Wild Berry: Strawberry, Orange Creamsicle, Mango Passion, Coconut, Dragon’s Blood, Opium, Frankincense

Strawberry

‘A sun-ripened strawberry fragrance with notes of apple, agave nectar and vanilla.‘

My first association to the raw scent was strawberry ‘dragon tongues’ (also called sour strips in Germany; there might be other names for them in English.). Putting my nose directly at the opening of the pack offers an overwhelming scent experience; the smell screeches like speakers turned too loud. The smell makes me think of all sorts of artificial flavours. Alongside strawberry, cherry and banana also come to mind.
I had to cough from the intense sniffing at the bag, then it actually made me gagged. 🤢

The first stick from the pack wouldn’t stay lit; I tried several times, but the ember died each time. The next stick had some starting difficulties but stayed lit.

The smell is really strange. It still reminds me of sweets with strawberry flavour, but mixed in are notes settled somewhere between soap and decomposing plastic.
Ages ago, I bought a large pack of strawberry lollipops that I never managed to get through. At some point, I discovered they’d developed a strange smell: still ‘strawberry’ but with a disgusting, bitter note. That’s what Wild Berry’s Strawberry reminds me of.

Furthermore, I find that despite the fragrance’s potency, the base material still manages to come through in a quite unpleasant way.
When the smoke drifts directly in my direction, it has a similar effect to getting soap in your mouth. 🙁

Orange Creamsicle

‘A creamy citrus scent with delicate notes of orange, lemon zest, sweet pineapple, coconut, and tangerine.‘

The raw scent reminds me of Nimm2 (lemon and orange hard candy) with soap.

I placed the burning stick about a metre away in front of me on the balcony railing. Even here in the fresh air, the smell is instantly overwhelming as soon as the smoke drifts even roughly in my direction.
With a little more distance, the exaggerated creamy sweetness of the fragrance comes to the fore, which for me corresponds more to vanilla flavour than coconut. Added to that is an orange aroma. It actually smells as if you’d synthetically concentrated the essence of a creamsicle and packed it into incense sticks.

At first, I don’t find the smell so bad, but then this unpleasant smell appears again: like I’d imagine a reed diffuser set on fire; something that burns but isn’t made for it.
Orange Creamsicle again offers the ‘soap-in-mouth’ effect introduced earlier by Strawberry.

Mango Passion

‘An exotic mango and passion fruit scent with notes of mandarin orange, nectarine peach and candied orange peel.‘

The raw scent of Mango Passion once again brings an association to sour, artificially flavoured sweets, such as Skittles; plus some soap.
Right after lighting, there’s once more that unpleasant smell of soap and old plastic.
I can’t identify mango here, not even an artificial one. At best, it smells like passion fruit, but mainly it smells soapy.

Coconut

‘A toasted coconut cream fragrance with notes of smooth vanilla bean and nutty praline.‘

I had asked Nathan not to send Coconut because I generally don’t like coconut smells, but he either forgot or ignored it. Now that I have it, it’ll be tested…

In the raw scent, we have soap again, this time with coconut fragrance.

What can I say? They’re better than Milo’s Temple – Coconut, but that’s an incredible low bar.
It’s overly sweet in a similar way to previous fragrances, with artificially feeling coconut aroma, this time with only a slightly soapy tone. However, the smell creates a disgusting feeling in the back of my mouth.

Dragon’s Blood

‘An exotic earthy fragrance with subtle notes of pine needle, Arabian sandalwood, musk and amber. Inspired by the aromatic bright red sap produced by the dracaena Draco tree.‘

Nathan wrote in his review: ‘This stick smells like baking spice and tart fruit, which is confusingly close to how I might describe actual dragon’s blood resin, but it still somehow smells nothing like it.‘
And that’s how it’s gone for me with basically all ‘Dragon’s Blood’ incense sticks I had tried.

The raw scent is surprisingly different from what I had expected. Indeed, very spicy, but for me, it also has a touch of tart herbal soap and a hint of old-fashioned women’s perfume; heavy and floral.
The burning stick smells less bad than the previous Wild Berry examples have led me to expect. It’s quite similar to the raw scent but actually less soapy, while notably sweeter.
I fully agree with Nathan’s ‘baking spices’, I just smell less of the tart fruits. Other Dragon’s Blood incense sticks didn’t have this spiciness but instead had much more of that tart-fruity note, which does come close to how I’d describe dragon’s blood resin without really smelling like it.

Opium

‘A rich, spicy scent with delicate notes of petitgrain, soft lemon, ylang ylang, carnation petal, cinnamon, patchouli and warm vanilla. Our version of the popular perfume by YSL.’

Opium—my nemesis. I’ve never liked ‘Opium’ incense sticks. A while ago I had the opportunity to smell a knock-off version of the famous Yves Saint Laurent perfume and didn’t like that either; so it doesn’t seem to be solely the incense sticks’ fault.

The sticks have a really intense raw scent that simply smells of an old-fashioned, quite overloaded, heavily floral perfume. Added to that is once more tart soap.

Lit, the stick smells even more soapy than before, and the smell is incredibly potent. With Opium, the smoke doesn’t even have to drift in my direction for it to become too much for me.
I’d already noticed, after the second or third Wild Berry stick today, that a scratching was building up in my throat; this heavy fragrance adds a heaviness to my chest.

Similar to the Strawberry cones, I find the cone version of Opium ‘better’, but still far from good.

Frankincense

‘An exotic Tunisian frankincense scent with deep notes of woody spice and bright balsam.‘

After I’d been able to try a couple of other examples of dipped ‘Frankincense’ incense sticks last year, I expected something similar from Wild Berry – Frankincense: a dry-resinous ‘incense’ smell (as the perfume industry calls it).
The description of the fragrance puzzles me: ‘Tunisian frankincense’. Tunisia is a country on the coast of the African continent closest to Europe. It’s not known as a frankincense country.
Secondly, ‘bright balsam’ is a description that doesn’t really say much. Balsam can mean both liquid resins from coniferous trees, particularly the balsam fir (which is almost colourless but has a fresh, bright smell), and balsam resins such as Tolu-balsam, which smells honey-like sweet and is about the colour of light caramel or toffee.

The raw scent of Frankincense was by far the biggest surprise from this selection: spices like clove and cinnamon with an orange-y citrus note—it’s practically a Christmas fragrance! It’s like a synthetic gingerbread!
I’m not sure whether I should be relieved about that. It smells leagues better than, say, the frankincense interpretation by Zam Zam, but it also smells so very much not like frankincense …