Mordred's Full Review: Nads No Heat Hair Removal Gel
The Infomercial:
My wife has been dying to try Nads ever since she first saw the infomercial on late night TV. At first I thought she was crazy. There was obviously no way the product could perform as advertised and there was no way I was going to buy any product I "saw on T.V.!" She asked me if we could get some and I said that she could, but I wasn't about to order it for her. This had the desired effect of placating her and (I rightly assumed) we'd never actually buy the product. Plus we have the added bonus of me not being the bad guy.
Unfortunately the infomercials continued. With greater and greater frequency. By the time you probably read this, Sue Ismiel (inventor of Nads) has most likely debuted an all Nads channel running that stupid infomercial and it's infomercial offspring round the clock.
Have any of you actually seen this? Doesn't the whole female Aussie inventor strike you as a little bit off her rocker? Sue saw that her 6-year old daughter Natalie was uncomfortable because she had a surprisingly large amount of dark hair on her body. I'm envisioning some type of wolf creature but I assume it wasn't that bad. Being the good mother that she is Sue decided she'd invent a hair removal product to help make her daughter look good. Just like any normal mother would.
Hold on. Who are we kidding here? As a kid I had really bad eyesight and acne. My mom didn't invent some kind of eye-ball replacement to fix my eyes and she sure didn't invent a new anti-pimple cream! Basically I had to suck it up and deal with my life, no matter how embarrassing it was going to school. Who invents stuff because their kids have bad self esteem? Anyway I digress.
So Sue spent a year or two slaving away in her secret laboratory mixing various natural products and apparently smearing them on her children to see if their hair fell out. Now tell me if there isn't something wrong with this picture? Here in America we can no longer jam mascara and toothbrushes into monkey's eyes to see if they'll go blind yet in Australia you can test whatever you want on your own kids! What if they died? I guess Sue is technically in charge of children production and so she can determine exactly how many are expendable.
Also have you noticed how this product is all natural? In fact you can eat it because it's all natural! Since when did all natural mean safe? Since when can you eat anything so long as it's natural! Lava is natural and that's decidedly unsafe for human consumption. So is Poison Ivy. What kind of message are we sending to people here?
CHILD: "Daddy can I eat this hemlock branch I found"
DADDY: "Hmmm. . . is it all-natural?"
CHILD: "Yep, I found it growing next to Socrates"
DADDY: "Well, then eat up, but for goodness sakes don't eat a Twinkie! Those have preservatives!"
Now here's where you really have to pay attention in the infomercial. It turns out that the product is named Nads after Nadine, Sue's oldest child and not the former wolf-beast Natalie. I guess we know which kid was an accident in that family. If my parent's invented something for me but then named it after my sister. . . well I think I'd need serious therapy.
What's really odd is that Sue talks about how she's been using the product for so long that eventually her hairs quit the fight and gave up and so she's now completely hairless with no need to even Nad herself anymore. I'm not sure if this is so good for people, but hey, as long as they look good who cares if they put several parts of their body into permanent shock.
The Purchasing Decision:
Whenever I was flipping through the channels and saw some girl spreading green gunk on her arms or legs (and after making sure it wasn't a Troma film) I'd quickly flip the channel hoping and praying that my wife hadn't realized what it was. Of course I'd either hear "Go back, wasn’t that's the Nads commercial?" or "Gee honey, can we buy some Nads?". I used the same terse reply of "Yes." to both inquiries then proceeded to attempt to change the subject.
I didn't want Nads. It seemed stupid and gross and painful and I didn't really want to waste $30 on something she'd never tried before. I like to do extensive product searches on the internet, go and see the product in some type of show room and often times conduct random Gallup polls to determine the general population's reaction to a product before I'll even think about buying it.
My wife started asking me if I'd buy her Nads for Christmas. I made the mistake of replying with a "We'll see" or a "maybe" which turned out to be a bad idea.
Note to any men reading this review: never Never NEVER use "We'll see" or "maybe" when your wife/girlfriend asks if you'll get her something for Christmas. This will only lead to heartbreak and sorrow. Reply with a firm "No" which will make you a jerk for a little bit but will quickly be forgotten.
After my wife realized that she hadn't gotten Nads for Christmas she asked ever so sweetly and politely asked if maybe we could go get some because she hadn't gotten it and she really wanted it. Of course guilt always works on me so I quickly caved. Of course I adamantly refused to go and purchase it by myself. A guy buying Nads is sad enough but going into Walgreen's with the sole intention of buying Nads and just a few days after Christmas, well it'd be obvious I was some kinda kinky freak who molests small children. I wasn't going to have some pimply faced check-out guy thinking weird things about me so I made my wife come along. Oh and she'd have to carry the product. And I'd stand in another line.
So we plunked down the $30 and brought home a brand new box of Aussie Nads. (For some reason it's really hard not to laugh when I write that line)
How does it work?
For those three of you who haven't yet seen the Nads commercial, this is how the process goes. The user is supplied with a box of thick green goop. For those of you thinking that it's not that thick allow me to capitalize and italicize the most important words from the last sentence. THICK GOOP. I'd underline them too but Epinions won't let me.
Trust me on this, the green stuff is incredibly thick, just like molasses except that you can't warm it in the microwave and then pour it on your pancakes. Wait, I forgot. It's "all natural" goop so you can pour it on your pancakes.
The idea is that you take the provided handy little spreader, dip it into the goop and then quickly try and spread it on your skin. The idea is to spread a thin layer in the direction of your hairs. Of course it's just like molasses so it doesn't spread real well. It's actually a little painful just to spread it as it will catch on your skin and hairs and hold on.
Once this step is completed you take one of the 5 small cloths provided and cover the gooped up area. Lightly rub the cloth over the stuff, then hold the skin tightly and YANK in the opposite direction of your hair growth. If all goes according to the infomercial you should find you've experienced no pain and all of your hairs from that area are now sitting on the cloth along with all the green stuff.
What they neglect to tell you in the infomercial is that you have about 20 seconds from application to fast-yanking-motion before the stuff starts to lose it's effectiveness. It's best to practice on pets or small children first to get hang of it before trying it on yourself (Hey, it's the Aussie way!).
Does it work as advertised?
Sadly no. The first problem is the pain. Depending on your own pain threshold and the area you've decided to de-hair you can experience a minor irritation to full on excruciating, jump-up-and-down-on-one-leg-while-screaming pain. Of course all your hairs should be gone too.
My wife being ever so adventurous decided to try it out and see how bad it was. The product worked reasonably well and the pain wasn't too bad, although she did say it was uncomfortable. My guess is that you'll probably get used to it after a while. She was pleased but remarked that the 5 supplied cloths (which must be completely dry before letting the green goop touch them) aren't nearly big enough to do both her legs at the same time. She can do one a day but fortunately the hair normally takes about 2-3 weeks before really returning.
After a session with Nads you'll be left with some red bumps which mark the places where your follicles used to reside. It's not the most flattering thing in the world but they go away after a day or two and it's my understanding that after a handful of uses they probably won't show up much at all.
Me being the ever so idiotic member of the family decided that anything good enough for my wife was good enough for me, so long as she tried it first and didn't suffer any permanent injury. My wife was excited about the prospect of inflicting pain on me so she jumped at the chance. Now I'm reasonably hairy but I'm not about to let her touch my arms or legs. I don’t have a hairy back and any chest hair I've got is just fine thank you. I decided that beard removal was the way to go.
Those pesky regions of the neck was the best place. If the pain was bad and I couldn't do it again I'd be okay and wouldn't have a hairless area on my face for three weeks. So I had my wife put a very small amount of the green stuff on my neck, near the edge of my beard. I was working on a good 4 days growth so I was pretty hairy by this point. She applied the stuff, placed a cloth over the area, padded it down and then yanked.
Surprisingly the pain was tolerable. I didn't yell or even cry and within a minute or two all of the pain was gone. Unfortunately not a single hair was on the cloth. All of the green stuff was on the cloth, but no hair! My wife said she wasn't sure if she put enough on so she'd try to do a larger area. Again the handy spreader went into the goop and again it was slathered on my neck. The cloth was applied and gently rubbed over the area, and then my wife counted to three and yanked.
I think it all would have been okay if I'd just managed to black out. Guys, you know that feeling you get when all the hairs in your face are simultaneously pulled out? OF COURSE YOU DON'T! NO ONE BUT ME KNOWS THIS PAIN! It was like a thousand needles jammed into my neck and not those nice acupuncture ones. These were like needles from a needle gun that Batman's arch-nemesis The Needler made to fire high velocity needles at people.
As I wiped the tears from my eyes I examined the cloth to see exactly how much hair had been removed. You shouldn't be surprised to find out that not a single one was pulled out. Not one. I went through unbelievable torture and didn't even have a spotty bald patch to show for it! My neck was as hairy as ever.
My wife was convinced she could get it right on the third try but I ran screaming from the house at that point. The area got red and bumpy just like my wife's legs, but somehow even worse. And I still had hair. It hurt pretty bad to touch my neck for 4 days and I had a red welt that looked very much like a hickey for over a week. I was embarrassed, in pain and I still had to shave.
Conclusion:
I hate this product. Hate it, hate it, hate it. It hurt more than I could have imagined and failed to extract a single hair from my "death-grip" follicles. I really have no idea how bearded ladies manage to use this stuff. My wife likes it. I think it hurts more than she thought it would and thinks there should have been more cloth strips included but overall she's happy and her legs look good too. I'm content to let my wife use the stuff so long as she keeps it away from me.
Note: My rating of 2 stars comes from a weighted average of my 1 and my wife's 4.
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