Albuquerque Tribune
September 17, 2004
In the wry of the beholder
Good friends add a wrinkle or two to testing those 'miracle' beauty products
By Carrie Seidman


There wasn't one among us who hadn't heard the TV infomercial for Epil-Stop products ($14.94 for a jumbo bottle), a hair removal spray that touted a "refreshing cucumber melon scent" and made eight claims, among them, "No fuss, just spray and wipe away!" and "Clean, gentle, refreshing!!" (Note: Many exclamation points are requisite in beauty product packaging.)

Result: Belinda and Diane retreated to the back yard for testing. Shrieking ensued. An unpleasant odor began to permeate the room. Diane, never one to mince words, returned to report: "It burns, stinks, shoots all over the place and doesn't take off the hair." Belinda concurred.

Verdict: No one would consider buying this product. Before tossing it, we debated whether we might be liable for injury to the garbage collector.

http://www.abqtrib.com/archives/diversions04/091704_diversions_beauty.shtml

Epil-Stop. Been there, done that.

The amount of scams in the field of hair removal is shocking. Obviously they understand that most people would be too embarrassed to make personal complaints.

The more important problem with this product is that people are used to seeing it advertised for the past ten years on TV and think that it must work because if it really was giving people the chemical burns noted in the law suites against the maker, wouldn't the FDA have done something about it?

Well, no, they have not. The product still is sold, and people are still paying to get chemical burns, and still have hair growing out of damaged skin.