The Doc Johnson Burning Passion set gives you three brightly colored “low temperature paraffin candles” designed to safely drip onto your lover’s bare skin. The three candles are bright red, purple, and pink, and they smell a bit like cherry Chapstick; mostly waxy and just a little bit sweet. The aroma is very subtle and won’t make your bedroom smell like a candle shop at the mall.

The package warns that this product is “not for the timid, but for the adventurous lover”, or you can burn these candles “regularly for a sensual ambiance”. The seven inch tapers are about ¾ inch in diameter and should fit well into a standard-sized candle stick holder if you choose to burn them “regularly”.

If you are looking to use these candles in their intended manor to “drip onto cool flesh,” be warned that the wax that drips off of these candles is HOT. Not hot enough to leave behind burns - they do seem to be a safe enough product when used responsibly - but these candles are hot enough to have a real sting. Personally, I enjoy the sting of a good spanking, of the flogger and the riding crop, even a belt, but I hated the burning sensation of these candles.

When I received the package, I immediately set out to test the wax. I ripped open the package, trimmed the wick on the red candle and lit up. A few moments later the wax was ready to go. I dripped some on my bare thigh. Ouch! Ok, maybe I was too close. I needed to move the candle further away from my skin. I lifted the candle higher and dripped again. Ouch! Ok, higher. Yow! Ok, that’s as far as I can get it from my own thigh. No ouch this time, but only because I’m hitting the couch and the floor with the wax instead of my leg.

So, I gathered up all the candles in my house. Sadly, for the sake of this review, all the candles in my house amounted to only three kinds, some tea lights, a few scented candles from the dollar store and a lone pumpkin candle left over from last Halloween. After carefully poking, prodding and dripping the melting wax in all three candles, I concluded that only the tea light produced a (marginally) higher temperature wax than the passion candles. The scented candles in particular produced a wax so warm and soft, I was tempted to pour it all over my body.

The results of this very (un)official survey have lead me to believe that the burning passion candles are on the HOT side of safe wax play. If hot is what you are looking for you won’t be disappointed. If you want something more on the mild side, keep looking.

Have you ever stuck your finger in melted candle wax just for the pleasure of peeling the cooled wax off your skin? I used to do this all the time. My cousins and I were always being scolded for dripping candle wax on Grandma’s nice linen tablecloth. And while Grandma’s candles where almost certainly not specifically designed for dripping on a lover, I don’t remember this as a painful pastime. So, I was expecting these Doc Johnson “low temperature paraffin candles” to be a pleasantly warm experience. They were not.

When I finally worked up the courage to let my lover drip the wax on me, I was hoping to be pleasantly surprised by the new experience. It’s happened before that I thought I would hate something and ended up loving it, but not this time. It felt to me a lot like the sensation of being spattered with hot cooking grease, which I just couldn’t channel into something sexy. Maybe next time.