THE NEXT BEST THING

Being a lip balm junkie, for ages I have been wanting an Eos (Evolution of Smooth) lip balm. The packaging is super cute (though it does look a little bit like a deodorant) so it was annoying for me when I realised you can only get Eos in America, unless you order it from Amazon with ridiculous postage prices.

The packaging is a much brighter pink than this in person.

THEN I discovered Balmi, Britain's answer to the Eos crisis. Balmi (£4.99 in Boots) is basically the same as Eos with the same, awesome circular packaging, however you actually get better value for money with Balmi as it actually contains more lip balm, despite being the same size as the Eos (Balmi- 10.5g, Eos- 7g). Like many lip products, Eos suffers from there being too much packaging and not enough product, giving the impression of more when really you don't get that much- tubs of Carmex have this same problem, better to stick with the tube.

In comparison to my normal sized hands- it is quite a small product.

Like Maybelline's Baby Lips, Balmi is a very thin product and has the unfortunate appearance of a deodorant, as well as the texture. However, I like it a lot. There are five great flavours to choose from (I have raspberry in the pink packaging), however the selection is very limited to very basic flavours that you can get in any lip balm range; flavour-wise I prefer Eos (despite not having one yet), as there are loads more exciting flavours to choose from (I am tempted by Honeysuckle Honeydew or Pomegranate and Raspberry- though Summer Fruits has been very highly reviewed).

Whereas the old product was round, this is in a pyramid shape.

My only main disappointment with Balmi, despite the thin-ness of the product as I am not as great fan of thin lip balms, is the new packaging. I loved the circular shaped packaging and was really excited for it, however I found that you can now only get square shaped packaging with a pyramid shaped lip balm inside. The square packaging is still very cute, and possibly a more convenient shape as it is less bulky that the round ones, but you can only get four flavours in the square ones instead of five. Much to my great joy though, I believe that you can still get the circular shaped packaging from the shop section of Birchbox.co.uk which I will hopefully get round to ordering in a different flavour, though I will eventually order an actual Eos if I can find somewhere with low shipping price!

(Excuse the messy opening of the packet) I am not too sure how I feel about this...