Freak369's Full Review: Wrecking Balm Tattoo Removal Fade Complete System
Before anyone gets a tattoo there should be a 48 hour waiting period; they do it with guns and that seems to work out pretty well. Ask anyone that has ink if they regret it and you are bound to come across more than a few people that will vehemently shake their head in agreement. Every artist has their own personal rules about who they work on, for me it's pretty simple. If you're drunk, under 21 or are acting like a jerk you won't be sitting in my chair. Over the past few years companies have started marketing products that they claim help remove tattoo ink from skin. Do they work? Are they worth the money? Are you getting your hopes up only to have them squashed like a grape?
Wrecking Balm Tattoo Removal System
What is Wrecking Balm? The advertisements that were running a few years ago touted it as being the end all, be all of tattoo removal. The spots ran mostly on local radio stations but were yanked after a disc jockey bought a system, tried it out and said it was a crock of bull. Was he right? Well, it's hard to say without seeing the start of the project and how it ended up. I was given a kit by someone that ordered it to remove a tattoo then decided to keep it [the tattoo] and have a cover up done. He had heard that there could be some scarring from it if it wasn’t done correctly and that could really interfere with getting a cover up done.
When I first heard about Wrecking Balm I thought it was just a cream that you applied to the tattooed area and waited for it to eventually remove some of the color. It's a little more involved than that and you aren’t really guaranteed that you are going to get the same results as others. This should not be sold as a tattoo removal system, even with laser removal procedures there is no guarantee that the ink will be removed from the skin so do yourself a favor and think before you ink. Getting someone's name on a part of your body should be illegal unless its your child or mother.
The person that bought the Wrecking Balm Kit paid close to $200.00 for it including shipping fees. No wonder they never advertised the price when I would hear the adverts on the radio. Is this a one time investment? Probably not; the system he ordered and gave to me contained 24 applications of a four by four inch tattoo. The system comes with a two month guarantee [about the length of time that you need to get through the kit] that you will want to read before you order it just so you know exactly what it entails. One of the oddest things in the literature is that it shouldn't be used on persons under the age of 12. If you have a 12 year old with a tattoo chances are you have bigger problems on the horizon than getting a tattoo removed.
What do you get with the Wrecking Balm Kit? The kit I received contains: DemoMatic, 2 Erosion Heads, Suffusion Gel, Hydravescent Cream and Branding Butter. Everything was packed well and looked pretty nifty but I still needed to find someone to use it on so of course I recruited Tommy. He's been complaining about a tattoo that he got when he was 19 so he was the perfect guinea pig for the experiment. He agreed that even if it only worked minimally it would still be a perk because it would lose some color and if he wanted to get it covered up in the future it would make the process easier.
Since this is sold as a kit and there are supposed to be 24 applications, chances are you are going to end up running out of something due to using too much or too little of one of the liquids. That's just the way it goes. If things were individually packaged so you couldn't use too much or too little I think it would be a lot easier and less frustrating for most people to use. I didn't see the individual bottle of the gel, cream or butter at the Wrecking Balm website but I didn't go through every page because the heavy graphics killed my browser. When I did this on Tommy I ended up with left over Hydravescent but ran out of Suffusion and Branding Butter.
Side note: This is not an FDA approved product. Claims made have not been researched or proven to be accurate. The DemoMatic is listed as being an FDA approved product but the rest of the ingredients are not.
The pain level associated with this depends on where you are using it. Common sense will tell you that there are certain parts of the body that are going to be more sensitive. Tommy's tattoo was on his upper arm; there's some meat there but it is a pretty sensitive area for him so I wanted to make sure that he would be able to handle it. Hey, if he could sit through the tattoo then he shouldn't be squirming around and acting like a baby when I break out the Wrecking Balm System. He said the cream hurt more than the buffer that you use first and I had to laugh, I told him that trichloroacetic acid was the ingredient that would be doing most of the work and that, while it won't burn, it won't feel like a kitten licking you either.
The basic principal of Wrecking Balm is to get the ink out from under the skin. According to the makers of it, it only takes three minutes every other day. Yeah, umm, ok, I'd like to know what type of clock they are using because we could never get it done in less than fifteen minutes. You start with the hand held DemoMatic [shouldn't it be called DermoMatic?] and buff out the tattooed area then you apply the liquids to penetrate the skin, break up the ink and help speed up the process. Essentially you are stripping off a layer of skin to trigger a healing effect with new cells that will be ink-free. That's great in theory but not everyone is going to have the same results so it's a lot like seeing the Nutri-System commercials and seeing the little asterisk saying "results not typical". Of course every product is going to use the people with the best results to advertise their product so don't get too excited about Wrecking Balm until you are at least half way through the process.
Things to know: Most of this is common sense. If you are pregnant, nursing or trying to get pregnant, don't use this product. It's only for external use but I can't see someone wanting to remove a tattoo that is internal [think private parts] since its not something that's going to be highly visible. If you have any type of ongoing redness, pain or swelling in the treated area discontinue use and contact your doctor as soon as possible. Don't use this more often than as directed [every other day]; using it more often than recommended will not give you faster results and could actually slow down the process because you aren't giving your skin enough time to rebound and heal which is what Wrecking Balm is all about. Out with the old, in with the new.
After doing the applications according to the instructions I have to say that this might work for some people. Tommy's tattoo faded a little bit but in my opinion it wasn't enough to justify the price. You can get this directly from the Wrecking Balm website or a handful of other sites that carry it. I wouldn't buy this from an auction site because you never know if you are going to get a new kit or something that has been used [and that's just gross]. If this was half the price then I could say that its worth it for people with small or light colored tattoos but if you have a large back piece, sleeved arms or something bigger than the palm of you hand then this isn't the system for you.
If you are buying this to fade out some of the color before a cover up then chances are you will be happy with Wrecking Balm.
If you are buying this to completely remove a tattoo chances are you are going to get disgusted and feel more than a little ripped off.
Fantastic prices with ease & c...(Stock status: N/A)
Wrecking Balm Tattoo Removal Fade Complete System, 2-Month Supply. REGRET IT, FADE IT, FORGET IT. Lets face it, some decisions simply do not age well....More at Amazon Marketplace
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