Review: Marula Pure Beauty Oil shampoo and conditioner

Not Poppy.

Here I am in Florida, having packed a week's worth of outfits into a check-in bag that is supposed to weigh under 50 pounds.

I brought a couple of sample packets of shampoo and conditioner. I picked the ones that are sulfate-free, since I have both hair dye and a keratin treatment to protect.

Again, not Poppy.

I brought

Marula Intensive Repair Shampoo 8.5 oz./$28.00

with its matching conditioner

Marula Intensive Repair Conditioner 8.5/$28.00

And all I can say is ... this shampoo is probably OK for people who simply want to freshen their style by getting their hair wet enough to warrant blowing it dry. And this is actually me a lot of the time. Most of the time I have dry hair which I shampoo not because I really need to, but because it's been four or five days. Things seems a little flat. And dim. So why not?

But I'm in Florida, and I started this whole trip with "second day hair." So take second day hair plus tons of extra styling products to keep my hair from puffing and frizzing up in the Florida humidity, plus the extra yuck you get when you go jogging in 82 degree heat along the beach.

So, salt, humidity, oil, styling products + "glow" = a hot mess.

And this shampoo simply didn't get my hair clean.

It's sulfate free, so it doesn't foam up. Like, at all. So it's hard to know whether I've massaged it long enough into my scalp. And even with a second sudsing, it doesn't suds, so your guess is as good as mine as to whether it has worked.

I really hate blow drying my hair. It's incredibly labor intensive. I section it when it's wet into about 10 parts. Then I blow-dry each section and roll it around a velcro roller. Then I blast all the rollers with heat and let everything cool down. This takes a long time. My feet, back, legs, and triceps get tired.

When I go through all that, and my hair isn't actually clean, I get a little annoyed.

So I'd give the conditioner an 8 out of 10. It felt creamy and moisturizing, yet rinsed clean. It smelled good. It was a pleasant experience.

But the shampoo? Was like pouring a watery fluid into my hair. It didn't produce any suds. At all. And I know that sulfate-free shampoos don't create mounds of suds. But I did two "sudsings" and rinsed carefully and my. hair. still. wasn't. clean.

I'd call that the failiest fail that ever failed.