Padmini Brindavan Sandal

Padmini is imported into the UK by Aargee Novelties, a British company founded in 1978 to import incense and ethnic gifts. Brindavan is where the young Krishna grew up, and the box has an image of Krishna as a child. It is a reasonably priced incense which can be bought in a hex box of 20 sticks for between 80p and £1.50.

Sandalwood has been so widely used in India for perfumes and incense, that the true sandalwood tree is now a protected species, and most sandalwood comes from other trees and plants, or even from synthetic sources, such as the chemical IBCH.

The sticks are hand rolled with a patchy brown and red incense on a red dyed bamboo stick, and produce a medium amount of steady and pleasant soft smoke with a gentle yet noticeable aroma of sweet sandalwood with hints of vanilla. It is a fairly basic scent - pleasing but not attention grabbing. A good background incense, it has attractive wood burning notes, and the aroma is quite clean and cleansing, and fades gently leaving exotic hints and memories.

Date: Feb 2013  Score: 29

***

Sandalwood

Padmini

HEM - Precious Musk

Precious is a brand name used by HEM for a range of fragrances, of which the Precious Musk is one of the most popular. Generally, musk aromas in Indian incense are derived from the seeds of the musk mallow plant that grows in India, though this musk aroma smells somewhat more artificial. The Hem Corporation has incense factories in Bangalore and Mumbai; it was founded in 1975, and is one of the largest incense companies in the world, with over 100 different incense products.

The cones produces a moderate amount of smoke - quite steady and pleasant. The aroma is woody, with some stale floral notes, and a sense of musk. There is an artificial feel to it, that is not pleasant. with a faint whiff of stale sweat on wool. The lingering smell is not good - it is reminiscent of old ladies knickers: damp talcum powder and cheap, flowery rose perfume that catches in the throat.

The cones, as with most Hem cones, are sold in packs of ten with a small metal disc on which to burn the cones. They tend to be sold in shops and on the internet for between £1.50 and £2.00. Almost all Hem products tend to be modestly priced, and no particular brand or variety has gained attention.

Date: Feb 2013  Score: 8 

***

HEM Corporation

Musk

Tree of Life Variety Pack I (discontinued)

Tree of Life is a brand of hand made bamboo stick incense made in the UK since 1992 by Geoffrey Davies. and distributed by Cha Cha Dum Dum, an ethnic gifts company founded in Kensington in 1968. They are available at a low price from a few internet and high street incense shops, and from Cha Cha Dum Dum direct, but only when ordering goods to at least the value of £25. They used to be available direct from Tree of Life for 99p a packet, plus postage, but the website appears to be down.

Tree of Life Cannabis
Score: 20

  

Tree of Life Shalimar
Score: 30

Tree of Life Shalimar incense sticks are of a soft, pleasant fragrance with a mild smoke. This is a pleasing, delicate, and good value for money incense, reminding me of the subtlety and delicacy of Japanese incense in the fragrance, if not in the burning (Japanese incense sticks have no bamboo, and so burn more cleanly and with less smoke). I feel if there were a little more incense applied to the sticks, this could become a favourite of mine.

Tree of Life Jasmine
Score: 30

These sticks have a delicate floral perfume out of the packet. The fragrance when burned starts off with warm notes of sandalwood base combined with sweet floral high notes.

Tree of Life Opium
Score: 20

***

Tree of Life

Vintage Incense
(Incense not available from
this brand for over a year)

Vaishnodevi Chandan Dhoop

Dhoops are incense pastes rolled into sticks or logs, or extruded or moulded into logs or cones. They are not rolled around a bamboo stick. Chandan is sandalwood, one of the basic fragrant woods used in incense.   Chandan dhoops are amongst the cheapest and most popular forms of incense in India. There are a number of brands available on eBay, and through some internet incense sellers, but  - as of Feb 2013 - Amazon only has the one brand Vaishnodevi Chandan Dhoop - this can be bought from 89p to £1.99 for ten sticks or logs.

There is little pleasure in the smoke it produces. The aroma varies, and can be terribly smoky and unpleasant. The box claims: "Real Fragrance of pure Ghee & Real Sandalwood". Ghee, which is clarified or condensed butter, is sometimes burnt at funerals in India, and is an occasional ingredient in dhoops, helping to both bind the fragrances, and to aid burning. However, if the proportions are wrong, the smell of the dhoop can be like that of burnt butter. These Vaishnodevi Chandan Dhoop can be a bit smoky and unpleasant - the burnt butter dominating, and also a harsh burnt rubber odour penetrating the room. They produce a lot of smoke very quickly, and will fill a room with the fragrance, good or bad - sometimes leaving a diesel smell. However, the logs can be broken into smaller pieces, and that is advised. It's not all bad, as sometimes the fragrance can be pleasantly sweet, with the sandalwood dominating, and this brand does have hints of why chandan dhoops are so popular. But, on the whole, this is a cheap nasty incense brand, and should be bought for reasons of curiosity only. Don't buy expecting a consistently pleasant fragrance.

Oddly, the more I burn these the more I am liking them. Rough and ready, and feeling quite ethnic and real. They have a lot of character, and are certainly great at covering up unpleasant smells such as cat pee. Burning a whole log, though, may give you a headache. I certainly won't be buying them again.

Date: Feb 2013  Score: 10 

***

Wet dhoops

Sandalwood

Satya (Mumbai) Super Hit cones

Sixth review - scroll down for earlier reviews

I love the scent of Super Hit, and the convenience of the cones, so we usually have a stock in the house, and - to be honest - we use them as an everyday room freshener in the toilet. I have found the cones to be somewhat variable over the years - particularly as the Super Hit brand owner, Nagraj Setty, the brother who was in charge of distribution, moved production around from place to place after Satya split up; though always found the scent to be pleasant. The scent in this batch, which has an image of the founder of Satya, Satyam Setty, on the box, above the original Satya logo which was used when Satyam was alive, is the scent I have always enjoyed. However, this batch is very smoky, and has an eye-stinging and headache-inducing impact. Even with the window open directly above the burning cone, the eye-stinging and headache-inducing impact penetrates into the rest of the house. Great scent, awful personal impact. The main cause of eye-irritation and headaches when burning incense is not necessarily due to chemicals or synthetic fragrances, the irritations are generally caused by volatile organic compounds (VOCs) which are present in all scents including pure essential oils - the irritation, it seems, is due to the amount and type of VOC, and to individual sensitivity. 

Anyway, putting this more simply - this batch of Super Hit (which comes from an Amazon source I have bought Super Hit from four times previously) contains a scent compound that is very irritating. It is so irritating that we have stopped using these cones. I am giving this batch a very low score not because of the scent but because of the negative reaction to the VOCs - but will average out the scores from all six reviews for my listings. 


Date: Oct 2023   Score: 18 

Fifth review

Running short of cones, I added a box of these when ordering a bundle of Golden Nag series  from The Holistice Eporium. I'd forgotten how much I like Super Hit. Really, this scent is something of a classic, and is a must try if you're into incense and have never burned it. I immediately sought out my regular source on Amazon - 12 boxes for £8.30, with free postage, and ordered some more. Bargain. 

And I've been burning these cones since 2013, enjoying them, and buying them in bulk, but for some reason always keeping them just out of my Heavenly list. Silly. This is one of my favourite everyday scents. Bumping it up to 40. 

This has the logo of Nagraj Setty, the brother who was in charge of distribution before the family broke up. Nagraj has always said that he devised the scent. These are perfume-dipped cones which burn cleanly and strongly, but not aggressively - though some may find them a little sweet and heady.  

Date: Oct 2023  Score: 40 

Fourth review. Bought from Tibetan Dawn

A fresh box from Tibetan Dawn. As with the Rose, this is quite fresh and heady, yet is in a box with the old pre-2014 logo.  If this is old stock it has kept remarkably well. It's quite delicious. If it's a fake, it's very good. 

Date: Dec 2020   Score: 39 

Third review

I got a new box of Super Hit and noticed a considerable difference to an older box I have. The scent on the cone was the same - something like fabric conditioner, but with a candy sweetness, and a hint of summer fruit and spring flowers - but on burning, the scent was fresh, alive and beautiful compared to the older box, The cones from the older box, when burned, tended to have a scent more based on sawdust than on fragrance. When burned side by side this is very noticeable. The difference could be due to the new box being fresher, though it could also be due to my older box being a fake.

New Super Hit is on the left in each picture 

I don't rate the older Super Hit very high when compared to the new - it's mainly sawdust. But the new box is fresh and strong. The new box is made by Nagraj Setty the brother who is based in Mumbai, and is clearly handmade. The older box appears to be machine made. It could be a fake, or could have been one of Nagraj Setty's early efforts when the Satya company was initially split. The other brother, Balkrishna, did complain that Nagraj was using machines at that point. If this Super Hit cone is anything to go by, it appears that Nagraj has sorted out his teething problems, and is making good quality incense.

Date: April 2018    Score: 35

  

Second review

These cones are one of my standard go to incenses. I buy them in bulk, and use them frequently. I always enjoy them, and find the smoke very pleasant, with absolutely no irritations or off notes. The aroma is not attention seeking or dramatic, it simply is a very good, slightly sensual and almost dreamy scent. It's a great background aroma that calms a house and calms the mood. It gives a general sense of well being. I use them so much I barely even think about them, and in the bath the other day as the incense smoke was drifting around the room, helping me relax and unwind, I thought I'd come back here and nudge the score up a bit. I'm not pushing the score so high it goes into my Top Ten largely because this isn't a scent to impress or truly delight, but it's certainly one of the greatest everyday scents that one can buy, and so deserves to be moved higher.

Date: Nov 2016    Score: 39

First review

Super Hit is sold in cones and sticks. Made by Shrinivas Sugandhalaya of Bangalore since 1964. The company also make the Satya Sai Baba brand of Nag Champa - the world's best selling Nag Champa. Super Hit is part of the Satya brand, and is the company's second most popular incense.

The cones produce a lot of smoke and burn fairly rapidly. The smoke is soft and pleasant to inhale. The fragrance is woody and sweet and fairly intense with mild musk tones. some sandalwood, honey and vanilla, and a bit of rose. It isn't as dreamy as Nag Champa, but there's an attractive robust earthiness about it, that gives it a bit of an edge. To be used, perhaps, when Nag Champa has become a bit cloying, or when a stronger fragrance is desired. May be used to more quickly cover up bad odours.

Sticks and cones can be bought from Amazon. Best deals are £10.35 for approx 180 sticks [2023 price -£7.41], and £14.25 for 144 cones [2023 price - £8.45]. Cones are dhoop - an extruded incense paste that holds together and burns without the need for a bamboo stick.

Date: Feb 2013    Score: 33


Average of six reviews: 34

***

Satya (Shrinivas Sugandhalaya)

Incense cones