Influenster’s Kat Von D Studded Kiss Lipstick Sample: Beautiful Boxes are Still Boxes

A little box in a big box. Wasting cardboard is not beautiful.

Influenster is an online product review platform where certain members (apparently social media analytics are used to choose testers) are given products to test. Reviews are then posted by members based on their experiences.

Recently, I was given a Kat Von D lipstick to test (Kat Von D Beauty Studded Kiss VoxBox) for free. The packaging on this was out of this world wasteful. Firstly, the lipstick was in a cardboard box (a safety seal would have done). Secondly, the regular sized lipstick in a box came in a much bigger box filled with tissue paper with a paper insert. This is a big waste of paper and cardboard (at least it is recyclable though) and definite overpackaging.

This box came in the mail (the mailing label is on the bottom).

This is how the box looked when opened.

When the tissue paper was removed it was just empty, empty space and this little lipstick.

The lipstick, the lipstick's box, the paper insert on top of the Influenster box (the tissue paper is not even in this picture).

In case you're wondering, the colour of the lipstick is "OG Lolita."

To their credit though, Influenster has an article on their site where they suggest ways in which members can reuse and repurpose the boxes that their sample products come in. The Kat Von D box was very colourful and I ended up cutting the top off of it and using it as an open box to store lipsticks on my makeup table. But reducing is better than reusing, so it would have been better if it had just come in a much smaller package like a small bubble mailer.

I reused the box to store my lipsticks.

Free Orville Redenbacher's New Caramel & White Cheddar Popcorn from Influenster Comes With Inflated Packaging

On Friday, I received a very large cardboard box from the post carrier. I was confused as to what it was, until I turned it over and saw the Orville Redenbacher's logo on the other side. I knew that Influenster was sending me something from Orville Redenbacher's for free to review on their app, so from the size of the box (over one foot long, at least eight inches wide, and several inches deep), I thought there must be more than one product that I would be reviewing.

What could be in this giant cardboard box?

But there wasn't. When I opened the large cardboard box, there was just one foil bag of Orville Redenbacher's new Caramel & White Cheddar Popcorn and a card.

This was all that I found in the box.

That's a lot of extra room in the box for this one bag of popcorn and card.

I was heartened to see it was a flavour combination that I could get into, caramel and white cheddar, but then I felt the bag. It was mostly empty. I know people here might interject about "slack fill" to prevent crushing of the popcorn in transit, but surely 3/5 - 4/5 of the bag doesn't need to be empty to preserve the integrity of the popcorn. Why not just make the bag smaller and use less resources in its manufacture?

A bag of Caramel & White Cheddar popcorn.

The bag looked very big, so it seemed like there would be a lot of popcorn inside.

But there was actually a lot of empty bag.

This is what I found when I actually opened the bag. It looked almost empty.

Now, onto the popcorn itself. It was well preserved in transit, no doubt due to its huge armored box and the excessive slack fill. The popcorn was very fresh. It tasted like caramel corn from a country fair mixed with Smart Food, this kind of white cheddar popcorn snack that I remember from my youth. The sweet and salty combination was pleasant. And when I didn't feel salty or didn't feel sweet, I could just pick one or the other out (they're just mixed half and half in the bag together). My husband is not a big fan of mixed sweet and salty snacks and he even liked it, so that's quite a compliment because he's picky.

Caramel corn is mixed equally with white cheddar popcorn.

If you're a fan of salty and sweet combo snacks and you like popcorn, you'll probably like this.

So, the product itself tasted really good to me, but the packaging has a ways to go. It seems wasteful to me. I am not a fan of overpackaging, so the snack's tastiness was somewhat tainted by this. All the same, I'm glad to have been given this item to review and to add my two cents.

*** I received this product for free from Orville Redenbacher's Canada via Influenster, but opinions expressed in this post are my own.*** #OrvilleCWC @OrvilleCanada +Influenster