Pocket Incense - 12 Incense Sticks With Holder

 

I got these a little while ago, and can't recall where I got them from. There's no information on them - no brand name, no address, not even a country of origin. They are little packs of dhoop incense - similar to Panchavati or Morning Star (there is no bamboo core).  They appear to be no longer readily available, but can be bought in some places like Mays in South America, and they are possibly the same as the Karma branded ones. 

These are among the thinnest, smallest incense sticks I can recall having. Like the Panchavati, the holder is part of the packet, so these can genuinely be carried in the pocket, and then lit up anywhere you happen to be.  The burnt stubs are a little awkward to remove as there is no hole under the holder, so you can't push the stub out; you have to catch the tip of the stub with your fingers (or tweezers) and pull out. Not easy. 

The scents are modest and delicate - the Apple Cinnamon is perhaps the strongest, with Eucalyptus the weakest. The sticks are like Japanese incense in that the scents at base are mainly comprised of fragrant wood, in this case some clean but basic sandalwood augmented largely with a fragrant oil or perfume. The scents are modest, but gently pleasant. After having had some difficulty getting the stub out of the in built holder, I used one of my own dhoop holders. 


 

The Apple Cinnamon certainly has a scent of apple and cinnamon, along with basic wood. It smells like cheaply made incense. The apple and cinnamon are fake perfume scents, and not well done, and there's too much of the cheap base wood overpowering the fake perfume, so it's all a bit of a muddled clash. 

There not much lavender scent on the Lavender. It's the cheap wood smoke that dominates.

The Jasmine sticks are dyed green, and that's the main way to tell the difference between them and the Lavender. It's quickly becoming clear these are bargain basement incense sticks. 

I loved the idea of these - I thought they would be very cute. But the quality of the incense is very poor. I don't think these are made in India - I think they are made in Vietnam for the Western market. Vietnamese incense in my experience tends to be made from poorer quality ingredients than Indian, Tibetan and Japanese. One particularly annoying feature is that the sticks are held in place with a strip of Sellotape - if the Sellotape is removed, it looks like the sticks would easily fall out, and it would be a nuisance to fit them all back in.  However, the stickiness of the Sellotape makes getting the sticks out a little tricky, and I have broken a few while doing it. What I am doing now is pushing a fine screwdriver behind the Sellotape to loosen it, and allow the sticks to be more easily removed. 

The Eucalyptus sticks are dyed green, the same as the Jasmine. And there is little in the way of perfume on the sticks, so - like the Jasmine and the Lavender, what I smell is garden twigs burning. 

The Ocean sticks are some vague dark brown colour, though they do have a kind of mineral scent to them that is not offensive. A little sort of musty. Like an old fossil museum. There is more stone on the burn, merged with wood. It is perhaps the least offensive so far, after the Apple Cinnamon. 

The Nag Champa smells quite pleasant on the stick, and is sort of in the right area of waxy floral and sandalwood, though there's a bit of rubber in the mix as well. The scent on the burn closely approximates that on the stick, though without the rubber, and with some smoky cheap wood. These sticks are a little tiresome, and I'm starting to get through this quite quickly, not bothering to burn them down to the end. They are very simple, with little to offer - and what little they have, they give up in a very short time. There is no depth or range here at all. 

The Orange Cinnamon has more of the cheap wood, though faintly, and there some mineral notes and a bit of rubber. Bleugh! What a shame. Cute little idea, but too cheaply done. I'm not sure when I got these, though I have a feeling it was sometime in 2022, so I haven't been sitting on them for years, as I sometimes do.  It is likely that a very fresh pack would retain enough of the cheap perfume for them to smell better than what I have experienced, but I doubt if it would be that much better to be worth the price of admission. 

In short these are a failure. 


Date: Jan 2023    Score: 17 

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