Last night I tried my Kinoki Foot Pads for the first time. After a night of significant drinking, I decided their first test would be to draw my hangover out of my body while I slept so I would awake feeling refreshed. Daniel tried a pair too. An hour before bed we washed our feet in the bathtub and even ran a pumice stone on our soles to try and open up a path for toxins.
You open the pad, apply it to this big adhesive sheet and then stick the whole thing on the bottoms of your feet. We decided to put socks on over the pads so they wouldn't come off and that ended up being a good decision because they kind of leak. I immediately felt something. I'll grant you that I was drunk, but there was a tingling sensation. So I was gaining confidence that maybe they didn't do nothing. In the morning, my socks were a little bit brown from the Kinoki juice that leaked out. I wouldn't call it a confirmation, but I didn't feel as bad as I thought I would. I should have had a regular sized hangover, but it was less. So much so that I went to the grocery store and cooked us a really big breakfast of pancetta and fontina cheese omlette croissant sandwiches. You don't make up recipes that unless you've been revitalized in mind and body.
I have to say, though, that the biggest testimony to their effectiveness is that Daniel got up at 10:30 in the morning. A mere 8 hours after we had gone to bed. This is, like, at least 4 hours earlier than usual. I think they might work. The test will be to see if they get lighter and lighter as I use them. You can only use them every other night, so it will take me a while to get through the 5 remaining pairs of pads. But I'm hopeful.
Probably the most disturbing thing about these pads is their smell. They are brown and liquidy and leaking and make your feet tingle. But then you take them off in the morning and there is the overwhelming smell of barbeque sauce. The fact that they look like barbeque sauce only stands to reinforce this olfactory conclusion. I threw my pads away but I am curious to compare the ingredient list against that of some A-1 and see how much they have in common. In the meantime, though, like I sometimes do, I decided to lend my advertising genius to Kinoki for free and put together this brand new marketing graphic for them.
Stand by for my final verdict, but I'm seriously undecided at the moment. Peace.