Morning Star Pine 200 sticks

This is my favorite brand of incense. I am often leery of buying incense online as I worry it may become damaged or damp in shipping but this arrived in perfect condition. The sticks were not cracked or broken and the packaging was dry and free of moisture. The scent is the same pleasant tree like smell that I remember, not over powering and because these sticks contain no wooden core it is the pure scent without the burnt smell you sometimes get when the sticks are thicker than the incense coating on other brands. This one doesn't make me sneeze or leave a bitter burnt after smell.

This brand of incense is very good. I am sure there are quite a few other quality brands but this simply fits my needs. Nippon Kodo Morning Star brand are fairly inexpensive for the amount of incense sticks you get, 200 per box. I have multiple scents, Sandalwood, Cedar & of course Pine and I love them all. Pine is my favorite as it is not overly powerful and is more of a softer scent in comparison to the others. The smell is powerful but not over bearing and the burn time is equal to other brands I have burned maybe even slightly better. I may be partial to this scent simply because this is what we burn in my Aikido dojo.

The sticks are the usual Japanese style, you stick then in a bowl of ash. They do not smoke up the room but they do provide the scent, with just a little smoke.

Up to this point, I had been using "cored stick" incense that uses bamboo sticks to adhere the incense (i.e. the HEM brand) and I now wanted to try a solid stick incense from Japan. First off I was taken back the length of the sticks - they are half the size of the cored incense (description did give length but it didn't register at the time) and about half the diameter (as there is no bamboo stick) - see the picture. The description says they burn for 30 min - I would say more like 15 min. And to really notice the scent I had to burn at least three sticks at the same time. Now with incense, you do have to take many flavors with an "open mind" and give them several attempts before you can make some connection (however minor) to the stated flavor. Although I enjoy the scent - myself or anyone I asked never made any connection to "pine". What I like about this incense is it does not have that smokey smell that many incenses get from the burning bamboo - it is a gentle scent that is very pleasing and very relaxing (as it does not distract you but helps create a pleasing background that gently fades in and out). However, if you want something stronger with more pine-flavor than go with the HEM pine - there are some true elements of pine - but I should caution you IMHO I have not found that truly pine-flavor yet.

Exactly what I expected

I have previously enjoyed the scent of this company's sandalwood incense, so I figured that I'd be safe trying out a different scent. Who could screw up the smell of pine, right? As soon as I got them, I opened up the box and caught a somewhat unpleasant odor. A gas station air freshener smells more like pine than these do. Although I was suddenly wary, my past experience with the sandalwood incense sticks overcame my instincts. Trying to keep an optimistic attitude, I lit one. Bad idea. These things would gag a buzzard. They should be banned for violating the Eight Amendment. They smell like burning turds dipped in skunk spray and wrapped in Satan's twice-worn jock strap. Whoever came up with the recipe for these incense sticks should be sent to Guantanamo Bay. Not as an inmate. As an interrogator. We'd have no need to waterboard a high value detainee ever again. Simply plop Mohammed down in a chair, shackle him to the table, theatrically set up one of these incense sticks, and begin demanding answers. When he resists, light the stick and wait ten seconds. You'll have more intel than you'll know what to do with: Ayman al Zawahiri's current location, his sat phone number, his midget porn preferences, even what he ate for breakfast last Tuesday. But hey, the smoke's pretty. So there's that.

Low smoke and nice pine smell

Morningstar has been a staple incense for me since I was in school. I like that it's subtler, that I can burn it nearby without sneezing from heavy smoke production. Over the years, I've tried many of their scents. Maybe I just have an unrefined sense of smell, but with the exception of one, they all smell very similar to me--sweet and faintly floral. Nearly all of them smell, to me, like this company's sandalwood scent. Since I like woodsy scents and dislike floral, I thought I'd try the pine, the only scent I hadn't tried before. I was nervous it would smell basically like nearly all the others. And I'm disappointed I'm right. Scent's subjective, but I can't detect a difference among most of these... I wish a small sampler were available on Amazon--two small sticks of each scent. Now I have a box of 200 sandlewood...err...pine that to me aren't remotely reminiscent of the astringent scent of pine you get with, say, traditional Native American incense that immediately call up a liesurely hike in the deep-forest. But, again, at least Morningstar koh are light on smoke and gentle enough to burn nearby without being overwhelmed. So I'll use the rest of the box, though, I'm sad to say, I won't purchase more. There's another plus to the Morningstar. If you're searching for incense as a way to keep summer bugs at bay, the Morningstar will do this about as well as other incense that produce thick, coughy smoke plumes, though only for about 15 or 20 minutes per stick as the sticks are much smaller.

Beautiful

Buon prodotto 👍

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Wonderful and great value for money