• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, July 23, 2007

It's been ages since there was a real product innovation in the personal lubricant category (warming gel is just so last year), but Replens thinks it has a winner.

Its Intimate Options Personal Lubricant Mousse is now available nationally in drug stores, and the company is readying an ad campaign, from Coil Counts Ford & Cheney in Chicago, for later this year. (The company will also introduce a Web site called letloosethemousse.com.)

Lil' Drug Store Products, which manufactures and markets the Replens line, says it developed the mousse product after a study of nearly 1,500 women found that while 71% of women over the age of 18 had used a lubricant, only 10.1% were very satisfied with the products they had used.

While lubricants can perk up any intimate relationship, they are especially important to women during periods of stress, illness or fluctuating hormones, including menopause.

And women had plenty to say about what they didn't like about lubricating products: 65.7% percent say they're too messy, 49% complain they mess up the bed, 43.3% say they're too drippy, 41% think they feel too cold, and 25.7% think they interrupt the moment.

The company says the mousse--available in unscented, vanilla and vanilla cinnamon--addresses those complaints. Replens' main competitors include Johnson & Johnson's K-Y, which recently introduced a spray-on version called Sensual Mist, and Astroglide, made by Biofilm.