Escape Monthy May 2014 Unboxing

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I've gotten a ton of subscription boxes the last couple of weeks and one of them was Escape Monthly. They bill themselves as a "Vacation in a Box." They choose a destination every month and send you products  associated with that location. I'm all about travel, so this sounds like a no brainer for me. It is kind of pricey though. It costs $49.95 per month and they don't seem to have a deal on their site for a discount if you subscribe  to multiple months. I hadn't heard of it until I saw it on Living Social, where I bought a 3-month subscription for $97 -- making each of my boxes $32.33. Still fairly expensive, so it better be good! The good news is that even if you don't find it on Living Social, you can get $10 off every month for the life of your subscription if you use the code YOURESCAPE at www.escapemonthly.com. Another cool thing is that every month they choose one subscriber to win a trip to the current month's destination.

Here's a first look of the box when it arrived:

This month's destination is California. I'm pretty partial to international destinations, so I'm a bit disappointed.

And here's what was inside. First up is food. Who doesn't love food? We start off with IPS All Natural Egg White Chips. I've gotten these before in a Conscious Box. They're billed as chips with protein. They're decent. I wouldn't go out and buy these on my own, but I did break into them pretty quickly and polish off the whole bag (it's a small bag.) They retail for $1.99.

  

Next up is a tiny little box that contains 2 Nicobella Organics truffles. As soon as he saw what it was, my boyfriend wanted to steal them. I was nice and I shared. These were delicious! I wish there were more than just two in this tiny box. They come in unique flavors like Ginger Green Tea, Pumpkin Chai and Lime Basil. For truffles, these are expensive. A 6-piece box goes for $13.50 on www.nicobellaorganics.com.That means my two truffles have a value of $4.50.

And we have yet another food item in the box and it's San Franola Cinnamon Almond Granola. I'm not a huge granola fan because I usually think it contains more calories than it's worth. If I'm going to splurge on the calories, I'd rather have ice cream or chocolate. Anyone that tries to tell you granola is a health food is either flat out lying or they haven't looked at the nutritional information ever. This granola actually looks a bit better than most when it comes to ingredients -- among other typical granola ingredients, it contains flaxseed and it's sweetened with stevia. The thing I don't like is that the one I got has a LOT of crumbs -- there are a few granola chunks, a bunch of almonds and then about half the bag is small crumbs. They're so tiny that you can't really eat this alone -- you have to put it on/in something like yogurt or ice cream. I dunno -- maybe it will be delicious and I won't mind the crumbs. The retail value of this single serving box is $2.00.

And the final food item in the box is Caliwater Cactus Water -- water from the Prickly Pear cactus. I like the idea of this because it's low in calories. The 11 ounce bottle only has 32 calories and it's sweetened with organic stevia.  I like the taste of it to -- it's crisp and refreshing. I didn't find myself wanting to chug it down like I do with iced tea -- I seem to like it in moderation. This single serve bottle retails for $3.50 -- though  you can get it a bit cheaper than that on Amazon.

  

Now for the non-food items in the box. The heaviest thing in the box is the Moon California Wine Country Travel Guide. This is pretty useless to me. I get that they include a travel guide in each box  and that's cute, but I will never use this guide. And even worse, this edition was published in 2011. This book is not even up to date. Bummer. Escape Monthly lists a retail value of $17.99 even though the price on the back of the book is $21.99.

 

Next comes the beauty items in the box! First up, Juice Beauty Green Apple Age Defy Hand Cream. Yay! I think it's kind of funny that it claims to reduce fine lines and wrinkles -- but it's not a face cream, it's a hand cream. Are they trying to make us worry about wrinkles on our hands now? Don't we have enough to worry about on our faces already? But I am pretty happy about this hand cream. I've heard good things and have wanted to try it. This 2 FL OZ rube retails for $12.00.

 

Next is the Hugo Naturals Vanilla & Sweet Orange soap, and it smells SO good! I just keep picking it up to smell it. It has a retail value of $4.00.

Next is a premium sea sponge.  I'm not so sure about this. I generally use a washcloth. I've used loofahs before and I don't mind those -- but I still favor a washcloth. The thing about this sponge is that I don't like the feel of it dry. It feels like the foam inside of a couch cushion. Yuck. I'm sure it feels much better wet. Anyway, it has a retail value of $8.

 And the last thing in the box is listed as a bonus. It's a California Poppy kit. It's apparently everything you need to plant a field of poppies. It claims to have over 30,000 seeds in the bag and looking at it, I guess that could be true. It's a shame I live in a condo or I could actually plant these. The retail value is $7.

Alright, so what did I think of this box overall? I actually like most of what's in here. Food is always good -- and there is a lot of it in here. The hand cream and soap are great. I probably won't use the sponge and definitely won't use the guide book. I appreciate the poppies though I'm not sure what I'll do with them. But here's the problem -- the total value of this box comes to $60.98. Of that, $17.99 is for a guide book I won't use, $8 is for an overpriced sponge that I won't use, and $7 is for poppies that I have nowhere to plant. If you subtract out the guide book and the sponge, the value drops to $34.99 and if you subtract out the poppies, it drops to $27.99. There are a lot of inexpensive items in this box because they have so many food items -- and they're all single servings. No full size food items. Aside from the useless guide book, the most valuable item in this box is the hand cream. For people that paid the full $49.95 for this box, it was definitely not worth it. The $32.33 that I paid for it wasn't worth it either.

In the booklet that describes the items in the box, they give you a preview of next month by telling you what the destination will be, and next month  will be Las Vegas. Well that's disappointing. Not only are we still in the U.S., it's still the western U.S. That means the destinations two months in a row are in driving distance to one another. How lame. Where's my Italy box, or Spain, or Fiji? Give me something exotic -- not Las Vegas. Meh!

Well, despite the location next month, I hope they do better with the items in the box and make it more worthwhile.