would just throw this away if I didn't want to keep looking for a lemon balm that I like and use this as a comparison point!

I'll probably use the grapefruit one, since that's one of my favorite flavors for vegan balms. It's okay! But I don't like it was well as Hugo Naturals grapefruit balm. (Crazy Rumors are also just "okay.") If you're going grapefruit, get the Hugo, is all I'm saying. It's worth it.

The black cherry flavor has a tint. I'm not a tinted lip anything girl, but this is not a red tint. It's hardly even a pink tint! I think I'll use this one, too, since on my lips (which have all the color I want naturally) it's not very noticeable.

I haven't used the mint enough to gain any appreciation for it since I have spearmint and peppermint from The Gnarly Whale in rotation, but mint is such a basic scent for lip balm, I'm sure I'll get use out of it eventually. Scent-wise, it's more on the peppermint side.

Similarly, I can't comment as to the staying power of these. I haven't worn any of them enough to notice them either needing constant reapplication or hanging around on me.

It's just hard to imagine getting to like any one of these in particular, since I don't reach for any of them. Sorry, Hurraw! I like your style, I am really excited by the simple fact that your balms have colored wax, and I appreciate your range of scents. I just don't think you're for me. I wish I loved you!! But I'm going to use this grapefruit balm for sure.

TL;DR: If you like very slick formulations, you might like these! These aren't my favorite, but they're usable.

Review: Crazy Rumors Lip Balm (Pink Grapefruit Juice)

Since I liked the Hugo Naturals Grapefruit lip balm so much, I was eager to try the Pink Grapefruit Juice scent from Crazy Rumors. So eager, in fact, that I got three of them...

Crazy Rumors has a really wide selection of scents/flavors! In the world of vegan lip balm, scent and flavor can be hard to come by and very limited. I've mostly seen citrus and vanilla scents. To see that they produce so many varied and unique flavors is great. I do believe, with the small selection of flavors I've tried, this may mean they can be a little hit-and-miss, but we'll see.

I've used these Pink Grapefruit Juice balms for about six months -- lost a tube in the wash by leaving it in my pocket and everything! So I've really put these through the wringer. They seem to rank between Hugo and Bee Friendly in terms of scent/moisturization. The scent is very light and the taste is also very minimal, but both are present enough to be so much better than unscented/unflavored. These are not saturated with scent or flavor.

In the tube, the wax is very, very firm-feeling against the lips. It will transfer, but it feels very firm. Luckily, it is smooth. (As I've said, I don't really mind the "grainy" feeling some vegan balms can have when their wax crystalizes a bit in the tube, but if you do, this is something to keep in mind. To each his own!) It's also buildable, so you can achieve the amount of lightness or heaviness you might need or want. They feel good going on, and I like this flavor in a neutral manner.

But I do feel like the Hugo one lasts the longest and has the most saturated scent/flavor. It smells like a literal grapefruit, and if you held them both out to me and told me to pick one, I'd take the Hugo flavor. Crazy Rumors' Pink Grapefruit Juice is smoother than Hugo, but I still like Hugo the best, I think, in terms of scent, flavor, moisturization, and staying power.

But if you don't want an overpowering scent or flavor and like a lighter balm, these are worth a try!  At $3.50, they're the general price of most balms I've seen so far, and Crazy Rumors has such a wide selection.

TL;DR: A nice balm with a mild grapefruit scent/flavor. Worth trying, but I think there are better grapefruit balms in particular out there.