Neutrogena Norwegian Formula Immediate Repair Lip Balm > Reviews (2)

If you flick through the pages of any woman’s magazine you will find plenty of advertisements for the latest lipstick or lip gloss which is going to give you the perfectly kissable lips of your dreams. Well apart from if you have dry lips that is as no lipstick is going to be able to disguise them! Dry lips are not only unsightly but they can be sore and painful too and I’m sure that all of us have experienced them at some point.

Recently after a rather bad cold my lips were looking and feeling rather sorry for themselves and I decided my usual lip balm wasn’t helping so I decided to invest in something a bit more heavy duty. I browsed the shelves at my local Boots and decided on the ‘Immediate Repair Lip Balm’ by Neutrogena. I think the words immediate repair jumped out at me and that was what swayed my decision and the £2.50 price tag wasn’t too bad either.

The product comes in a small white plastic tub with a red screw on lid, pretty standard packaging for a lip balm really. Wanting to experience this immediate relief I opened the jar as soon as I’d paid for it and was greeted with a white paste which had a pleasant smell to it. I can’t quite describe what it smells of as there isn’t anything that stands out from it. As with a lot of lip balms that come in a pot the idea with this is that you use the end of your finger to take a little of the balm from pot and then use this to apply it to your mouth – I always think that these are a little unhygienic as you never know what nasties your finger has on it and do you really want to apply them to your lips but I must admit do prefer these to the stick balms you can get.

The first thing I noticed about the product was how thick it is, usually lip balms are quite easy to get out of the pot but this is quite difficult due to the sheer thickness of the balm. I always end up with a huge blob that I then have to put on the back of my hand because there is far too much to apply to my lips on the end of my finger! So I use my forefinger to apply the balm to the lips and the first thing I notice is that it feels really waxy and even though I have only applied a thin layer it feels like there is much, much more on there and isn’t a very nice sensation at all. I can literally feel this thick waxy film just sitting on my lips and every time my lips touch they kind of stick together – yuck!

I assume that I am just impatient and that if I give it a few moments the waxy film will disintegrate into my lips, leaving them feeling smooth and moisturised and this would be when I’d experience this immediate relief I was so looking forward to getting. Hmmmmm five minutes later my lips still have this horrible waxy layer on them and it becoming more and more annoying it doesn’t feel like it is sinking in at all. After ten minutes I give up and use a tissue to remove this horrible waxy feeling off my lips and I can’t honestly see or feel any relief from the dry skin either! Feeling quite fed up I wonder if maybe I did something wrong even though I’m not sure how wrong you can go with putting a bit of lip balm on your lips?

So a little later I give it another try……..exactly the same thing happens and I end up wiping it off with a tissue.

As you can maybe tell I wasn’t impressed with this product at all, until I then tried it on the dry skin which my cold had left me with around my nostrils – attractive no but I am sure you’ve experienced it at some point! It said on the back of the pot that it can be used on the skin around the nose to relieve dryness so I thought I’d give that a go – well it was useless as a lip balm so I may as well! To my surprise when used on this area it worked an absolute treat – it really moisturised the skin around my nostrils and helped to alleviate the soreness I’d got from constantly blowing my nose. Needless to say I haven’t bothered using this on my lips again but have just kept it for the next time I get a bad cold and need a nostril balm!

I would only award this 1 out of 5. Personally if you are looking for a lip balm that is pleasant to use and gives good results I wouldn’t bother with this as there are much better products out there that actually do work. However if you have a sore nose from blowing it constantly after a bad cold then this is the product for you! If it hadn’t have worked on my sore nose then I would have given this a big fat zero out of five and it isn’t often I do that.

Thanks for reading – please rate and comment xxx