Experience Island Bliss with the New güd by Burt’s Bees Mango Moonbreeze Collection
“Comes with live hula dancers,” reads the large print in the advertisements for Mango Moonbreeze, the newest scent in the güd by Burt’s Bees family of haircare and skincare products — and, then, in smaller print comes the kicker, “By ‘live’ we mean completely imaginary.” The wink-wink quality of this advertisement embodies the spirit of he güd by Burt’s Bees brand, which seeks to make natural skincare and haircare more appealing to young, carefree, trend-setting, fun-loving types. With a clever combination of lively packaging, yummy fruity scents, and playful advertisements, güd by Burt’s Bees is inviting a younger audience to traipse down the natural beauty aisle at their favorite drugstore — and their strategy is proving quite effective because, once these customers try the brand’s products, they’ll become tirelessly devoted to them. Rather than relying on a style-over-substance strategy, then, the brand simply utilizes stylistic elements to allure customers and then, once they’ve been hooked, it retains them by virtue of its products’ stellar formulations.
Thus far, güd’s all-natural, paraben-, petroleum-, and phtalate-free products have been available in the following scents: Vanilla Flame, a sweet and creamy vanilla and rice milk aroma; Floral Cherrynova, a combination of cherry blossom and almond milk notes; Pearanormal Activity, a juicy pear scent with just a hint of an açai berry; Orange Petalooza, a blood orange fragrance with a floral twist; and Red Ruby Groovy, which fuses together zesty grapefruit notes with herbal thyme. Now, the brand has released yet another scent, Mango Moonbreeze, which combines ripe and tangy mango notes with a feminine, romantic jasmine aroma.
The fragrance is positively exquisite and has quickly become my favorite güd scent, even edging out Red Ruby Groovy (which I also adore). The tropical references made in advertisements for the güd by Burt’s Bees Mango Moonbreeze collection are well-deserved since, once you smell the scent, you’ll feel like you’ve embarked on an island getaway. For me, the scent has a very personal allure — after all, perhaps no other fruit reminds me of my childhood in Puerto Rico the way that mango does. Throughout my infancy and adolescence, my grandma always had a huge mango tree in her front yard, and so there was never any shortage of the fruit inside the house. My older cousins would eat the mango with a degree of decorum, cutting the fruit into perfect slices or cubes and nibbling on these with the help of a fork. My younger cousin and I, however, enjoyed eating the fruits in a more savage manner, peeling off the green skin with our fingers and revealing the orange flesh, biting right into this fruit and slurping its juices, feeling the stringy bits of fruit in between our teeth, and getting our fingers sticky and tacky while holding the oval-shaped fruit and making our way to its pit.
The Mango Moonbreeze scent, then, reminds me of my grandma’s house, of those after-school snacks I so relished, of that robust tree in my grandma’s front yard… That being said, it’s not an exact replica of that mango scent since it does incorporate some jasmine notes meant to render the fragrance a bit more feminine. I almost wish the jasmine note hadn’t been integrated into the fragrance composition since I would’ve loved a strictly mango-based scent, but the aroma is still quite lovely.
The güd by Burt’s Bees Mango Moonbreeze range of products includes a shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and body lotion — all formulated using all-natural ingredients. For weeks now, I’ve been enjoying the güd by Burt’s Bees Mango Moonbreeze Body Wash ($6.99 at leading drug, grocery and mass retailers and at gudhappens.com) and the güd by Burt’s Bees Mango Moonbreeze Body Lotion ($6.99 at at leading drug, grocery and mass retailers and at gudhappens.com).
The güd by Burt’s Bees Mango Moonbreeze Body Wash is exquisite — it transforms your shower into a tropical sanctuary, facilitating a much-needed escape from the horrid winter cold via its delicious Caribbean scent. The cleanser lathers up really nicely, so you can easily work it onto your damp skin and then rinse it off. The formula contains sunflower seed oil, a powerful emollient that’s rich in vitamin E and beta-carotene, both of which help neutralize free radicals; raspberry leaf extract, which works as an astringent but also soothes and calms the skin thanks to its anti-inflammatory properties; black walnut leaf extract, an astringent that also soothes skin conditions like eczema and psoriasis; dog rose extract, a skin conditioning agent; lemon balm extract, a natural cleanser with antiviral properties; and hyssop oil, another natural astringent.
The güd by Burt’s Bees Mango Moonbreeze Body Lotion is also quite enjoyable, featuring many of the same ingredients found in the body wash — among them sunflower seed oil, black walnut leaf extract, raspberry leaf extract, dog rose extract, and lemon balm leaf extract — but also fortified with shea butter, a superb moisturizer and skin conditioner that’s rife with fatty acids; and soybean oil, which is rich in essential fatty acids and vitamin E and which has a small molecular structure that enables it to penetrate the epidermis, where it can stimulate collagen and elastin synthesis. Now, the body lotion isn’t as easily absorbed by the skin as other creams and it might take some vigorous rubbing to really work it into the skin, but the effort is well worth it since your skin will feel smooth, soft, and comfortable.
