Price and Availability
I picked up this lip balm for a bargain £1 from a smallish Boots store. The product is available exclusively in Boots stores and via the Boots website (www.boots.com). At the time of purchase the product was on a 3 for 2 offer, a common boots offer and worth waiting for. At the time of writing (November 2012) the product was available on a 2 for £1.80 offer alongside other Boots Essentials lip products. If you are a member of the Boots Advantage Card scheme you will also accrue points when buying this product, you can also pay for this product with points if you have enough points to cover the total cost. For more information on the Advantage Card scheme go to the boots website.

Packaging
The product itself comes in a standard stick form that twists up from the bottom and has a slide on/off sleeve type lid. The lid is a baby pink colour and the base/twist up unit is white. All the product information is printed onto the lid. As this is a 'Boots Essentials' product the packaging is very basic, the tube has information regarding ingredients, contact details and a few product claims. The packaging informs us that the product is dermatologically tested. No nice images or fancy fonts, just basic key information. The tube came shrink wrapped in a clear plastic, this is designed to prevent people tampering with the product in-store and it works, my product was intact. The plastic wrap has a perforated strip down the middle, which you tear away and then unravel the rest of the plastic, I have to say that I found this a little difficult to do as there was nothing to grab onto to start the pulling, I resulted to using my teeth to nip a bit of the perforated strip away, then it easily unravelled and my product was ready to use.

Product
I am not sure what I expected from this product. It's £1 price tag led me to believe that as a moisturising balm this wouldn't be amazing, I was hoping to get a nice rosy red tinted balm that delivered on colour but perhaps lost points on moisturising abilities. I got exactly the opposite. The balm itself is a great quality, it contains shea butter and beeswax, alongside apricot, soybean and aloe vera oil. It is a stiff consistency, providing an even coating but it doesn't drag on the lips. It feels moisturising and after a couple of days use my lips felt and looked better. As a lip salve it had exceeded my expectations. As a tinted lip product, I was massively disappointed. The product claims to 'enhance you natural lip colour'. I read this aloud when my boyfriend walked in and asked what I had done. His response was 'yes, if your natural lip colour is zombie' that should sum up how flattering the colour of this product. I wouldn't say that this product 'enhances your natural lip colour', what it does do is coat your lips in a baby pink pearlescent colour, a very strong pearlescent, much stronger than other pearlescent lip products on the market. There are pearlescent lip balms available all over the place and that is fine, my gripe with this product is it doesn't state that it is pearlescent, if a product is supposed to 'enhance my natural lip colour' then I expect it to be red/pink in tone at the very least (and I don't see myself as having a particularly abnormal lip colour) It is such an unnatural lip colour that it is un-wearable outdoors. It looks ridiculous which is a shame as a lip salve it works really well and so this product has been resigned to 'in-house' application and only when no one will be seeing me!

In conclusion, I wouldn't recommend this tinted product at all but it has made me curious about the other Boots Essentials lip salves and if they did a clear one that moisturised as well as this one does but doesn't make me look half dead then I would try it.