Cheap and cheerful hair-styling product (Tesco Value Styling Gel)

Member Name: worst_trip

Product:	Tesco Value Styling Gel
Date:	10/07/09 (24 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Works well and smells faintly pleasant

Disadvantages: Styling effect brushes out and is lost if you sleep on the 'do,' but this is normal for hair gel

Considering what you're getting here is a large tub of hair gel for under 50p, this stuff's all right.

The smell isn't too offensive. A lot of the low-end hair-gel-type styling products leave you smelling like an teenage boy who's gone completely over the top with his cheap aftershave - and I know what I'm talking about here, since I used to work as a warden at a halls of residence at an agricultural college, where after a long day on work experience down in the cow sheds the young male farming students had more cause than most people to be worried about lingering nasty niffs.

So this Tesco stuff has a relatively faint, synthetic-herbal kind of smell. This wears off quite quickly after the product dries, which I count as a definite plus point. Unlike some hairsprays it doesn't seem to leave any noticeable flakiness or sticky residue - but then I only ever apply it once, just after I've washed my hair. I don't reapply it between washes as I use other products for dry hair instead.

Personally I have nightmarishly difficult-to-style, coarse-textured hair which, worst of all, seems intent on growing in a forwards direction over my scalp. Without the aid of some pretty heavy-duty styling products, because of this unfortunate hair growth-pattern, I would spend most of my time looking like a village idiot. I use hair gel immediately after washing mainly to make my hair appear to be growing in a more natural direction (backwards, and down over the sides of my head). With this initial help of gel, I can then style my 'do' with more wax and hairspray when it's dry so that I begin to look more like a normal person. Tesco Gel works really well to 'tame' hair in this way; the last time I ran out of it when I forgot to bring some gel on a weekend at the relatives', I can confirm that I was back to looking ridiculous the minute my newly-washed hair dried.

Hair gel isn't intended to be 're-sculptable'; after applying it to towel-dry hair you comb it into the style you prefer and then leave it to set hard. If you comb it or brush it again (or sleep on it) you lose much of the styling effect. Tesco Value Styling Gel works well for the above stated process, and it's so cheap that really, who could ask for more?

Summary: Definitely worth a try