The Good: Amazing aroma, Great lather, Wonderful feeling, Good cleaning power
The Bad: Stupidly expensive.
The Basics: An amazing peppermint scented and infused shampoo, Bath & Body Works' Mentha Hair Mint-Infused Invigorating Shampoo does all it promises. . . for a pretty steep price!
I have no problem with admitting both that I like a good deal and I loathe spending too much on a product. When it comes to health care products, there are very few that I want to pay a lot for. Having only been married for a little over a year and a quarter, I'm still in the phase where my wife can get me to follow her into any store. A few weeks ago during one of their clearance sales, that meant I went wandering behind her through Bath And Body Works. And while occasionally I tried to make myself useful by smelling something and passing to her scents I thought smelled delightful, more often than not, I found myself in the role of scoffing over ridiculously high prices for merchandise. One of the things that nearly made me gag and fall over was finding the price on the bottom of the C.O. Bigelow Mentha Hair Mint-Infused Invigorating Shampoo. It is regularly $12 for a bottle.
My wife hemmed and hawed about the bottle which was fifty percent off and ultimately, we both came to the conclusion that there would never be a better time in our feeble little anti-capitalist lives to spend a decadent $6.00 a bottle on a shampoo and its accompanying conditioner. And now, having felt how the other half lives . . . I'm quite glad I did. The Mentha Hair Mint-Infused Invigorating Shampoo is a perfect summer shampoo and while Bath & Body Works blindly clearances it as "out of season," it is a great opportunity for consumers to get a real (if still insanely pricey) treat.
The C.O. Bigelow Mentha Hair Mint-Infused Invigorating Shampoo comes in an opaque green bottle with the 10 fl. oz. usually costing consumers a whopping $12.00! The green bottle is boxy, reminds one of a flask - outside being green and plastic - and has a darker flip-top lid. Because the sides of the bottle feature the letters for the Bigelow name in raised letters, the Mentha Hair shampoo bottle does not drop easily from one's hands and thus remains light and easy to use.
I am a huge fan of all things mint, a fact my wife knows quite well. So this quickly became a treat shampoo for both of us. As summer has descended, I need to wash my hair at least once every other day and when I have used the Mentha Hair, it cuts through accumulated oils and dirt with an efficiency that makes it like Dawn for hair! Application and use could not be easier. After rinsing one's hair, simply open the bottle, deposit a dollop of the Mentha Mint shampoo on your hand - I have long hair and a droplet the size of a quarter stretches to clean all my hair - then lather into the hair. The Mentha Hair shampoo comes out of the bottle as a mostly-clear fluid with only the slightest tint of yellow-green color to it. It quickly lathers into a light white foam that easily coats a full mane of hair. When the time comes, it washed out exceptionally easily, making it a great shampoo when the hot water kicks out!
I mentioned before that Mentha Hair is an ideal summer shampoo and it's about time I explain that. Mentha Hair has 1% peppermint extract and smells divinely of peppermint. This is not a subtle scent, it is a forceful, open your nostrils aroma. The thing is, like most mentholated products, this shampoo opens the pores. In the process, the Mentha Hair Mint-Infused Invigorating Shampoo actually cools off the skin, starting at the scalp and then wherever it comes into contact with skin below. In the summer, that means after a minute or two of shampooing - there is a time delay factor to this benefit I have not been able to truly comprehend the reason for - every inch of skin this touches gets washed over with a freezing breeze. The first time this tingle effect happened to me, I shouted out in a remarkably girlish way!
The Bigelow Mentha Hair Mint-infused Invigorating shampoo comes from C.O. Bigelow Apothecaries which was established in 1836, so one assumes if there ever had been animal testing in perfecting their formula, it was so far back as to justify the "Not Tested On Animals" label the bottle bears. The shampoo does contain actual peppermint extract, though it is far below ingredients like water, sodium laureth sulfate and cocamidopropyl betaine. All I know is that the ingredients work and even in the summer, my hair still smells like Peppermint after twelve awake and about hours!
While this is an absolutely amazing shampoo, I could not justify giving it a perfect score due to the outrageous cost for so small a bottle. Price does matter and while I have never had a shampoo that has the tingle effect like the Mentha Hair, I've had shampoos that clean equally well and scent my hair at least as much for about a third or a sixth of what my wife paid for this bottle of shampoo. It's amazing, but I would never recommend anyone pay $12 for it!
For other shampoo reviews, please check out my take on Suave Professionals' Rosemary Mint shampoo by clicking here!
7/10
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© 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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