Hey, you sass that hoopy EdenFantasys? Be a frood who really knows where his towel is.

Even though it's essentially advertising for an adult products website, the design on the EdenFantasys beach towel doesn't give that away. The towel has a chemistry experiment in fun bright colors on a black background printed on the front, and the back is plain white. Somebody would either need to already know about EdenFantasys.com, in which case they most likely won't be bothered by it, or take the time to look it up online. So in that way it's subtle and discreet.

Looking at other beach towels online, most are listed as measuring a little larger than this one, but it's still a good sized towel at 59.5 by 29.5 inches. The towel is all cotton and really soft, but it's not very thick. When I think of beach towel, I envision plush, deep terry cloth. Maybe thinner towels are better for the beach. Perhaps sand sticks to them less or something? The "beach towels" I bought at Target a few years ago are a few inches longer, an inch wider, and at least triple the thickness of the EdenFantasys beach towel. Ultimately, size isn't what's important here. No, what matters is absorbency. I think the EdenFatasys towel dries me off just as well as the others, and it takes up considerably less space in my linen closet.

It comes packaged in a clear plastic bag. You'll want to wash this towel a couple of times before using it because of the shedding (also, don't forget to clean out your dryer's lint trap). Those tiny little black fibers were really noticeable sticking to my wet skin the first time I used it. I'm not sure how well this towel is going to hold up over time, though. After the second washing, I noticed a snag on the back and a run almost 11 inches long, which was rather disappointing.

I'm the kind of person who washes everything before I use it, and in the case of towels, this reduces or eliminates the loose lint and fabric fibers that often shed (onto the user's wet skin, typically) when a towel is new. The EdenFantasys beach towel filled up the lint trap on my dryer after its first washing. I know it was from this towel, because it's the only black towel I have, and the lint was black. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though. Hopefully, the more lint in the trap, the less to shed on the wet body.

Unfortunately, I did get quite a bit of black fibers on me the first time I dried myself off with this towel. So I washed and dried it again, and I was surprised to see just as much lint in my dryer's screen as before. But the next time I dried off with it, hardly any lint shed on me, thank goodness.

I am bummed about the run/snag on the back after only the second washing, though. It seems like a towel should hold up better than that. I can't blame my washing machine. It's a front loader and much easier on clothes than my old top load washing machine. I'll post an update on the snag and how well the towel is holding up over time when I do the follow-up to this review.

Too bad there's not a "I still can take it or leave it" option. I really wasn't sure which to select, because I was fairly ambivalent about this towel when I wrote the review due to its snagging and shedding, and I have to say that I'm still pretty ambivalent about it. I guess if I had paid money for it, instead of receiving it free to review, I wouldn't like it because I think the quality could be better.

However, I like the bold design and bright colors, which haven't faded much. The towel to this day will still sometimes shed a few fuzzies, and the snag in the back seems to grow a wee bit with every washing. It may just be my imagination, but I think the towel is also getting thinner, and it's not the most absorbent towel in the house, but at it does get stuff dry.