First reaction upon opening the cap: "This smells like a cleaning product!" Indeed it did. It seems that the things used to dissolve hair and the top layer of one's skin is the same sort of thing that's so effective at peeling up grease and grime from a smooth hard surface. The geek in me wondered if it wouldn't be more effective to spray some cleaning product on a washcloth and apply that instead; the sensible part of me immediately vetoed the suggestion.
Fortunately, I seemed to have gotten a plain, no-frills tube of the stuff, so on top of the chemical stench, I didn't have to put up with odors of Fairy-Fart Pink or whatever insipid little perfume they thought could help disguise the smell of what is probably bleach and other assorted caustic chemical wonders that I'm reluctant to use except in the cases of Extreme Grime.
I put the goo on, careful to keep it well away from eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and other assorted pink bits. Then I felt like an idiot for not having a timer in the bathroom. Ah well. I went ahead and wiped it off after a conservative amount of time had passed, but before any parts of me felt anything scarier than a bit of annoyed tingling. An impressive array of small and not-so-small hairs came with it.
I'm never going to use the stuff outside of a context where I get to take a full and involved shower afterwards, because the stuff is scary. It also failed to get rid of all the stray eyebrow hairs, but it did weed their number down thoroughly enough so that subsequent applications of tweezer-related happiness made everything all good.
I am now even more impressed with the cunningness of one Lord Auditor Vorkosigan, in using depilatory cream to gain access to Nikolai Vorsoisson's stronghold.
