As a creative exercise (with a very wide use of the word creative), I'm going to see how many words I can write about an off brand lip balm tube. There's no real point to this, it just seems like fun.
I'm just gonna start with the part that everyone cares about - it's citrus flavored. "Flavored" isn't correct - it has no flavor, only scent - but that's always the term I use for lip balm-y things. The label on it suggests that it's specifically oranges, as the background shows half an orange, with another wedge next to it. There's a couple leaves, but the top leaf gets cut off as the other side of the label is layed on top. I did peel off the label a bit to see if there was more leaf, and there was, but disappointingly you still don't see the whole thing. The orange half is mostly unaffected by this, but the wedge gets cut off at the left side.
An important point to make is that this orange is not a photo, it's clearly an artistic render. It's a somewhat realistic one - at first glance you could mistake it for a photo - and it seems painted, possibly with watercolors. I think it looks pretty good. I'm usually disinterested by still life, and this piece is definitely no different, but writing about it does make me appreciate the detail.
The suggestion of orange is actually matched by the scent, as it smells like how orange juice tastes. This surprised me, but honestly shouyldn't have. Orange is the default "citrus" scent. There's no reason for me to expect it to be, say, lemon, or grapefruit. If it's a different citrus, it's usually advertised as such.
Moving back to visuals, behind everything is a gradient background that changes from left to right - cream, to darkish yellow, back to cream. This looks pretty cheap, but everything is visible and legible so I guess it's fine. Even more in the background, the plastic itself is completely white. Headed back to the foreground, on top of the oranges is a logo - reading "Chap-Lip Lip Balm" - and the flavor name along with a claim of additional vitamin E. If we roll over to the ingredients list, this claim is justified as one of the ingredients is "Vitamin E Acetate". I don't know how justified, however - "flavor" is also listed as an ingredient, and there's no flavor in this.
Most of the ingredients remaining aren't very interesting, but at the very end is "Red 40 Lake & Yellow 5 Lake", which indicates the coloring of the lip balm itself. That would indeed be the case - the balm is a pale orange. It's not just a solid color, there's some texture to it. I assume this is the result of defects in the manufacturing process. There's a barcode to the right of the ingredients list (woo, numbers!) and some more production info below. It was made in the USA, the one stick is about 0.15 ounces or 4.2 grams, and it's produced by Citco. Their general address (they're in California) and website are printed on the lip balm.
Googling Citco led me to a hedge fund first and a wastewater company second, so this is evidently only the third most important Citco. (The fourth most important Citco manufactures marble. There's also a tool company in there somewhere, but their own website never popped up, just a place that sells them.) Unfortunately at the time of writing this I was unable to visit citcousa.com, the website that I mentioned was printed on the lip balm tube we're discussing. All of the info I could find is through Google search blurbs and images.
In Google results they label themselves as "CITCO - Makers Of Exceptional Lip Balm". They've got 6 flavors, they do free delivery over $25, and they also manufacture the brand Nature's Bees as well as Chap-Lip. I thought that Nature's Bees would be beeswax based ala Burt's Bees, but it's actually cocoa butter, which is confusing. The Nature's Bees line has 8 flavors, so I guess that makes up for the confusion.
Back to the tube itself. There's two visual details I want to touch on before I'm done with the sense of sight. Firstly, a number printed on the twist part of the tube - 23133. I have to assume this is a lot number or something along those lines. Secondly, the tube has a tamper seal to make sure you don't buy an already used tube, but it doesn't mesh with any part of the label, being a darker orange. This seal is obviously broken, as I bought and used this tube myself.
As for the lip balm part of the lip balm, it's ok I guess. My lips are very particular on this subject. I mentioned the beeswax thing earlier, and it's worth mentioning again as beeswax based lip balms seem to be the only ones that actually work for me. Chap-Lip and other such balms don't feel bad on my lips or anything, it just isn't as effective. Honestly, I only got the tube just in case I forget or lose my go-to, which as of now is a Meijer branded beeswax based balm.
That's all I've got for this. I wrote more than I expected, but it's clearly not anything groundbreaking. I enjoyed writing it more than I thought I would, so maybe I'll do this again with something else.