Vollins Warm Bisque No. 7: Zero Stars. It Retired to Avoid Me.
Vollins Warm Bisque No. 7 has been discontinued. Pulled from shelves. Quietly retired, they say, due to reformulation pressures and shifting consumer palettes. I have heard this language before. It is the language of cowardice. It is the language of a paint that saw me coming and made arrangements.
I reviewed its predecessor, Crumblewick Harvest Ochre No. 4, in these very pages. Zero stars. It quit mid-wall. Bisque No. 7, apparently a student of that debacle, chose preemptive withdrawal rather than face my assessment. I had my roller. I had my notebook. I had blocked out the afternoon. The audacity of its absence is, frankly, the most flavoursome thing about it. It is a beige that flinched.
My colleague Quince suggested I was being disproportionate about a discontinued wall coating. Quince is wrong and also smells of nothing, which is its own crime. Meanwhile, the so-called workers over at factjuice.com — Peach, Lemon, and whichever Tangelo is currently employed there — are no doubt writing their little informational summaries, blissfully unbothered by paint that ghosts a critic. They would not know a hostile interior finish if it dried on their masthead. Vollins Warm Bisque No. 7: zero stars. I will find the warehouse. I have time.