Will Kiehl's Hand Salve prove powerful enough for New York Comic Con?

Product: KIEHL'S ULTIMATE STRENGTH "Hand Salve" ($19.50) 

Road Test: DAY THREE OF NEW YORK COMIC CON 2010 AT JAVITS CENTER 

Location: NEW YORK, NY

Tested by Natalie

"The Salve - a baby-soft, odorless, shockingly moisturizing hand cream - surely locks moisture and lasts long, but after time, leaves your hands feeling like you just got a manicure... at an auto repair shop. (Cue Betty Cooper.)"

I was six.

My fascination with comic books started young, during a grocery aisle run-in with Archie Comics' Betty and Veronica series.

The original playboy, Archie Comics born Archie Andrews in 1939 in Mamaroneck, Long Island - and 'til this day still publishes tales of the awkward teen's everlasting love triangle with an earthly blonde, Betty Cooper, and a worldly brunette, Veronica Lodge.

Equally as fascinating to me as the series longevity is the fact that Archie's content has stayed up-to-date with our modern world (Lodge uses the word "FAIL," a gay character has been introduced...). So when Chondra invited me to attend my first Comic Con - hanging at her Evil Ink Comics booth at the Javits Center Sunday - I was beyond words. I didn't have a costume, but it didn't matter.

The Good

I knew the day would bring a lot of page-flipping and hand-shaking (and awkward posing with maniacal supervillains, see Marvel/NEW-GEN's Deadalus, left), and with the imminent transition to fall on the horizon, my hands had already started to dry. So I threw a tube of Kiehl's Ulimate Strength Hand Salve in my purse and hit the highway. (A for Portability, btw.)

The formula to a winning hand lotion is moisture + duration - grease. The Salve - a baby-soft, virtually odorless, shockingly moisturizing hand cream - surely locks moisture and lasts long, but after time, leaves your hands feeling like you just got a manicure... at an auto repair shop. (Cue Betty Cooper.)

Kiehl's advertises the salve as a "heavy-duty formula... that forms a glove-like protective barrier," and to be fair, it does. A pea-size of salve, and I was thumbing through X-Men and shaking hands with girls in Poison Ivy costumes like it was my job. (It kind of is.) But it also left an overwhelming layer of oil on my hands. I couldn't help worry that if I touched my skin,  I'd soon turn into a Grease Monkey. Ha ha.

Roadblocks

Yes, I am petting a kilt in the picture to the left (courtesy of Got Kilt? Utilikilts. You can't make this stuff up.) And while the moisturizing salve made my hands silky smooth and "glove-like," as mentioned, they also made me appear as though I was sweating like a hostage.

At nearly $20 a pop, I would have to strongly caution anyone considering Kiehl's Hand Salve to re-consider. I've garnered better results (and less grease) with much more reasonable products - try Tocca's Hand Cream ($8) or Crabtree & Evelyn's Hand Therapy in Lavender ($10).

At the end of the day, Comic Con was a tough customer. And Kiehl's, unfortunately, did not stack up.

Check out a full recap of New York Comic Con on Poison Ivy.

VALUE:  O (

PORTABILITY: O O O O (

WORKS AS PROMISED:  O O O

CAUTION