Duke Cannon "Ice Cold" Mentholated Aftershave Balm!
Stirling turned me into a menthol head, and they spoiled me good. Now days I am on the search for mentholated aftershaves, splashes or balms. I did some research, and I decided on the Duke Cannons Ice Cold aftershave balm, because its mentholated, and its a sandalwood based scent. What I didn't realize until later however, is that portions of the proceeds that they earn on sales of this product, go to benefiting our honored US veterans. You just can't get much better then that.
BOTTLE APPEARANCE:
These bottles do not have a flashy appearance, but do have a bit of a drug store feel, due to the label design. These are pretty much standard squeeze bottles, like you would find your lotion products in. Bottle does not come sealed, threaded top cap, with push to open for dispensing. If your favorite color is turquoise, then your going to like this product, cause thats the color of it.
BOTTLE SIZE:
The bottle size is fairly small, its 6 ounces of 177ml. Its a plastic bottle that doesn't take up much space, as seen in my picture here, where you can clearly see larger aftershave bottles around it.
INGREDIENTS:
"Water (Aqua), Glycerin, Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Butter, Glyceryl Dilaurate, Methyl Gluceth-20, Fragrance (Parfum), Melaleuca Alternifolia (Tea Tree) Leaf Oil, Adansonia Digitata Seed (Baobab) Oil, Calophyllum Tacamahaca Seed (Tamanu) Oil, Menthol, Dimethicone, Acrylates/C10-30 Alkyl Acrylate"
The biggest things to note I believe are...
- "Contains menthol for an instant cooling sensation"
- "Alcohol-free formula for maximum comfort"
- "No parabens, sulfates, and anything you don't want"
SCENT:
This aftershave just made itself at the top of my list for best smelling aftershaves, I absolutely love the sandalwood scent, and the way Duke Cannon does it here, is 100% right. The scent power is not overwhelming at all, it won't send you running for the nearest airlock. But the scent is not weak either, its an even balance IMO, and I don't think that this scent, would offend anyone.
PERFORMANCE:
The performance of this aftershave balm, is nothing short of perfection, easily a top tier performance aftershave balm! This is basically a lotion style product, and its thick, as you will witness as you squeeze some out. This aftershave is not greasy at all however, a couple of key factors to note. If you apply this on dry skin, it will get absorbed into the skin and disappear very quickly, so you may not want to use this as a lotion substitute. This aftershave works best when your skin is at least damp, it applies very smoothly, and makes the face feel very smooth, and you feel the cooling sensation of the menthol.
MENTHOL:
If Stirling Wintergreen can be considered a 10 out of 10 for maximum levels of mentholated power, and Proraso Eucalyptus be considered a 6-7 out of 10, Duke Cannon is a solid 3 out of 10. I was honestly surprised, as I was expecting the menthol power to be stronger here. If this aftershave is applied to dry skin, I couldn't feel the menthol at all! It wasn't until my skin was wet prior to application of this aftershave, did I begin to feel the menthol, and its cooling effects. Its menthol power is too low to cause eye watering, or nostril cleansing, so if thats what you are looking for, you might want to check out Stirling's products instead.
DRY DOWN:
If applied directly to dry skin, the dry down will be next to instantaneous, so fast you won't have time to evenly apply the product, unless a lot was used. However, a normal person is going to have a damp face after a shave, after application, I estimate it took about 5 minutes for the dry down. During such time, the menthol provided the coolness factor I love.
POST SHAVE FEEL:
One of the main purposes, that anyone uses an aftershave balm, is for the post shave feel. Aftershave splashes are great, when you don't have to worry about your skin too much. But! If your skin is dry, or you have nicks, weepers, irritation, razor burn, this is what an aftershave balm is best for. Not only did my skin feel smoother and softer after using this, but the Shea Butter ends up being an excellent moisturizer, maybe perhaps even better then standard lotion products! My skin doesn't feel dry at all afterwords, I don't feel any irritation at all, and my face feels quite comfortable. So excellent post shave feel!
SCENT DURATION:
This aftershave blew me away, because it easily beat out all my other aftershaves, when the aftershave was lasting 8-hours! I thought that was strange, so I had a look at the ingredients list. If you look closely, they state they are using "Fragrance Parfum." There are basically 3 different grades of fragrance strength, you generally have aftershave which is like a tier 1 scent. Then you have Eau De Toilette, which is a tier 2 strength. Then Parfum, which is the highest tier 3 grade strength. So no wonder the aftershave lasts for so many hours, their using Parfum grade for their fragrance. I am speechless!
TESTING:
Because Duke Cannon makes high claims like, "Find relief from that scorched earth feeling by going from hot to cold," and "Allantoin provide hydration while minimizing razor burn irritation." I decided to put that to the test! Most of us are traditional wet shavers here, but what if I go to the dark side, and shave with a Panasonic Arc 4 electric foil shaver, on my skin dry, with no shave gel applied.
Some might say, I was hurtin for some hurtin. 
I did a shave with this thing, and I can't tell if its just that, the head is already getting dull off my course whiskers, after less then a year of total runtime on it, or the shaver just sucks entirely. This thing takes every bit as long as it takes me to do a 3-pass DE shave, why? Because its so inefficient! I can't believe how much this thing misses my whiskers, causing me to have to go back over spots over, and over, and over, and over. I am somebody who likes to have a BBS shave, but this thing just misses whiskers consistently, to the point that, by the time I've achieved that BBS shave, I got some irritation afterwords for sure!
This was the perfect situation, to test out my new aftershave balm. Now, keep in mind, my skin was dry, so I applied this aftershave balm on dry skin. The product got absorbed so quickly, I didn't quite feel like I got enough on, so I applied some more, just to make sure I applied it evenly on both my face and neck. This is when I noticed how strange it was, that I couldn't feel any menthol feel at all. Having said that however, what I did notice, is that Duke Cannon's aftershave balm, was indeed moisturizing my dry skin, and making my face feel smooth. I then discovered that my irritation was gone almost instantly, and I felt perfectly fine afterwords.
On my second shave test, I chose to shave with my Timeless TI95 razor, using a Wizamet blade. I chose Proraso RED shave soap, which is their classic Sandalwood scent. Well, I gotta be honest, Proraso is not the slickest of shave soaps on the market, and its barely slick enough to get the job done, for using my holy grail razor. But, in the end, I didn't have any nicks, weepers, or irritation. And I barely could feel much alum block feedback after the shave. After a rinse, my face was still wet, and I applied Duke Cannon's Ice Cold Aftershave Balm.
Guess what? Not only was it easier to apply on a wet face, but the menthol suddenly showed up to say hello. I guess the menthol finally got the memo, and decided to provide me the menthol cool that I seek. If only the menthol could go pedal to the metal, with a stronger kick. I applied enough to get it evenly applied to both my face and neck, it felt so good! Dry down took about 5 minutes, skin was moisturized, irritation free feeling, cool feeling, just what you'd expect from a mentholated aftershave balm.
CONCLUSION:
Unless your going pedal to the metal with the menthol, it can be difficult to please a menthol addict. Having said that however, Duke Cannon's Ice Cold Aftershave Balm, ticks all the boxes. It has easily moved up to the top of my list for best aftershave balm, this is because the performance is rock solid top tier level. And as a plus, I really love the Sandalwood scent that they use in this aftershave, it is by far some of the best I have smelled. And this aftershave really threw me through a loop, when I could still faintly smell it, 8-hours later. SWCT is going to give this a highest level recommendation to all B&B members, with a solid heaping score of 5
out of 5 stars!
