Review - Bon Bon Balm

Disclosure - PR sample

LBR is a little late to the party with these lip balms, which have previously been featured on several other blogs. We wanted to add our shout out to the generally positive coverage anyway, firstly because we love a good quality indie brand and secondly because Bon Bon Balm are offering a quite ingenious service to their customers - a lip balm club (Club Bon Bon) which works as a subscription service. Customers sign up to receive a new lip balm each month in one of many mouthwatering flavours. The picture to the right shows the lovely packaging you can expect. Sadly this is a "coming soon" service, but we will be keeping an eye on the site for an announcement of the launch, billed as "coming summer 2010" (i.e. very soon).

Founder Sally works as a plant scientist and has based the Bon Bon formula around natural oils and waxes. Personally I'm not a "natural is always best" kind of consumer (I don't necessarily agree with the Bon Bon view that ingredients such as paraffin "suppress the lips' natural ability to function"), but I have found the Bon Bon Balm I tried to be softening and pleasant to use, with a non-greasy (in fact almost matte) finish and a soft, smooth texture that's easy to pick up with a fingertip. Also Pina Colada, the variant I tried, smells absolutely divine. The scent alone is quite addictive.

Bon Bon balms come in 5g glass jars with a screw top lid and a printed sticker on top. Simple but functional. If the jars were slightly lighter and maybe made of plastic I'd like them even more, but given that my handbag is already swimming with a heavy clutter of products, I'm not going to complain too seriously about the weight of one little jar.

Gemma tried out the Mojito variant, and she found the texture of her balm to be slightly gritty. I didn't have this problem, so I think it's possible that these vary by batch or maybe by flavour.

Bon Bon Balms are available from www.bonbonbalm.com and cost £5 each.