A few days ago while looking for some Tulasi Vidwan online I noticed Juicy Jay's being offered at £1.99 for two packets, post free. The company was founded in America in the late 1990s to sell flavoured cigarette papers, and a few years ago - probably 2013, launched their incense series. The aromas have tempting names such as Orange Overload, Funkincense, and Apple Brown Betty. As they were cheap and made in Thailand, I suspected they would be poor quality, similar to the incense made for Ancient Wisdom, which are also made in Thailand, though as it turned out they were slightly better than that - but only just!
The packaging is top quality, with expensively printed glossy cardboard sleeves over double plastic sleeves, one with a zip lock. They look appealing, with attractive modern names, and the initial aromas are fresh, light, fun, and very modern. The sticks are not blanks, but dry extruded fragrant paste over a bamboo stick - similar to some of Happy Hari's incense sticks. So it all looks OK. And when you burn them they last for over an hour, with no nasty off-notes. The aromas, however, tend to be the earthy organic base material overlaid with a very basic and simplistic synthetic car air freshener scent. They are not bad as such, but they are not as interesting as they look, and the earthy aroma of the base organic material can contrast a little uncomfortably with the modern synthetic sweet aromas of the top notes.
As they are not refined sophisticated aromas, I'm simply grouping them here. They are cheap and cheerful, and would serve to cover up bad smells, or as a low cost everyday incense or room freshener. They wouldn't be used for anything meaningful.
Apple Brown Betty does have an awareness of apple to it - a slightly sweet, applie pie type aroma. But it is faint, and it is merged into the obscure organic material of the paste so creating a slightly duller aroma than it could have been. It's OK, and while it doesn't live up to its promise, it is an inexpensive and reasonably pleasant air freshener.
Score: 22
Strawberry Fields is the stick that is closest to its name. There is a distinct aroma of synthetic strawberry and cream. It's cute, and is the second most enjoyable of the five I tried.
Score: 22
Funkincense is my favourite as I love frankincense, and this does have some of the sultry, musky warmth of that incense, and there is something a little more spiritual about it than the others. But as a frankincense aroma it is fairly poor.
Score: 23
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough is a little vague, but does have a pleasant sweet warmth about it, rather like synthetic vanilla. It reminds me a little of Tulasi Chocolate, and maybe I'm being a bit harsh with my scores here, as I gave the Tulasi a 26 - or perhaps I was being a bit generous with the Tulasi, which I reviewed two and a half years ago, when I was less knowledgeable/experienced than I am now. I'm still learning and discovering, and there is much I still don't know, but I know more now than I did back then, and I hope that in two to three years time I will know more than I know now.
Score: 21
Orange Overload is the most disappointing of the bunch. The name promises so much and the stick delivers so little. There's a faint peppery aroma that is nothing like orange, and sure enough is not an overload at all!
Score: 18
Incense tried: 5
Highest score: 23
Lowest score: 18
Average: 21
Conclusion: American importer and distributor of own brand Asian perfumed-incense. The perfumes are fun, but manufacturing and storing is poor quality, so the scents on the burn do not live up to the promise on the stick.
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