Cheap Thrills — Bonne Grows Up

My love affair with beauty products started early, really early, when I received a Bonne Bell Lip Smacker for my 8th birthday. At least I think I was 8. Things get hazy once you have kids, and your brain cells die off at a much more rapid rate. Or, more accurately, are killed off by sheer fatigue.

I can't tell you what I ate yesterday, but I can see that oversized tube of bubblegum scented lip balm as if it were right in front of me. It was a giant tube, like big enough that Angelina Jolie could roll it across her pout and feel like everything was satisfyingly lubed. My lips are not nearly so lush, but I passed that tube over my lips until I had caked on a good inch of goopy pink balm. Seriously, it was so thick that chunks of Smacker clung to my mouth. I couldn't hold that fat tube daintily in two fingers, either — I wrapped my fist around it

Now, I've never used up an entire tube of lip balm, not because I don't use it every day but because I fall in love so easily and often with new stuff. Probably six tubes are scattered across the house and my purse. But when I spied the all-grown up version of
Bonne Bell Lip Smacker at Target ($1.87), well, I added another to the collection.

The company boasts that the product is 100-percent natural and doesn't have any yucky parabens or other equally toxic ingredients (what do you want to bet that stuff was in the earlier versions?). Instead Smacker 2.0 contains olive oil and vitamin E along with aloe. I took home the acai flavor, which is colorless and has only the faintest berry scent. No taste that I can detect.

The au naturel Smacker imparts the barest sheen and is wonderfully, amazingly moisturizing. The stuff lasts a long time before the ol' kisser starts to feel parched — and that's with much less than an inch's worth of Smacker, too.