 Hey it's Alex from AlexFrigus.com and today I have another mouth taping product review. Now if you've been following my videos for the last few weeks you would have seen I've already done a few mouth taping product reviews. This is I believe the third and I do have some more coming up so be sure to subscribe to check them out. What I've been doing is testing each of these products to see how well they perform as a mouth taping strip which in turn allows you to restrict mouth breathing and instead breathe through the nose at night. Now I won't get into the health benefits of this because it is rather extensive and that's not what this video is about. Instead I want to see how this particular product, a Band-Aid paper tape that I'm using today, how well it works, how well it sticks, the cost and other things you should know if you are going to use this as a mouth taping product. What I'm doing is testing these products over five key categories and for each category I'm going to give my thoughts and a knee and score. Once I've tested all these products, five, six, seven products, what I'm going to do is a big comparison video where I line them all up and I do one big overview so be sure to subscribe for that as well. Now this product is a Band-Aid paper tape from Johnson & Johnson. Now this isn't designed or marketed as a mouth taping product. It's not like the SomniFix or the Maya Tape which are purposely created for mouth taping. This was actually the first product I used when I got into mouth taping about five years ago, maybe six years ago. Since then I've obviously branched out and tested a lot of these other products. But I wanted to include this in my review series because like I said it does work rather well and it's quite cheap. Now real quick, before I start sharing my feedback yet, like I said this isn't a specific mouth taping product. It's just a roll of tape. As you can see here it's a tape. What I do when using this as a mouth strip is I simply rip or cut a couple inches, usually about two or three inches and then stick that on my mouth like so. So this is what I am testing, this two or three inch strip of paper tape. So now that we know that, let's see how the paper tape stacks up in my five round review. So first up we look at stickability. How well does it stick? Does it stay on all night? Is it too sticky? So I've given the Band-Aid paper tape a score of three out of five. Now my requirements for a score of three read that the product stays on all night but if you remove it once it's not very good for the rest of the night. And that's true, that's bang on true for this. Pretty much in a nutshell you get one shot. So if I just take off a little bit here, rip it off, you put it on at the start of the night. If for some reason you have to take it off, whether it's a drink or to talk or you just need a breath of air through your mouth, then if you put it back on it will still stick. But it's not as sticky. Every time you apply it and take it off it's losing a lot of that stickability as I call it. Now you compare this to a product like Somnifex or even the Maya tape and stuff like that then those things are very, very sticky. So this doesn't have the same level of stickiness in there. You can't really fault it because it's not designed to stay on the mouth all night. Most nights it does stay on all night if I haven't removed it. There have been a few times when I've woken up and it's coming off or I feel it peeling off or it has come off completely. Typically that's a result of a couple of things. One it gets wet and that could be because I was drooling and I didn't get a good seal and my mouth was slightly open like a little bit of draw on there. It's kind of disgusting but hey it happens. Secondly it's a result of me talking or at least trying to talk. You know maybe I don't know I get up and I say something and I find that speaking creates a bit of moisture and once you get a bit of moisture on this it just effectively becomes paper. Well certainly I've just put it on real bad and you know it's been on my moustache or on my beard and it just doesn't get a good stick. But most nights it does stay on all night and as for using this multiple nights in a row yeah it's just not going to happen. It's at most a one night application. Like I said some nights I do get up and I have to take a drink of water. I'll take it off and I'll just put on another fresh strip that I rip off of course. Alright next up we look at safety. How safe is this product? First things first it is a hypoallergenic non-irritating tape and if you've watched my previous videos I do react to regular band-aids and tape products. I get a bit of a rash. I don't get that with this tape and I've been using this for a long time on and off. So that's good thing. However it's not really good as a mouth taping product in fact I'm only going to give it a 2 out of 5 and there's a couple reasons why it's not very good. The first thing is it's quite hard to remove. As I mentioned many times this isn't designed as a mouth taping strip. It is simply a piece of tape which means the whole face of the tape is sticky. Right to the corners, right to the edge. If you put it on your mouth and you get a good seal there's no tab that sticks out like say on a somnifex and there's no way to quickly release it that other products have. You know you can drive your tongue into it or just open your mouth real fast and it will pop open. That doesn't happen with this which can mean that sometimes you wake up in a panic or I don't know something's going on or you're just freaking out and you need to rip it off and it can be very tricky. In fact I have woken up some nights you know my boy's been crying and I want to go out and comfort him and I'm struggling to get this tape off. I find that once you put it on straight away you can quickly remove it but after a few hours of sleeping with it it seems to get quite a good seal going on and because there's no little lip on the end you're literally trying to peel it off like trying to find a corner to peel. Now sometimes I'll find a corner and I'll pull it and I'll actually rip the tape in half so you still have half of it on or you still have a seal over your mouth and that's even more frustrating and then you start panicking a little bit. So yeah it's really not good for that in that sense. Secondly it doesn't allow any mouth breathing like most of these tapes have a little bit of a safety vent or a way that you can still mouth breathe if you really have to such as you know you're new to mouth breathing or I don't know you're congested or something like that. Once this is on especially if you're using a big strip there's no way that you can mouth breathe. So that is another big disadvantage because that is a concern especially if there's a risk of vomiting or choking or something like that you don't want a full seal on your mouth. So another big disadvantage and thirdly I have heard of someone who was wearing this and they woke up and it was actually in their mouth. How they happen I'm not too sure but I have heard of that scenario a couple times actually on online so like I said it's not the safest product. I should mention though that you can get around all these things by using a smaller piece of tape say a one inch strip and what you do here is you just put it on the middle like so. This allows you to talk a little bit. This allows you to talk a little bit mouth breathe out of the sides and it's a lot easier to pull off because you have a bit of leverage opening your mouth there and of course you can pull it from the side. So that's how you could drastically improve the safety rating out of this paper tape however the downside I found with that is like I said earlier if you get a bit of moisture on here the stickiness just evaporates pretty much so if I have done this before where you wear it just like so but I find just a bit of breath or you get a bit of drooling or if you talk a few times and you get some moisture on it it soon just peels off and then you lose the whole effectiveness of you using your mouth tape. So that's why I'm giving it a 2 out of 5 for this round. Next up we have practicality. How well does it work? Now it actually works surprisingly well and it's the big reason why I keep using this because I know it does work. Sure it's got all those downsides I've just mentioned above you know you may have to get a fresh strip at night time there are the safety concerns but for stopping your mouth breathing and having you breathe through the nose it does it does work really really good the bigger the strip the bigger the coverage area the better the performance obviously if you go down small like I just mentioned you lose a bit of the performance gains but even with a small strip you do you do still get a reasonably good seal so that's a good way to start out but it's not necessarily perfect I because it can come off and because it's not quite thick enough like ideally it would probably be a little bit thicker sometimes if you apply it not in the best way you might wake up and you realize it slipped a little bit so for those reasons I'm giving it a 4 out of 5 for practicality. Alright next up we look at price now I paid $9 New Zealand for this 9.1 meter roll of tape this is just from my supermarket you can get it from most grocery stores pharmacies you know just any sort of place you don't need to get this online no I'm sure you can find it cheaper online I converted the price into US dollars and it works out to be $6.30 again if you're in the States chances are you'll get it even cheaper than that and 9.1 meters works out to be 30 feet so if you're using two and a half inch strips which is roughly what I'm using you'll get a hundred and forty strips out of this hundred and forty nights if you only use one a night if you are only using one a night based on those sums one night strip works out to be four and a half cents which is like 10 to 20 times cheaper than some of the other products I've reviewed it is very very cheap and that is probably the biggest thing going for this as a mouth taping product of course it's not a specialized mouth taping product and I've explained that many times and they are downsides to that but it does do a pretty good job and that's why it makes it such good value I mean a couple dollars for half a year it's you know you're not having to fork out 30 40 dollars for a month's worth of products it's actually quite a good way to get into the mouth taping space though again remember those safety issues I mentioned before it's not designed as a mouth taping product now there's no chance for multiple use so you can't really stretch that this product out even further but with four cents four and a half cents a night you don't really have to but anyway given that the price is so low I give this a full five out of five for the value round last but not least we look at everything else so first up let's look at appearance so it's not pretty we're in this but it doesn't look as ridiculous as some other products I've tested the thing is I personally rip the tape by hand so you get a rather rough looking piece of tape now if someone sees that it's not necessarily ridiculous but kind of strange like hey what's that random piece of tape doing on your mouth at least if it's a perfectly cut like nicely designed strip it's it's more of a okay that's obviously meant to be there why is it there kind of thought but with something like this it's just a random piece of paper tape that's been ripped roughly around the edge and it's almost like how did that end up on your mouth let me show you see what I mean it's a bit of an odd one there but my wife is kind of used to it what she doesn't like though is these random bits of tape ending up on the pillow or in the sheets or on the back of the book because sometimes it does come off like I said or you take it off during the night and you stick it somewhere it'll catch on something else and it kind of blends in if you've got white sheets or a white pillow so the good thing is though on the mess front there isn't that much mess I mean you you have obviously the packaging when you get it but then you just carry around this tape this roll of tape and each night you just strip off another one and the build-off of mess isn't like say the somni-fix where you have layers upon layers and plastic and all that so the mess isn't too bad ease of application is very good it's simple to put on take a bit right where you go though it can be a bit tricky getting it a good seal but it's not it's not as hard to say the myotate which is very sticky and very hard to apply can you talk with it it depends if you do the full you know two and a half strip like I have here let me show you so if you couldn't understand that I said it is rather hard to talk now if I just go with a smaller strip which is a lot safer but you lose some of the practicality here and I've just pulled that off and I pulled out of here facial here so let me show you how it is talking with this it's a lot easier to talk like this but you do lose the seal on the side and as for travel yeah I mean hey you just chuck one of these in your bag strip off a little bit rip off a little bit and away you go and at this price point you know five six dollars for a roll you can just buy say five of these and leave one in your travel bag leave one in your I don't know your spare room in case you're sleeping in there one night whatever like you can afford it it's so much so much easier so overall for the other everything else round I'm gonna give it a three out of five now that brings the total score out to 18 out of 25 which is rather decent given that this product isn't designed and marketed as a mouth strip product the main plus side is the simplicity and the value the downside though is that safety if you are new to mouth breathing or you're very conscious about waking up and gasping for it then you may want to use something like the mild tape or some effects that are designed you know with safety features built in the worst thing I guess with this is waking up in the middle of the night and you want to talk like like I said with my boys screaming from a nightmare or you freak out some someone's outside or something like that and you want to get it off in a hurry there are times when I've really struggled and you can't breathe you can't talk we can breathe through your nose but you can't breathe through the mouth you can't talk and you're struggling to get it off and then you manage to find a corner you pull it and it rips like a tiny bit off and you're straight it yeah that's not great I mean in fact that's one of the biggest downsides I have with this but if you're willing to put up with that or at least if you're happy making a smaller strip so you've got edges so you can pull it off and still talk and still breathe then it's actually quite a neat product the only downside is of course with the smaller strip it doesn't work as well but hey for someone starting out especially on a budget this is probably one of the best products you can use now I'm still got some other products to test so maybe my conclusion there will change after I've tested these other products be sure to subscribe and I will be testing these other products and revealing my feedback and my scores here on this channel and then once I have tested all five six products on the market I will be sitting down and doing a big comparison and comparing each product and each category and hopefully that will give you the information you need to make informed decision and buy the product that best suits your objectives and budget anyway if you have enjoyed this video be sure to give me a thumbs up leave any questions or comments below and yeah be sure to subscribe because I will have more of these videos coming out alright guys I'll see you soon