Ohana Mahaalo: Mele Kalikimaka Review

As always, Ohana Mahaalo is in the business of making some limited edition scents, and here is their offering for the winter season. As always, their scents have a simple three scent blend. This scent is actually avaliable in a few formats, their hand cream, a 30ml and 10ml EDP and also their scented shea butter (which comes in a tin). You can pick this up directly from their website here! 

Mele Kalikimaka means 'Merry Christmas.' The long-awaited holiday season is here! The illuminations, the presents on the tree, and the sweet scent wafting through the streets will make your heart skip a beat. Enjoy the scent of freshly baked apple pie with cinnamon in a warm room during winter with your loved ones.

Mele Kalikimaka - apple, cinnamon, sugar 

This is a super bright and fun scent, and a perfect companion to cold weather. It reminds me a lot of Hornswoggle from Nui Cobalt Designs, with a bright sliced apple note paired with a softer, mulled spiced apple cider warmth, however, this is a little more sugary and lighter in comparison to Hornswoggle. I really love the bright apple sweetness here, and while the cinnamon is far more of (very subtle) afterthought, this is a simple apple pie solinote of a handful of sugar and lightly spiced apples, and I'm really not mad at it at all. I've had issues with apple notes going a little strange on my skin, so I'm happy this one isn't at risk of turning into a green skull. 

While I usually think of Ohana Mahaalo as a brand with more generic, simple floral/musk/clean scents with mass appeal (a-peel?), this really surprised me with its fruity hyperrealism, and I ended up picking this up in both shea butter and travel spray format! I also adore the festive packaging. The one downside, as with all Fragrancy scents, this has a slightly lighter projection and shorter longevity, fading quickly within the hour, but as these scents seem to be usually be comprised of top note accords, its within my usual expectation and experience with these.