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Product Update: Life Underwear
Changes to the Wal-Mart Exclusive Underwear Line

There have been a lot of comments and questions sent to me lately regarding what's going on with the Life Underwear collection sold by Wal-Mart. I had not been to my local Wal-Mart for some time so I thought I would do a little underwear investigation to see what I could find out. When I went to my nearest Wal-Mart store I noticed that they have switched their Life Underwear packaging from a plastic box-style to a new plastic sleeve which has larger graphics and an exposed cutout to show the color and fabric. Probably more important in the changes to the Life Underwear line beyond the new packaging is the elimination of several cuts. The sculptured pouch collection has been reduced to just boxer-brief styles. Unfortunately it would appear the brief and trunk cuts of the pouch collection are gone from the lineup which seems short-sighted to me as I think there are plenty of customers who would prefer the option of something with less coverage than a full boxer-brief cut. Whether this is just the stock selection of the Wal-Mart I visited is an open question but I believe this would make sense given the similar observations from other readers.


The other two lines are called Life Micro and Life Tech which are in a trunk style. The Life Micro line seems to be a bit redundant to the Pouch collection as both are made from the same fabric blend. The Tech line is a seamless 94% Nylon 6% spandex fabric also in a trunk cut. I found both the Micro and Tech cuts to have borderline laughable rises on the waist resulting in extremely unflattering lines. Thankfully the pouch collection seems to have not been changed too much from its original cut and it doesn't suffer from the "granny-pants" look. I did not see any versions of Life Underwear in the single-pack styles that were cotton blends so it would seem the cotton sculptured pouch line is also eliminated. The cotton string bikinis and bikinis were still being sold in updated plastic boxes so I do not believe they will be going anywhere soon. The color options I found were also a bit more limited with just different shades of blue available with no reds like previous lines. I can't say all these changes are a good thing as I really dislike the new cuts from the Tech and Micro lines and the single sculptured pouch style is very limiting for choice. I think the new challenge is to find a similar line of underwear at the same price point that offers a pouch design in a brief and trunk cut.