Jack Black Lip Balm - Co-Founder Emily Dalton Responds
Emily Dalton, one of the co-founders of Jack Black emailed me this afternoon. I told her I’d be happy to share Jack Black’s response with readers, and her response is below. It is very much appreciated to get an official response from the brand, and I hope it helps create a fuller picture. 🙂
First, we are very sorry for not previously having the ingredient information easier to access. All of our products, except the lip balm, have always listed the full ingredients. And, in response to what we have heard today from your readers about how important it is to have this
information online, we will be posting complete ingredient information on our website as soon as possible.We had previously not provided all of the information on the lip balm package because of the extremely small size of the tube. However, with the new sunscreen monograph ruling, which became effective last year, we realized we needed to do more to provide our customers with more detailed labeling and the ingredient list on the package. When we became aware of the new guidelines, we immediately moved to provide the complete list of ingredients on the lip balm package and we increased the size of the lip balm tube to accommodate this. All of our current inventory has the updated labeling.
We are truly sorry and did not mean to mislead anyone. That was definitely not our intention. We’re a small, closely held company. Each of the founders are very involved in the day to day operations of the company, and we take total responsibility for this issue. We have grown over the past 12 years thanks to the loyalty of our customers and their satisfaction with our carefully crafted products. It’s very disheartening to see how this oversight has caused so many concerns and issues for our customers. This is extremely upsetting for us, as each person at our company cares deeply about the integrity of our products and doing the right thing for our customers.
I hope you will share this with your readers and let them know that we would greatly appreciate the opportunity to personally apologize to anyone who is unhappy with our company. Please let them know, they can email their contact information to info@getjackblack.com and we would be happy to talk with them directly.
In summary: Jack Black will be adding full ingredient lists for all of their products on their website (full ingredient lists for their lip balms are already added and viewable). The only product that did not have a full ingredient list printed on the packaging was their Lip Balm. They have increased the size of the tube in order to print the full list of ingredients and that all current inventory reflects these changing.
Very classy, Jack Black. I love when companies stay grounded and Apologize for something that may have caused anger among their followers. I will be purchasing a lip balm in my next future Sephora order/purchase to commend them on their classy reply! They could have easily gotten defensive, but they remained cool, calm and open. Kudos.
@Nikki at RougeReflections I agree! I have two Jack Black lip balms in my Sephora cart right now, and thanks to this sincere apology, I don’t have to remove them 🙂
@Nikki at RougeReflections ehm..classy? Do you really believe that they didn’t want to mislead anybody by purposefully hiding the ingredients? Everyone is free to buy what they wish, but I wouldn’t call this answer “classy”..it was DUE and it comes late anyway
Bullsh*t. They just didn’t want anyone to think they were merely buying scented Vaseline. They knew not many would. As I stated before, I don’t mind paying more for certain ingredients, but $8 USD for Vaseline is ridiculous. I spend more for my Korres Lip Butters, and I will just stick with those. Inexpensive, non-petroleum lip balms can be bought for less than half at health food stores.
Sorry but knowing that some customers were misled and influenced to purchase the product due to the shortened ingredient list is as good as intending it. Knowing that another person has a mistaken view of the facts but continuing without actively correcting it is tantamount to misrepresentation and fraud. Nice try.
I’m not sure what happened but saying a product is too small to label with the ingredients doesn’t make sense. All the other companies can do it. Even indie companies do it.
@HovercatMittens I absolutely agree. Besides, they could have included the *full* list on their site, with a note on the actual packaging to refer to the site for a full and complete list.
Wow. At least they’re not too proud to be defensive, indeed. They deserve another chance. But I bet they didn’t expect that consumers nowadays are *so* critical.
This should teach them a lesson. However, it still does not shun or correct the fact that they misled their consumers, which does still constitute as a fraud. And there’s no fact that might be able to corroborate with their defense being “unintentional”, unfortunately, as it happens to already be a common practice. To list ingredients, that is.
They’re lucky (and so far we are, too!) that there has been no physically-injured party to this incident. It’s definitely a tort, and might be a crime by negligence, too.
@LOLARIS There may have been, but perhaps there wasn’t enough space on their response to list it.
Eh. Too little, too late.
Meh, really? List it on your site!
@arianamar youtube it is listed there.
@artemis It’s listed there now but it didn’t used to be. They added that info at the same time they had to start changing the list on the tubes.
Apology accepted, but now knowing what makes up at least 40% of the product, I think I’ll stick with Vaseline.
I have to be honest, when I saw the header for this post I rolled my eyes and expected some passive aggressive excuse making, a la Urban Decay’s China fiasco, and instead found a simple apology. That doesn’t make things square, as they definitely withheld information that would have cost them sales (seriously, petrolateum makes up half of your product that sells for $8?! For shame!) otherwise, but this response doesn’t leave a bad taste in my mouth. The part about not including the ingredients because of some size issue is bs, of course, but they don’t dwell on it and make some amends by saying they will include full ingredient listings on their site. As a customer who NEVER buys skincare or cosmetics without a full ingredients listing (except when it’s illegally withheld and replaced with an incomplete – yet full “looking” – listing of course), I appreciate that step.
So, yeah, they made a huge blunder thinking they could get away with selling “overpriced, scented vaseline” (as many posters have already pointed out) as something more “natural” and “wholesome” than what it was….but I feel ok about their response to the uproar. Nothing burns bridges faster than loads of bs, not taking responsibility, and passive-aggressive public statements. I’m happy to see they avoided that.
I think it’s great they actually care and took the time to email you. As mentioned before, this is my FAVORITE lip balm and I don’t have any allergies/sensitivities to any ingredients-I just didn’t like feeling tricked. I still think it’s strange that, though they say it was due to lack of space, they somehow made JUST enough room to fit EVERY single “good” ingredient and left out all the chemical/potentially irritating ingredients. But honestly, I’m glad they apologized and I will continue to use the lip balm.
@Becca @The Beauty Sample I appreciate them reaching out, and even more noteworthy, that it wasn’t simply through PR. She wanted to call me originally to really convey their apologies, but I was busy and asked for an email response instead – since it’d be quicker and I could have something directly from them to share with readers, too!
It’s nice to see an apology, but they won’t make me believe that withholding information about their product, especially the fact that it’s mostly made of vaseline and lanolin, was an “oversight”. There are vegan people out there who bought this without knowing!
The ingredient list they mentioned was obviously meant to mislead consumers into believing that their balm is made of vegetal oils and butters. This is not okay, even when you say sorry afterwards.
@Lulle Couldn’t say it better!
@Lulle I really agree. I call BS on leaving out the cheap, “less natural” ingredient that makes up the majority of the product and only listing all the pretty, natural sounding plant ingredients (most of which are at the end of the ingredients list if they there at all like the MIA almond oil).
Seriously Jack Black? It just seems so transparent to me that they were trying to make their lip balm seem more natural than it is. Now they’re just trying to make nice now that the poo has hit the fan.
I wouldn’t be so upset if they had just been honest. I might have even still bought the product knowing the real ingredients. I just hate feeling like I’ve been lied to.
I’m sorry, I just don’t buy that it was unintentional. If that was the case then at least some of the “bad” ingredients would of been listed on the tube and not just a well edited list of the all natural good for you stuff.
Lip balms are one of the few products that I actually read the ingredient list one. Wanna know why? I dislike petroleum based balms, they never work for me. Wanna know what does work for me? Shea based balms. I always wondered why this balm made my lips worse considering that the ingredients sounded perfect to me. Had I known the real ingredients I never would of wasted my money on this stuff. So yeah, I do feel ripped off.
Now this is an apology I can appreciate! I like that they took full responsibility, and it seemed very sincere. I have no reasons to avoid the product, because ingredient lists don’t really phase me, so I’ll continue to buy.
Thanks Christine! I was so expecting some BS response. But I am happy that they came clean, dealt with the issue & did what they should have done! Companies are made of people & they will make mistakes. But I do respect the direct response though. I love their lip balms but now Im just not sure I want to pay that price for those ‘glorified vaseline’ ingredients. Back to Burts bees maybe?! Or does anyone have any other suggestions?
@Wenz Korres Lip Butters, or for a less expensive alternative, there are some decent lip balms available at health food stores (if you’re trying to avoid parabens, and the like).
@Wenz I love indie brands’ lip balms, especially Epically Epic Soap’s on Etsy. Sometimes the only thing is to let them know if you have any allergies and they often would formulate them without for you.
Eh… well this is just an attempt to appease the almost overwhelmingly negative response to the first post. While I appreciate this action of appeasement… does it really change anything? Not in my mind. But then again, I’ll probably still repurchase these lip balms. The ingredients aren’t THAT bad and at least it provides decent UVA and UVB protection.. While I wish there was more green tea, vitamin E, and shea butter, the formulation isn’t so simple to be just “fragranced Vaseline” as people say.
@John 3D
If you want more shea butter, vitamin E and other truly active ingredients (Petrolatum isn’t) why don’t you go for something 100% natural? I do not understand this loyalty to a deceitful brand 😉 Also bear in mind that all the ingredients that come after “parfum” are usually present in a small percentage (under 1%), so yes, this is just “fragranced petrolatum”..
PS I made my own lipbalm melting shea butter, cocoa butter, oils and Vitamin E at home..it is very easy (check out YT for tutorials) and a single tube costs me something around 50 cents..;)
@Marghe
Well, I’ve never been on the board with the 100% natural claim, but regardless of that, I do know that ingredients listed after parfum are very little. However, the reason I use the JB Lip Balm is primarily because it provides decent UV protection, as well as being aesthetically pleasing, and contains a smattering of other beneficial ingredients. Granted like I said, I wish more was included. But until I find a better alternative to the JB, (and I’ll be actively looking as I always do), it’ll have to do for now. If I wanted a treatment without SPF, I’d use my regular nighttime lip balm, the MAC one in the tube. While also in a petrolatum base, it has good amounts of other helpful ingredients. It’s fantastic. Also, there are several drawbacks to DIY skin care. Any antioxidants will degrade very quickly as you’re making it in a oxygen-rich environment (air). Not to mention that it’s difficult to make DIY lip balm with adequate SPF. Can you though? Yes, it’s certainly possible. I just couldn’t easily make one that could fulfill the standards I set when looking for a lip balm. I hope that made sense! But hey, if DIY works for you and can save you money, yay!
@John 3D it has good uva and uvb protection but maybe there are better products than this one that also contain more good stuff.
@artemis
I agree. I’ve searched in all the databases/sites that I know and considered each in terms of ingredients, price, and of course value. I haven’t found one yet. 🙁 But yeah, I don’t think the JB is an HG product by any stretch of the imagination. Teehee.
It is interesting and good they apologized… But they kinda had to.
And they don’t seem like an indie or young company, so they knew better. Thus to me, the apology after being called out, is to cover their bums… Or at least try to. I have never bought from this brand, and never will, and it isn’t cause they deceived customers either. I have no interest in their products. I’m sure there are other brands that leave stuff out.. But I mean probably few, cause they will be sued should an ingredient make people sick etc.
I just don’t buy this “There wasn’t room”. That’s a huge excuse, when they could have noted from the start where you could read the ingredients, or even have a insert stuck on the tube with the full ingredients.
Shame on them. I feel they only came clean, cause they were flushed out.
You know, I call shenanigans on their whole “we never meant to mislead anyone.” Um, sorry, but yes you did. By willingly, deliberately and ‘conveniently’ leaving all of the “bad” ingredients off of the actual product–and I don’t care what reason they cooked up to justify it–the company knew exactly what they were doing. They were marketing their product as better (or at the very least seemingly better) than it really is and they used deceitful tactics to do so. That is the prototypical definition of “false advertising” and they’re lucky they weren’t sued the instant someone found out about this.
And I bet they didn’t even stop to consider the possibility that there could have been consumer with a life threatening allergy to one of the ingredients that they felt it was okay to just leave off of the list.
You asked us earlier about brand ethics? This is the problem that I have with companies. Dishonesty. I’ve only bought 1 or 2 tubes of Jack Black over the last year or so, but I guarantee that I won’t do it again. If I lose trust in a brand, it’s done.
@nacacijin Well said!
I was in the midst of trying my 1st tube when holiday sales came out and thinking I was buying a product that was better for me than what I had been using I purchased A LOT while on sale…I still have 12 tubes left!!! I was stocking up for the entire year thinking over time I would see a significant improvement in my badly chapped lips that nothing was helping. I couldn’t understand why I saw very little improvement over the past several months…of course it makes sense now.. Even at the sale price I spent around $7 per tube, and considering I’ve been using them this long and have so much left it was quite the investment. I admit that I should have waited and used them for a few months at full price and stocked up at the next holiday sale…but based on the information available I thought it was making a good decision. I’ve learned from my mistake…but I don’t like being mislead!!!
Thankfully I have been using it and not Gemalayah or someone else with Celiac’s just to mention ONE health issue that would have had consequences from the contents. I think AcademicGirl made an excellent point that there was plenty of room on the tube to put the ingredients that they wanted to list and I too felt the email was just a (reactive) spin. I agree with other comments that they certainly could have listed the ingredients on their website, but I don’t want to hunt down your lip balm ingredients…I’m not researching a vehicle…make it easy.
It is good to see their response but their actions speak volumes. I have Celiac’s and “oversights” like theirs can be very costly for me health wise. It’s not like this is a new issue either. I guess my response is also “meh”. I will skip their product in favourite of the many, many companies who take these things seriously.
I think saying the tube was so small that it wouldn’t fit is a really funny (ridiculous) explanation, but I do appreciate the email, and I will appreciate even more seeing the full ingredient list put out there.
Emily Dalton, at least you are a bit better at these kinds of letters than Urban Decay PR. *giggle*
Note to companies, please just learn to put the accurate FULL listing out there (preferably on product packaging/products, but web site will do as well, especially if noted somewhere on product/packaging)!!!! It’s really not hard work, and your customers greatly appreciate it. Thank you.
Their “we didn’t mean to mislead” is a really poor attempt at spin, as everyone else said. If the tube size had truly been the issue, they’d have just truncated the ingredient list, that is put on the first 10 (or whatever) ingredients and left the rest off. Instead, they mysteriously only left out the “bad,” chemical-sounding ingredients.
I’d have had more respect for them if they came out and admitted what they did.
I am extremely pleased to see such a sincere apology though it still bothers me that don’t have a full list in the first place. I am surprised that their lip balm contains 40% petrolatum as Vaseline or other petrolatum products never did much for me since it’s a shield not a moisturizer so the other 60% of the ingredients must be pretty kick@ss to make this my mom (her lips are always chapped and this is the only balm that has stopped that) and my favorite lip balm of all time. Glorified Vaseline? Maybe, but I hail in its glory.
Personally I have never purchased a Jack Black lip balm, although I was intrigued by them and had been planning to treat myself to one at some point, and I’m not vegan. So I was never really personally “injured” per se by the incomplete ingredients list. I think Mrs. Dalton deserves a lot of respect for her personal, non-prideful apology on behalf of her business. I can understand how an honest omission might have occurred in the first place with them being a small business, too. They certainly aren’t indie, but they aren’t big corporate, either–it’s definitely awkward to be the littler guy in the big pond, what with all of the hoops to jump through (granted there aren’t as many in the “organic” cosmetic sector as there are in, say, the organic foods sector) in addition to just running a business with employees and production and the like. Nevertheless, I would hope that they’ve learned their lesson and have better compliance oversight going ahead.
The apology is irrelevant since I really did purchase the lip balm product assuming it was a more natural oil based product. I apply lip balm to my lips every single night before I go to bed. I liked the convenience of a tube and I really like the lemon and mint flavours and I actually kept a tube by my bedside, but at the end of the day, I’m not at all impressed with the high percentage of petroleum based ingredient at their price point. As a result, I will go back to supporting the Korres product which is very effective and does not scrimp on quality ingredients. Now I just need to buy it in the stick form because lip products in pots are not my favourite. I will miss the flavours, but I will not miss being mislead.
@wwendalynne lemon and mint favours are irritant anyway.
I don’t think I have a right to be offended, since I just looked at one of my tubes and it listed all ingredients including petrolatum and lanolin and so on and so forth, and I just never bothered to look. I do appreciate the apology, and I understand why so many people are upset. I will probably stop buying the lip balm for a while because a) I have half a dozen tubes and b) it’s not my favorite lip balm, no matter how many times I’ve tried to love it. I never really looked at the ingredients when I first bought it or when I last bought it, so that’s on me.
But I am curious now about other ingredient lists and will probably be looking more closely 🙂
@blueraccoon Hmmm.. interesting. My tubes have no ingredients listed, just directions for application in a number of languages and website/company info.
@wwendalynne @blueraccoon There’s no space to fit the entire list of ingredients, yet they can find space to fit directions on *how to apply*? Does anyone *not* know how to apply lip balm? I’ve been using lip balm on a daily basis since I was a child (in the 70s), and I don’t recall ever seeing instructions for application.
@xamyx @wwendalynne @blueraccoon hahaha, i agree, it’s silly.
@xamyx @wwendalynne @blueraccoon Laugh: Here is what it says.. “Apply to lips whenever they feel dry and chapped.” in 5 languages no less! English/French/Spanish/German/Italian? Since I am in Canada, I am guessing I have ‘international’ packaging.
im still disgusted and not buying this stuff. sticking to my Mad Gabs without lanolin and my eco lips from sprouts…
Sigh. On the one hand, I don’t believe that they didn’t mean to mislead anyone, and when I saw the first post about this I was bugged. Not because the ingredients bothered me, but because I don’t like when companies are deceptive in their marketing. I was never really concerned about the ingredients, and I’m still not, but they knew that there were people who wouldn’t want to buy it because it’s petrolatum-based and contains parabens and lanolin. Based on the texture, I assumed it contained petrolatum, but just looking at the ingredient list on the tube one would have no reason to assume the list were incomplete – in which case the primary ingredient appears to be shea butter.
On the other hand, I still do think it’s a good product. I see a lot of people saying it’s basically scented Vaseline, but Vaseline has never felt very moisturizing on my lips and this lip balm does, so for me I think it’s worth the money. I wish the company had been upfront about the ingredients to begin with, but I’m glad the situation’s been corrected.
Whatever their reasoning was, I really don’t appreciate the fact that I’ve been using a product containing parabens without realizing it. I chew my lips so I’m sure I’ve ingested plenty of their mint balm. I read labels and would have put the product right back on the shelf had I known. I realize most companies and people think these preservatives are safe and the alternative to not using them is worse, but that’s baloney. Many companies have somehow managed to eliminate parabens and I see no reason why JB wouldn’t do the same since they bill several of their products as paraben-free.As for the petrolatum, I probably should have checked the label again because I knew it was in there. Oils simply can’t give a lip balm the consistency the JB balms have.
@tg While many companies have managed to omit parabens, such as petrolatum, it is reflected in the price (more expensive), which is why this is so insulting (at least to me). I don’t have allergies or sensitivities, but I really make an effort to avoid parabens where possible, and am willing to incur the extra cost. I feel they didn’t think people would pay so much for a product with such a high petrolatum content, so they chose to omit it.
Do you have a specific allergy to parabens? There is absolutely no published scientific evidence anywhere that states that parabens are “bad for you”. It is a complete scare tactic and much more ‘baloney’ than anything else. Companies that omit it from their products do so, so that consumers will buy them. It’s all about marketing and they aren’t doing it for your personal benefit whatsoever. Parabens are some of the safest and most tested type of preservatives in the world, and that is a fact.
Not buying it. I won’t be repurchasing.
I never understood they hype. It felt like minty Vaseline 2 me. Did absolutely nada 4 my dry, chapped lips. 8-/
I never understood the hype either. It actually made my dry lips worse. I thought I was alone. :-/
Your mileage will vary in beauty! For example, some people swear by Burt’s Bees – dries my lips out so badly!
The weird thing is that mine has a full ingredient list on the back and I purchased mine back in December…
never used this and not interested( firstly, i doubt they’re available here and if they would, they be too expensive for what they are, plus, mint and lemon flavors are irritating to the skin).
but, please, don’t say you didn’t have enough space, lipsticks have even less space and always have all ingredients sticked on them(those i;ve used). BS! I hate that.
on another note, i don’t get everybody’s obsession with parabens. the whole ‘no parabens’ thing is just a scare tactic for some companies to make money even if their products aren’t good. i don’t get the petrolaum is dangerous thing either but i don’t like it either cause a)gross taste, b) doesn’t actually moisturize and c)won’t let the skin breathe.
@artemis I can only speak for myself, but I do find the overall textue to be much improved since I stopped using products with them on my face on a regular basis. As for lip products, it’s less of an issue, but the since many cosmetic companies use parabens because they are less expensive, I feel it should reflect in the price. This just seemed like a ploy to justify the higher price.
if they are*, they would* be
I think her response is great. Things happen, companies make mistakes… to me, it’s all about how you handle the situation and respond to feedback. I’ve contacted enough brands to know that even getting a non-automated response can be rare. But what’s more, her response strikes me as totally trustworthy – they took accountability, gave an explanation (not excuse), and are making the necessary changes.
It’s kind of strange though because I could’ve sworn I saw the full ingredients list before I bought one of these like seven months ago (though honestly I don’t remember where). Who knows…
I’m not sure I buy the apology. I mean, I don’t doubt that they’re sorry that they’re customers are upset as there’s a direct correlation between the health of a company and the happiness of its patrons. But their rationale for their goof is pure BS. Yes, the tube is small. Maybe too small to include a full list of ingredients without using printed insert attached to the tube by shrink wrap of something. But it’s NOT too small to list the two ingredients (lanolin and patrolatum) that make up over 50% of the formula!
I really don’t get their “we didn’t mean to mislead anyone” lines. I had been recommending JB lip balm to a couple vegan friends of mine because I didn’t see any animal ingredients listed on the packaging or website. One friend told me she’d heard it contained beeswax, so I emailed JB and they wrote back that Yes, their lip balms contain beeswax. The rep then said the only way they had to send me the full ingredient list was if I gave them a fax number, which I didn’t have. (Seriously, they could email me a lame response but couldn’t email me the full ingredient list?)
I really don’t get their “we didn’t mean to mislead anyone” lines. I had been recommending JB lip balm to a couple vegan friends of mine because I didn’t see any animal ingredients listed on the packaging or website. One friend told me she’d heard it contained beeswax, so I emailed JB and they wrote back that Yes, their lip balms contain beeswax. The rep then said the only way they had to send me the full ingredient list was if I gave them a fax number, which I didn’t have. (Seriously, they could email me a lame response but couldn’t email me the full ingredient list?)
This was OVER A YEAR AGO. Why didn’t they address this before just now?
@RabbitLuvr Re: jumping through hoops for ingredient lists – SO many brands do this. It took 4 weeks to get an email response back from one brand. I can’t remember which brands specifically, but all major ones, and I’ve been told the most asinine things – “Call this # and they’ll tell you over the phone.” Really? You’re going to make me and a poor rep try to hash out all those hard-to-pronounce chemicals? And I’m going to manage to write it all down? C’mon. It’s a bad practice but it exists across brands.
@Christine (Temptalia) I always found it really puzzling why brands do that. I’m from Europe and from what I know (and have witnessed) it’s illegal to not have a full list of ingredients written on the packaging. I feel really uncomfortable buying a product where the company don’t want to disclose ingredients because it automatically leads me to believe that they either contain harmful ingredients, or no active ingredients that actually work (I have a minor in chemistry, so I can “read” the ingredients list quite well).
I’m not sure if I’m the only one, but a post from you about what brands openly disclose such information and what brands don’t would be super helpful, maybe it’d help raise awareness and help give those companies a bit of a sign that customers *do* (hopefully??) care!
Hi Liz,
I’ve never had a brand not do so – they just make you jump through hoops on the occasions that I have tried, which are few! If a brand has it on their website, they make it easily accessible, and if they don’t, you’ll probably be looking at an email to customer service and waiting for some period of time for a list!
@Christine (Temptalia) I know it happens, but it’s really annoying. I honestly don’t think it *should* happen. People want to know what they’re putting on their body (especially on or near the mouth), and I’m really bothered when brands try to hide their ingredients. If companies are so confident in their product, they wouldn’t be hiding anything.
I’m not sure I buy the apology. I mean, I don’t doubt that they’re genuinely sorry that their customers are upset as there’s a direct correlation between the health of a company and the happiness of its patrons. But their rationale for their goof is pure BS. Yes, the tube is small. Maybe too small to include a full list of ingredients without using printed insert attached to the tube by shrink wrap of something. But it’s NOT too small to list the two ingredients (lanolin and patrolatum) that make up over 50% of the formula! If they had just left off a few ingredients that made up maybe <2% of the product, I’d have an easier time believing their claim that the exclusion of such ingredients from their labeling and product information was an oversight on their part. But not mentioning petrolatum as an ingredient when, at 40% of the formula, there’s likely more of that in there than there is of all of the ingredients they did want to list combined? I don’t know how to believe that that omission wasn’t made with the willful intent to mislead.
Honestly, I think a lot of people are overreacting here, with the possible exception of vegans.
I don’t believe anyone else has a right to be upset on their behalf, though. So for non-vegans, what’s so upsetting about this? It’s not like they were hiding the fact that they put napalm in their product. Lanolin has been used for hundreds of years in moisturizing beauty products. Guess what? It’s probably in your soap, and it probably isn’t listed.
Jack Black makes an excellent product. I have extremely dry and cracked lips and this product leaves them feeling repaired after I apply it.
Also, I think the apology is a classy and unexpected response. A company is not typically so open, honest or personal in its customer service. They offered to personally apologize to each and every one of you. What more were you hoping for? Gift baskets and diamonds?
Jack Black is not some cheating husband or corrupt political representative, although I think some people are expressing that level of betrayal.
Keep it reasonable – they’ve gone out of their way to make it right.
@etaoin The reply was just lame…who would buy their excuses about not having much space for the list of ingredients on the tube? What about publishing the the actual list on the internet, rather than its “eco-friendly” fake counterpart? Also, as other girls mentioned here, a lipbalm made out of petrolatum simply isn’t worth 7-8 dollars. Apart from that, I’m not overly concerned by the ingredients, it’s just that I want to be a critical consumer rather than someone who is fooled by companies and marketing. I don’t get the idea of showing “loyalty” to brand or a product. A brand is not my best friend, I don’t feel compelled to “forgive” them. If it turns out that a brand intentionally deceives his buyers I won’t close an eye on that based on an insincere apology (I repeat myself, how could they say that they didn’t want to deceive anybody? seriously?), I will simply look for better alternatives in the market. It is my right to know what I’m using on my skin, not a generous concession from companies. (At least I’m happy that here in Europe it is illegal not to provide a full list of ingredients)
@etaoin Because people want to know what they’re putting right near their mouth before they do it. What if they have an allergy or are sensitive to the ingredients that aren’t listed? I’d certainly like to know about potential irritants and allergic reactions considering my lips often develop an extremely painful rash for days if something triggers a reaction in them.
@etaoin Because I have a sensitivity to lanolin. I can’t wear wool or cashmere (boo hoo, tiny violins etc.) and I make a point of looking for it in lip products in an attempt to avoid the itchy rash that comes after exposure. Lanolin is such a common allergen, I’m really surprised they didn’t list it. If lip balm contained rag weed pollen, cat dander or peanuts, people would want to know.
I will certainly be checking those ingredients in hopes of finding what gave me such a terrible rash.
Jack Black is FULL of artificial ingredients! If you want great, natural lip balm then try Buddha Balm or something like it. Buddha Balm is not only natural, but its flavorful and fun. Thanks for the post.
Honestly..its just lipbalm, I bought the stuff for my boyfriends and it made his lips really soft. Didnt really care about the ingredients. I’m pretty sure there are other lipbalms we’ve all used that have some or all the ingredients in them and probably didn’t even give a second thought about it.
Some people with serious allergies (like myself) need a full list of ingredients. If I had bought the Jack Black lipbalm with the old packaging, my lips would have swollen up and I would probably ended up in the emergency room. So before you say “it’s just lipbalm”, know that for some people, it can be very serious. And having some ingredients on there while others were excluded is misleading those with allergies into thinking a product is “safe” for them.
I read the ingredients on everything I buy, always. It’s just second nature, force of habit, just like putting on my seat belt when I get in a car. Some of us care deeply about what we spend our money on, and I don’t want any of my dollars going towards animal usury.
I appreciate Ms. Dalton’s response. It takes some cojones to admit you’re wrong. I don’t think I can ask for much more than an apology, acceptance of responsibility and a willingness to learn from their mistakes. Thanks for posting this, Christine.
I appreciate the response and the apology — you can’t say that they weren’t listening and didn’t react. I do find the excuse a little hard to believe, though. No room? Other companies have worked around that. Find a way to do it. And that’s no excuse for it not being listed online to begin with.
I am getting upset with JackBlack. Thanks for the useless apology letter =) Oh wait, it WOULD be good, except for the fact that I CONTACTED you via the email provided and got absolutely no response. Its been 5 working days now.
So the whole “I hope you will share this with your readers and let them know that we would greatly appreciate the opportunity to personally apologize to anyone who is unhappy with our company. Please let them know, they can email their contact information to info@getjackblack.com and we would be happy to talk with them directlly” statement is not living up to its written promises. As someone with sensitivities, I take such things seriously. I expected more from jack Black. ANYTHING would be better than plain ignoring your loyal (ex-loyal) costumers.
Thanks, Christine, for all of your amazing work!