From Granny to Filmstar in 45 minutes (Clairol Nice 'n' Easy)

Member Name: sersha

Product:	Clairol Nice 'n' Easy
Date:	23/12/02 (1145 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: covers grey well, leaves hair shiny, easy to use, can apply to dry hair (less mess!)

Disadvantages: smells disgusting, looks disgusting

I've got 40 minutes to kill on the computer at the moment (well.. when I originally wrote this review...), cos my hair is piled up on top of my head, and I have the oldest towel I could find draped around my shoulders.

Since I realised last week that I'm going so grey that I really need to do something about it, I checked The Other Side (since I prefer it.. oooh er!) to see what the top hair colourants were, and Clairol's Nice and Easy came out at number 2 (pretty good recommendation I'd say) and cost me only £5.69. Price was probably the deciding factor - I only needed one more token to claim my soft toy at Boots, and so even though this is often available on special offer for less, I paid the full £5.69 and got a cuddly dolphin thrown in. (they were all out of moles.)

The shade I picked is called 141 deep natural medium brown (which is pretty much my original hair colour, minus the grey.) But the bit that really caught my eye was the "Extra Grey Coverage Formula". Hurrah! Bye bye prematurely aging granny lookalike, hello Catherine Zeta Jones! This is a Level 3 colourant which means that its a permanent haircolour. I didn't actually realise that until a minute ago. What that says to me right now, is if I mess this up I could have blue hair for life. Crumbs. How long is permanent then? It doesn't say. Is it... forever? Oh well, I got a cuddly dolphin ;-)

I hate the crap they write on the packaging. This extra grey coverage formula "contains Concentrated Colour Boosters which penetrate each hair strand so effectively that even the most hard to cover grey is coloured." So, dye then? I do quite like the image of the woman on the front though, she's just SO delighted with her new hair colour its hard to believe I won't actually BE Catherine Zeta Jones by 2pm this afternoon.

As with all these hair dyes, you really ought to pick one that is suitable for your existing hair colour. You
shouldn't try to go blonde if you have dark hair like mine, for example - it won't work. A general rule of thumb is that you can go darker, but not lighter. Helpfully, there are pictures on the back of the pack which show you which natural colour will work for this packet.

So, I opened my packet, put on my plastic gloves, poured my bottle of dye (I refuse to call it anything else) into my plastic bottle of white gunky stuff, shook it a lot, and squirted it all over my head. (You apply this to dry hair, which I like the idea of, as it means generally less messy dripping. It smells absolutely disgusting, a bit like fungusy bread or stale towels, and looks even worse - the same colour and consistency of the sort of thing you cough up when you have a chest infection. However, its on now. Ugh, shiver.

Now, if I were to follow the instructions carefully I would have done a strand test, and dyed just a small piece of hair to check I was happy with the colour first. However, I'm a hardened hair dye afficianado so I didn't bother. Also, I should really only leave it on for 20 minutes, unless I want "increased coverage of resistant grey hair" in which case 45 is better. Well, lets think about it. If I bought it to cover grey, which is it's main purpose, yes, I think I'd want that. And of course anyone who dyes their hair regularly knows that you always leave it on for the maximum time, otherwise you are wasting your money.

I like the way they think some people have particularly resistant grey hair. Isn't grey hair, just grey? Or do some people actually have little armies stationed on top of their heads yelling "No, we will never be conquered! We will fight to the death!" Anyhow, if that's the case, I think my own grey hairs are particularly ferocious and need a short sharp shock, so I might even leave it on for 50 minutes (gasp!!!)

Then again, I don't want to go green or blue for the
rest of my life. My career prospects are slim enough as it is without looking like a student again.

You don't need to shampoo this out of your hair as it has its own inbuilt shampoo, so they provide you with a small packet of conditioner to use once you have rinsed the dye off. These "built in conditioners travel with the colour deep inside the hair." Oh please.

What is it about Sunday afternoons that compels people to dye their hair, by the way? I know in my case its the lack of available offline shopping facilities, and crap telly. When I first did it back in my student days, it was simply to piss off my parents, or cos it was more fun than going to lectures. But it hasn't really lost its appeal, even after 5 years, on a boring Sunday afternoon. Ten minutes till crunch time.

Drum roll....

THE VERDICT

Just blowdryed and inspected carefully in mirror.
I have no grey hairs left. Hurray! My hair is a slighter darker shade of brown (and so is my forehead but that's my own fault I guess) and looks nice and shiny. I'm a happy bunny.

So, in a nutshell:

Advantages of Nice N Easy:

It's Nice and Easy
It costs less than the hairdressers (£5.69 for this time, compared to about £60.00 last time)
It left my hair shiny, soft and manageable (well, the conditioner left my hair shiny anyway, but then so do most of them)
You can get it on special offer sometimes
You apply it to dry hair which is less messy
I can't see any grey left at all
It gives you the perfect 45 minute slot to write an opinion on it

Disadvantages of Nice N Easy:
It smells disgusting
It looks .. disgusting (I'll spare you the details this time)
It tastes horrible (probably - DON'T try it)
The marketing department need a course in Copy writing For Beginners
You don't become Catherine Zeta Jones (but look on the bright side, you don't ha
ve to snog that old geezer either)


Thanks for reading!

Hannah

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