Vicks didnt quite hit the spot... (Vicks Cough Syrup with Honey for Dry and Irritating Coughs)

Member Name: Drewster_Rooster

Product:	Vicks Cough Syrup with Honey for Dry and Irritating Coughs
Date:	06/11/09 (32 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: did work during the day...

Disadvantages: but didnt at night

Having had a few restless nights recently with a dry tickly cough my wife picked me up a bottle of Vicks Cough Syrup with honey to try and alleviate my symptoms; I think more for her benefit than mine as I have been disturbing her by coughing in the night.

Housed in the box shown above in the picture Dooyoo has I am told that this cough syrup contains honey and is for dry and irritating coughs and that it contains levomenthol . The instructions on the box advise that I should take two 5ml teaspoons every 3-4 hours and not exceed 6 doses per day. The box also claims that the syrup will:

Control coughs with mentholated formula
Immediate soothing effect
Made with Real Honey
And is Non Drowsy

Sounds good so far. Taking the top of the bottle you are met with a very strong menthol aroma which is reminiscent of Vicks Vapour rub, it is a very minty smell and even by just sniffing the bottle your nasal passages start to clear, this to me was a good sign that the syrup itself would help with my cough.

As with all medicines of this nature the liquid syrup is very thick and oozes out of the bottle onto your spoon, I was expecting a sweet minty taste but in reality the flavour is quite vile. I could taste honey mixed with a strange mentholy minty flavour but nothing like anything I had ever tasted before. I can't say I enjoyed it, but then again I wasn't bothered about its taste so long as it helped with my cough.

So did it work? When you first swallow the liquid it does coat the back of your throat nicely and does indeed sooth. During the day it seemed to work fine but when it came to night time I found that my cough got worse when I was lying down and asleep. The cough mixture didn't really do much to stop me coughing in the night, despite me getting up and taking another dose halfway through the night.

I would agree with its claims that it does have an immediate soothing effect and that for during the day my cough was more controlled, maybe its formula just isn't strong enough for night time use?.

To me it was no better or no worse than the hundreds of other cough syrups that are on the market that people buy at this time of the year. I would not recommend you giving this to children as the taste is awful and there are other more pleasant varieties of cough syrups out there that would appeal more to younger people and make it easier for you to give it to them. For adults, I would say to give it a go if everything else fails but again, there are better tasting cough syrups that you could be taking which would probably give the same effect.

This syrup cost £2.49 from Superdrug for a 100ml bottle, but I have been informed by my mother-on-law that it is also available in Poundland for £1.00 so it pays to shop around.

All in all a mediocre 3/5 from me, I didn't expect a miracle and I didn't get one.

Summary: thanks for reading