Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Review: Shunga Chocolate Body Paint

For a long time, I didn't understand why on earth anyone would want to buy chocolate body paint. As far as I was concerned, there was decent chocolate sauce in the world that comes out of a squeeze-bottle if you need convenience, or you could melt up your own if you wanted a good, seriously decadent chocolate experience. Why on earth would someone pay an arm and a leg for chocolate body paint then? What was the big deal? I admit, it made me endlessly curious.


When Babeland sent me a bottle of Shunga Chocolate Body Paint to review, I was excited. Finally, I'd get to see what all the fuss was about! If people were willing to pay this much for paintable body chocolate, it had to be good. Plus, I've adored previous Shunga products. I figured that if anyone could pull of a nice chocolate body paint, it would be them.

The idea of painting designs across each others bodies sounded wickedly fun. A chocolate "lick me here" sign, a sensual exploration, a tantalizing tease winding its way across our bodies. I could totally go for that, so we decided to give it a shot.

The bottle is nice. It's a simple round bottle with a rectangular base, small and narrow enough to grab easily, but big enough that you get a serious amount of chocolate in there. The label on the front is nice, but not at all discrete. If you want to leave it out on your dresser, you may want to peel it off. Just below the cap is a little plastic collar that holds the "brush" in place. While it looks cool in the pictures, the brush was way below the quality I was expecting from Shunga. It's a little wooden stick, with a triangle of foam tied on. It's rather cheap looking and flimsy, unfortunately, and it doesn't redeem itself by being an amazing applicator.

I opened the bottle and took a sniff. Mmm, chocolate! If nothing else, I knew that this was made of actual chocolate. No fake chocolate-like substance here. It was a nice, strong chocolatey smell that wafted up to greet me. I'd promised myself that I'd wait to test this one with my boyfriend, but the smell was too much to resist. I dipped in the brush, and painted a curlicue across the back of my hand.

Or tried to.

What ended up on the back of my hand was a drippy, runny mess that might have been a distant mutant cousin twice removed of said curlicue. The chocolate was thin, and didn't stay where it was put at all. The brush? Just compounded the problem by sending chocolate running off the fat sides instead of down the tip. A cotton swab worked much better for attempting to paint with this stuff.

But who wants to look at chocolate? As long as I could get it on a body, and lick it back off, I'd be happy. So, I decided to sample it. And... it tasted like chocolate sauce. Normal, basic, ordinary, inexpensive chocolate syrup. Not rich and creamy, not dark and luscious, just... basic ice cream topping chocolate syrup. Not that there's anything wrong with the kind of chocolate syrup you put on ice cream, but I was expecting a lot more from this stuff.

The up-side of this whole mess? If you're lactose intolerant, this is a safe chocolate body paint, as it contains no milk-derived ingredients. And it comes in a cute bottle. And it smells good?

Seriously though. You can't really paint with it, it doesn't stay put on your lover's body, it doesn't taste any better than chocolate syrup, and you can't use it near the cooch because of the sugar. Why bother? Just get some chocolate syrup in a squeeze bottle, it's easier to apply.


Ingredient list: Sugar (sucrose), Water, Cacao (cocoa), Citric acid, Salt (sodium chloride), Potassium sorbate, Vanillin.






This product was provided to me free of charge by Babeland in exchange for an unbiased review. This review is in compliance with the FTC guidelines.

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