TIGI's Shine Junkie: Superior Shine in a Creative Spray-Cheese Can
Written: Apr 06 '05 (Updated Apr 06 '05)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: An excellent product that finally has packaging worthy of its greatness.
Cons: Still not ideal for travel.
The Bottom Line: Seek the spray-cheese can for shiny, shiny hair.
|
|
|
| kchowell's Full Review: Tigi Bed Head Shine Junkie 2 oz |
Until recently, I had a love/hate relationship with TIGI’s Bed Head Shine Junkie. It had won my heart – or more accurately, my hair – a few years ago, due to its unparalleled ability to help me achieve shiny, shiny hair. Maybe not shampoo-commercial shiny, but as close to that as I can get with the head of hair that I was born with. Unfortunately, I hated buying it, due to an annoying packaging design issue. However, TIGI has recently fixed that design issue, and Shine Junkie now gets nothing but love from me. It’s the best thing that I’ve found for getting super-shiny, smooth hair, without ever making my hair look greasy or overdone.
While many of the shine products currently on the market are liquids that one must either spray on one’s hair or smooth on one’s hair, TIGI’s Bed Head Shine Junkie is unusual in that it is of a bizarre (in a good way) creamy gel consistency. It has a subtle citrusy scent that I particularly like, too. While its appearance probably has no impact on what it does to hair, the shine gel just looks cool, with an opalescent, slightly sparkly gleam. Though those with thin hair might find it to be too heavy, it’s the perfect consistency to give my thick hair a nice shine without weighing it down. It's also good for taming frizz, especially when I'm wearing my hair pulled back in a ponytail.
While spray shine products tend to end up on my skin and clothes, Shine Junkie stays right where I put it. With Shine Junkie, I put the shine product on my hands, rub my palms together, and run my hands through or over my hair to get the look I want. This is essentially the same action that I’d use with a non-spray liquid shine, but I find that I have a lot more control over the end result when I use Shine Junkie than with most of the other brands that I’ve tried. With the liquid shine products, I find that it’s really easy to use too much and end up with flat, blah hair; this rarely happens when I use Shine Junkie. Another benefit of Shine Junkie over liquid shines is that it seems to wash off my hands with much less effort than the liquid shines.
Until recently, even though I loved Shine Junkie, I hated it, too, and I would have probably given it only three or, at most, four stars if I had taken the time to review it. This is because it was sold it an aluminum canister that allowed the product to deteriorate over time. Although Shine Junkie starts out as a distinctive-looking creamy gel, when it is exposed to the air, it “melts” and separates into a thick, gooey, sticky liquid. With the old aluminum canister packaging, it was impossible to keep an airtight seal, so my Shine Junkie only stayed in gel form until I’d used about half of the available product. After that, it was still functional, but it was a pain to use, because you’d have to stir up the product to mix the separated sections together, and then it had all the drawbacks of a liquid shine product. I found myself hating my Shine Junkie once this happened, and generally threw the whole can out once it turned to liquid.
Also, traveling with Shine Junkie in its original packaging was a very bad idea, because no matter how carefully I closed the canister, it always leaked. So, when I’d want to take my Shine Junkie with me, I’d have to scoop a little bit out into a travel container and cross my fingers in the hope that it would be sufficiently airtight to keep my Shine Junkie from turning to liquid.
Finally, I lost my patience with Shine Junkie when an entire can turned to liquid within a week after I’d bought it. Tired of wasting my money, I decided that as much as I liked Shine Junkie, it wasn’t a good value for me, and generally just caused me too much frustration. I’d try something else, miss Shine Junkie, buy more Shine Junkie, watch it melt far too soon, get annoyed at myself for spending $16 a can on a product that irritated me, try something else, miss Shine Junkie, etc. But then, something happened that caused Shine Junkie to win me back as a customer.
Recently, the design crew at TIGI have won my admiration because they’ve solved the melting Shine Junkie problem, and they’ve solved it in an inventive, aesthetically sharp manner. The aluminum canister is gone, and Shine Junkie is now sold in a funky aluminum can, just like that nasty artificial spray cheese-in-can stuff. While I firmly believe that cheese has no business being called cheese if it is stuck in a spray can, the spray can is the perfect dispenser for Shine Junkie. With the little flexible stick valve (I’m sure that there’s a proper name for this, but I cannot figure it out or find it anywhere), it’s easy to control how much shine product you get. And the airtight packaging means that you never have to deal with the product’s oxygen exposure breakdown. Which means that I don’t waste half a can, which in turn means that I don’t waste half the cost of the can. Which makes me a happy consumer.
Shine Junkie has now returned to its place as my favorite shine product. I would encourage anyone who gave up on Shine Junkie due to the packaging flaws to give it another try. The only real issue that I have with it now is that the cheese spray container takes up too much room in my travel bag, so I still have to find a small airtight container to transfer it to when I travel. It’s a minor quibble, though, as I’ve found airtight containers that work well for that task. Still, if TIGI were to come up with a travel-size spray cheese container, I’d buy it.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
kchowell
|
 - Top 1000 |
|
Location: Surrounded by books somewhere in Texas
Reviews written: 132
Trusted by: 323 members
About Me:
I have a toddler and an infant. I'm too sleep-deprived to write much of anything.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.