With most lotions, you slather some on and keep rubbing and rubbing and rubbing as it is slowly absorbed by your skin.
Curel is my favorite brand of lotion, because as you’re rubbing it in, you suddenly reach a point where your hands no longer feel greasy, just a bit damp.
What the heck is going on there?
Is this an indication that my skin has absorbed all the lotiony goodness? Or is it bascially some cheap emolient trick?
Boy, I dunno.
My guess would be a cheap chemistry trick, that they’ve found some way to emulsify or otherwise treat the basic hand lotion combination of glycerin, mineral oil and/or petrolatum, and water, so as to have it evaporate from your skin more quickly than the other brands. Your skin doesn’t really “soak up” that much more stuff depending on what kind of hand lotion it is–it’s limited that way, so my guess is going to be an evaporation trick.
http://www.otcservice.com/productpages/Curel.htm
Nivea Original is what I use, and it’s not that sticky.
Jergens is IMO fairly sticky. Jergens Lotion for Dry Skin, Ultra Healing, Extra Dry Skin.
IMO Vaseline Intensive Care is very sticky.
There’s no significant evaporation of such materials as petrolatum, esters, or silicones.
The reason Curel loses the greasy feeling is because it’s not very greasy. Looking at the ingredients, and knowing that the distearyldimonium chloride is unlikely to be more than 3-5%, it’s likely that the “oily” content of Curel is only about 12%. In addition, some oily compounds have a light feel on the skin (isopropyl palmitate in this case), and don’t leave much of a greasy feel in the first place. Finally, it’s a characteristic of the quaternary ammonium emulsifiers that they rub in fast, though I can’t explain why.
Well, huh. That’s interesting.
Slightly incomprehensible, but interesting. 
makes mental note to memorize, “Curel hand lotion isn’t greasy because their quaternary ammonium emulsifiers rub in fast” so as to wow 'em with it at the next party
hope nobody asks me what a “quaternary ammonium emulsifier” is
oh, well, I can always just pass the cheese dip real fast
Some oils absorb into your skin more quickly. Mineral oil and petroleum products tend to stay on the skin, rather than absorbing or being “rubbed in.”
Depending on what effect you want, this can be a good or bad thing, although I tend to avoid both of them.