Last week, I really enjoyed reviewing the Raymond Waites Spiced Cedar, so I decided to continue my Adventures in Ablutions and share it with you all. After work last night, I stopped by Walgreen's and picked up the Raymond Waites Citrus Basil set. I'd found this at the original Walgreens I went to last week. For $5, I figured why not go back and get it? You may remember that I wasn't that impressed with the Spiced Cedar, but thought it was okay for the price. I got the set home, opened it, and promptly noticed that both bottles, black and the white labelled, were exactly the same thing: Body Scrub. I guess putting the same product in 2 smaller bottles with different labels instead of 1 larger one makes the set look more diverse. Fine. Whatever. It contained 2x Body Scrubs, shaving cream and aftershave balm. To set the scene, this morning I woke up, went to the gym, ran a couple quick errands and came home for a shower. So again, it was a Power Shower with all the funk and stunk from yesterday, overnight and the gym this morning. I was probably the smelliest, sweatiest, grossest guy out there with a job and home. Was the set up to the task? Read on... Body Scrub: The Citrus Basil scent was really nice. It seems to be the same scrub that was in the other set, but this one atually has microbeads in it. It also doesn't lather. I don't get why they're insisting on calling it a body scrub, it's most definitely a decent face scrub. I tried using it as an all over body wash, and it doesn't work. Since it doesn't lather it just dissolves and falls off parts of the body that it's on. As far as parts of the body with hair? Yeah, doesn't work. In the interest of the review I tried to actually use it as an all over body wash and used a half of a bottle before giving up. Using it as a face scrub, I like it and that's how I'll keep using it. Shaving Cream: If you read my review of the other set, I described the Cedar Spice shaving cream as having the consistency of light mayo. After finding that the body scrubs were basically the same, I expected the same with the shaving cream. I was wrong. This is still a latherless cream, but it seemed richer and more lotiony instead of globby. The directions on the back still say you can whip up a thick lather with a brush, but fool me once... I smeared the stuff all over my face and went at it with my Merkur OC and a blade that I hadn't used in over 2 weeks and I had no idea how many shaves it had on it. Results? A nice 3 pass DFS. I'm not a fan of latherless creams, but I'd imagine someone who was would like this. It had a subtler scent. This also seemed to have a numbing agent, but it wasn't as strong as the other one. Shaving Balm: This was pretty good. Also a subtle scent, it was more balm like and less lotion like than the other one too. I gooped it on, and spread the excess on my hands. It felt like a balm not lotion, and a couple of hours later my face still feels nice and moisturized. This set was pretty good, actually, especially for just $5. I'll continue to use it, and I'd recommend it as long as you realize the body scrub is actually a face scrub and that the cream is latherless. It's nothing special, but for $5 it's pretty decent product. The scent is subtler than the Spiced Cedar, but the shave products are also a bit better. Give and take. I'll enjoy using these until they're gone and I'll look forward to moving on from them too. BONUS: One of the aforementioned errands I did was to stop off at the dollar store and get a couple of new kitchen utensils I needed. While there, I was intrigued by a product. It was Qperfume's 'impression' of Drakkar Noir, and the box promised it was the cologne for Adventurous Men. Being an adventurous man, I bought a bottle. After my shower and shave, I sprayed it 4-5 times on myself. It had an odd smell, vaguely like some kind of cologne. 10 minutes after I'd copiously applied it, I couldn't detect it at all. Perfect for terrible for bad cologne, so 5 stars.
I'm going to pick up the spiced cedar set. I've been eyeing it ever since seeing it on the walgreens end so collecting dust for weeks. Interesting. I've never seen this one before. $5 is a steal. I'll check at the walgreens again very interested in this stuff.
Oddly, the Walgreens that didn't have the Spiced Cedar had this, and the Walgreens that had the Spiced Cedar didn't have this.
Another stellar review. I was at Walgreens today and almost bought the English Leather set (cologne and A/S balm) for $10...
I was in Rite-Aid tonight and they had some. Most were the same ones that Walgreen's had, but they also had some different 'celebrity' type scents and mainly cologne/aftershave combos.
I'm gonna go to Walgreens on the first day of post-Holiday sale and go nuts there buying every set there is for, hopefully, $5 and then review them all here...in detail...one......by......one.......with .......photos.
Great and funny review one again man. My Walgreen's had a Stetson gift set that has cologne and aftershave in collectors edition glass bottles with nice raised logos on the glass. For $15 I may pick one up as I enjoy Stetson.
