Fab or flub? Will Dove’s new hair-care products fall flat?

Have you ever had a beauty product that you loved — and relied on heavily — suddenly disappear from the shelves of your local drugstore?

This happened to me recently with John Freida’s Full Repair Touch-Up Flyaway Tamer, the only product to ever rid my frizzy head of fly-aways. It was discontinued without explanation (or even a polite “thank you” to devoted uses like me).

Turns out women aren’t the only ones who feel the pain of this sort of misfortune.

On a recent trip to Target, my boyfriend, Robert, found that his go-to hair paste was no longer being stocked. After several failed attempts to find it at other stores, he realized it must have been discontinued, and I soon realized that the loss was a “big deal.”

Much like myself, Robert has unruly hair, and it had taken him quite some time to find a product that would take his hair from puffy to well-coiffed. So, I decided to help him locate a replacement and make a Fab or Flub? review out of it.

For the challenge, I chose two new hair-care products from the Dove Men+Care line: the Fortifying Styling Paste ($5.99 at Target) and the Fortifying Styling Gel ($5.99 at Target).

Designed for everyday use, both products are infused with caffeine, promise a strong hold and claim to thicken and fortify hair. Since Robert has used both pastes and gels on his hair before, I was hopeful that one of these products would fit the bill.

First impression

Having had more success with pastes in the past, Robert decided to try the Dove Men+Care Fortifying Styling Paste first. It comes in a plastic tub and is thick and white in color. It has a fresh smell reminiscent of a nice cologne. Robert described it as being like a pomade but drier.

In contrast, the styling gel is clear and comes in a squeezable tube. It has a similar fragrance to the paste, but Robert says he was surprised to discover that its consistency was slightly watery. Later, he reported that it wasn’t sticky or greasy — a definite plus for any hair-gel formula.

Fab or flub?

Robert put Dove Men+Care’s Fortifying Styling Paste and Dove Men+Care’s Styling Gel to the test, and the paste emerged victorious, winning his “fab” seal of approval.

However, things did get off to a rough start. With his hair paste of old, Robert had developed a habit of using a hair dryer to set his hair after he applied the product, so he decided to do the same with the Dove paste.

This ended up drying out his hair. I pointed out that the paste has a matte finish and might give him a better result if he took a pass on the blow dryer, and that did the trick. His second attempt proved super-successful. The product made his hair easy to style and more manageable, while providing a strong hold that lasted all day.

And he was pleased to have a product that didn’t require the use of a blow dryer, thus, shortening his hair-styling time.

Robert’s experience with the gel was not as successful. Despite the fact that he loved its non-sticky formula, it wasn’t up to the challenge of his thick, coarse hair and provided little hold. He said he felt the product might work well for someone whose hair wasn’t as thick and who might also appreciate a non-sticky gel formula.

But, for him, it’s the paste that’s fortifyingly fab.

This story was originally published March 27, 2015 at 1:31 PM with the headline "Fab or flub? Will Dove’s new hair-care products fall flat?."