Forget the dance floor, become the Fred and Ginger of the bedroom floor! (Anatomicals Snog Me Senseless Breath Freshener)

Member Name: missixty

Product:	Anatomicals Snog Me Senseless Breath Freshener
Date:	17/04/08 (451 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Freshens breath, kills germs and bacteria, cheap, funky packaging, portable

Disadvantages: None, not widely available in stores YET but watch this space

Okay before I get into this review I would like to share some very exciting Dooyoo + anatomical + me news!! As some of you are aware a few months ago I stumbled across the brand anatomicals and instantly fell in love, purchased several products and came here to tell you all about them. I was very excited to have found such a fun exciting brand, with products that came without the price tag but with all the quirkyness of more expensive brands.

Time passed, I continued to happily use my lovely products and then out of the blue I received a message via Dooyoo from none other than anatomical themselves! This message was informing me they had read and liked my reviews and that they would be happy to send me some samples. I was of course very excited, excited enough to risk the fact they could be mass murderers posing as anatomical staff to willingly give out my address (weighing up the risks vs benefits the benefit of free beauty products of course won!), and two days later came a knock on my door. There stood a mass murderer...No of course not, but something equally shocking. There stood my postman, with an absolutely HUGE box. "Some" samples was what it was said to include. By some they meant absolutely LOADS, like you wouldn't believe! Very, VERY exciting, considering how much I loved the products I already had by them! How fab is that? All through my dooyoo review writing!

Amongst the mountain of products I'd acquired was not one but two of the Snog Me Senseless breath freshener. When they had contacted me to offer me my samples (which by the way, were not sample sizes but all full sized products) I had thought about cheekily asking if a bottle of Snog Me Senseless could be included, as I had had it in my virtual 'cart' when first shopping from them, amongst many other things, which I had to end up removing, amongst other things, to bring me back into some sort of sensible spending budget, but had really wanted. I didn't ask, as I didn't want to be too cheeky considering they were offering me something for essentially nothing (since I would have written the reviews either way). Anyway, here it was, not one but two, which will probably last me roughly forever.

So then onto the product itself which will apparently have you being the Fred and Ginger of not the dance floor but the bedroom floor as you learn the "Tonsil Tango" and the "Horizontal Hoopla" all thanks to this spray! As always with anatomical products, the first thing you notice is the funky packaging. I absolutely love the packaging, as I may have mentioned before. Each product comes in a bright colour, with bold humorous text printed all over it. The cardboard box this comes in is a dark but bold blue with the writing printed in white which really stands out. The text itself tells us that with "whiffy" breath, you're likely to send that person you want to play tonsil tennis with running as fast as they can towards "the nearest nunnery or monastery to sign up for a life of celibacy" which isn't exactly what you want to go doing is it? Added to that fact and that it is as essential as clean underwear, is that this is a first aid must have, in the sense that "you don't want a paramedic refusing to give you the kiss of life, do you?"

The first thing I notice about the box was it was actually a lot smaller than I expected, as it was the same size as the lip balm and eye gel that I already have. Now this may sound a little contradictory as I mentioned in those reviews, that they lip balm was bigger than your average and that the eye gel was a more than decent size too. Make your mind up! Is the box big or small? Well it's all relative I guess, it's bigger than your average lip gloss but smaller than I expected a breath freshener to be, simply based on the one experience I had of a breath freshener before, which was distinctly larger. After the initial shock I decided that the size was actually perfect, as you need this to be portable and fit into your handbag, along with the 800 other essential items that you must keep on you at all times. This isn't just one for the handbags though, as this is completely unisex, after all guys, if you want to get the girls, rule number one is fresh breath (shortly followed by no BO).

The bottle itself is a sort of spearmint green colour, with a light blue lid, and bold text covering it, with "snog me senseless" being the biggest feature on the side of the bottle. The design of the bottle again is completely unisex and I can't imagine either sex being embarrassed to pull this one out. It's very funky, modern, fun packaging. My brother commented that it looked a bit cheap, but I think that says more about his age, than it does the packaging (!) These products are perhaps aimed best at the young and funky but so long as you're cool enough and have the attitude to pull them off there's no reason for anyone to not be able to enjoy them, if not, perhaps its best you go off and have a look at the anatomical website, where they can direct you to a personality undertaker, who can bury your old boring self, in the hope you'll find a more fun personality. In all seriousness though, I do get what my brother was trying to say, it doesn't look lets say "classy" but classy is boring, it looks young, funky and utterly cool, its bang on fashion.

The text on the bottle informs us yet more witty things and could also be used as somewhat of an icebreaker if the place you choose to pick up is in the smoking shelter where you could offer anyone [to] "snog me senseless" when no one has any chewing gum or mints to hand, and you could swoop in like a superhero of sorts with something far more exciting than chewing gum will ever be (despite the silly adverts trying to portray it as such).

So then what does Snog Me Senseless, the breath freshener do? Well, um, it freshens your breath, so much so, that people will want to snog you senseless. So how does it do this? Well, surprisingly, for those of us accustomed to anything breath freshening being purely minty, it does it with a combination of yes, mint, but also cinnamon, parsley and stevia, all working together to create much more effectiveness than just mint alone. On top of these the ingredients seem to include clove, ginger and pimento fruit extract. With such a huge list of ingredients, it sounds like something you could buy in Lush, which should give you at least some indication of the quality.

So what do all these magical ingredients do? Well obviously they all work together to freshen your breath but here's how exactly. Cinnamon is said to actually kill the bacteria in the mouth including apparently the germ that can cause a "rotten egg smell" from the mouth, eww, I hope I've never had breath smelling of rotten eggs before, I think I would have probably been sick if I had, but it's nice to know that it won't even be possible if this spray is used. It's also nice to know that the spray isn't just masking smells, but actually stopping the bacteria that are causing them. The mint included in this product is both spearmint and peppermint oil. Spearmint oil aids bad breath, sore gums and digestion whilst peppermint oil helps retain moisture in the mouth which reduces the multiplication of bacteria, and also gives the spray a fresh taste. Parsley is something my mum has always recommended to me as a breath freshener as in "if you have a curry chew some parsley after and it should stop your breath smelling", and it does work a treat at neutralising onion and garlic breath but does add a slightly bitter aftertaste to the spray. I'm not sure I could handle the bitterness of parsley on its own, nor do I tend to carry a sprig about just in case I happen to have a curry but its handy inclusion in the spray is just right. Stevia sweetens both the taste of the spray, and therefore the taste, and smell of your mouth, which is perfect in balancing out the parsley. Clove has a pleasant smell which helps mask any bad breath and ginger just generally freshens the breath.

So does this product work? Yes it does! Of course it does. With all those active ingredients hard at work in your mouth to stop any bad odours how could it possibly fail? It of course, although this may sound silly to say, doesn't taste minty, which I say only because despite the fact it's not meant to be a "mint" flavoured freshener, we have got so used to associating fresh breath with mint, that it can come as quite a surprise, and take some getting used to, to associate a different smell with fresh.

The boyfriend, who despite having quite an aversion to all my beauty products, actually grabbed a box off me (I had taken a box of duplicate items to keep round at his house) and was rummaging through. This I think demonstrates that these products really do appeal to both sexes, and although he denied being "excited" as such, he definitely showed an interest, which was a first. Rummaging through, and testing things out (yes, seriously) and reading through the funny packages, he came across this and promptly sprayed some into his mouth. His only response was "it doesn't taste like mint it tastes like aniseed", "cinnamon" I corrected, "do you like it?", "it doesn't taste like mint", "yeah, but do you like it?", "it doesn't taste like mint"...ah creatures of habit they are men, so it may take a moment or two for them to get over the initially "not mint" shocker, but once he had a minute or two to take in the fact that I wasn't asking if it tasted like mint, I was asking if he liked it, his response was "Well, yeah, but, it doesn't taste like mint". So there you have it, it doesn't taste like mint. It tastes like cinnamon.

I love this little spray and its 15ml size is actually perfect. It will fit in any handbag, even the tiny little ones us girls insist on taking on nights out and it will fit in any guys' pocket. Despite it being small, the fact that you only need to spray it in your mouth now and then when you need a freshen up means that it should last for ages. At a mere £3 it's more than worth it, it will last longer than say £3's worth of mints, or chewing gum, and has far more essential ingredients in it to not only mask but also combat bad breath.

It's also perhaps not as obvious as if you come in smelling of mint (hello, you may as well have a flashing neon sign above your head saying "I've just had a sneaky cig"!) because whilst it neutralises your breath, its quite subtle and not as glaringly obvious as full on mintyness.

Whilst dieting, I drink a lot of coffee, complete with a minimum of seven spoons of sweetner per cup. This means two things, I'm about as likely to die from it as I would be to take up smoking, and my breath smells about as nice as a smokers. I don't have to go outside for my cup of coffee though, so it does have its benefits. Anyway, so coffee has its benefits but does make you absolutely reek, so this is perfect to have a quick spray of after a cup, so that you don't have to go round pre announcing your vice via your breath!

Also I don't know about you but some of my favourite foods are the smelly ones. Possibly my all time favourite singular item of food is onion. I absolutely adore the stuff, so again this comes in handy. Garlic based foods (curry, garlic bread, mmmm) always taste good but leave you smelling rough, again having this on hand is the perfect thing to combat it. If you don't fancy flashing it out in public, then it's also easy enough to do a quick spray whilst you nip to the loo, and no one will be any the wiser, except that you'll smell a lot nicer.

This is one of those products that you can live for years without, but once you have it, you realise its an absolute essential that you need with you at all times. Luckily I have a good supply of this stuff now that should last me a long time, but had anatomicals just sent me a tester, I would have gone right ahead and bought it anyway but shhh don't tell them that I don't want to discourage free stuff :) For you mere mortals who haven't been lucky enough to get a truck load (okay maybe now I'm exaggerating just a bit) of free stuff delivered right to your front door, then this is available to buy (ahh harsh I know) from the anatomical website (anatomical.net, which if nothing else will provide you with aching sides from all the laughing it induces) or from asos.com. As mentioned before my delivery from anatomicals directly arrived in two days, which is good enough in my standards, and come complete with the most entertaining packaging tape I've experienced so far in my life. My original order (from asos.com), which had the added negative of me actually having to pay for it, also took about two months to arrive, no I'm not joking it was tough to cope, but that was due to Royal Mail being incompetent and not asos.com who were very helpful so I'd recommend shopping at either place to you - although, anatomicals has that added edge of the funky box it arrives in. In my previous reviews I mentioned it may be stocked in Superdrug or House of Fraiser, I'm not sure this is entirely true now, although anatomicals will be launching in some major shops later this year, listen out for news. Until then, you can always email them at info@anatomicals.net where they will be happy to inform you of your nearest stockist.

Summary: One of those things you never realised was an essential until you own one!