I swear, mascara formulas multiply like rabbits. Ever major make-up brand has far more mascaras then seems necessary. And even within the brand, say Max Factor, the mascara that you buy this year will have been replaced by a new line the next year.
In all this turnover violence, only one mascara has actually been on sale for more then ten years: the humble Maybelline Great Lash in the pink bottle with green cap. That is the only reason I buy Maybelline Great Lash; I figure, if nobody has changed it for ten years, it must be good as it is.
But that still doesn’t explain the huge turnover in mascara products. Why? Is it a marketing conspiracy ? Your favourite brand is discontinued, your try and throw out many other brands, settle on a new favourite type, untill that one is also discontinued ? Rinse, repeat?
It can’t be fashion. Mascaras are either lengthening, thickening, curling, or a combo. That would warrant no more then a few continually existing kinds of mascara.
If they’re all so similar and the changes are just marketing, why would you try several before settling on a favorite? If you can tell the difference enough to have a favorite, the mascara makers will put in the effort to be a favorite.
Robot Arm, there is difference in the brush and the wiper. But the average woman won’t know what brush or wipers she wants. And product names are very undescriptive. A mascara is hardly sold as : “brown, waterproof, a bit lenghtening”. or “black, makes your lashes look like spiders legs, if that’s your thing”.
No, the choice is between Lash Architect, and Dream Lashes. Or you could go for “Mega Effect” or “Unbelievable Eyes”. It’s the IKEA method of naming products; the Bjorre could just as easily be called the Stockholm, and vice versa.
The serious lengthening and thickening technology really only happened in the last five years or so. Before that, I found that mascaras were more similar. Probably the various brands are still setting into their marketing.
It’s all about marketing. Occasionally I would buy my ex or daughter feminine hygiene products. By the time I needed to buy them again the packaging and naming conventions had changed.
Try getting the right one back in the dark ages with no cell phone.
Yeah, but that’s not quite what I was getting at. You’ve tried multiple brands, and you like one better than the others. That tells me that there is a difference between the brands, and that it’s not purely a marketing exercise. Maybe they left the mascara alone and only changed the brush, and gave the product a whole new name to make a splash.
If you found a brush and wiper that you like and that product is discontinued, can you keep that brush and use it with a new mascara, or does it not work that way?
It sounds sort of analogous to Coke vs. Pepsi. Some people prefer one, some prefer the other (and probably some can’t tell the difference). But for all the millions that those two companies spend trying to differentiate themselves, the only way for me to know which one I like is to try them both.
That’s easier to do with sodas, of course; they don’t change the formulas very often, there aren’t as many choices, and each bottle is cheaper. But I think the principle still holds. What name could they come up with that would tell you what you need to know before you try it? I think the British phrase for this situation is “suck it and see”.
In my experience, the degree of product turnover and lurid marketing is inversely proportional to the actual differences between the products. In other words, if there’s very little to distinguish the products in a category from one another, you’ll see a lot of churn and a lot of marketing hot air, while if there are clear differences, you won’t see nearly so much, as the differences themselves serve to differentiate the products without really needing the assistance of so much marketing artifice. (this assumes that the products are even actively marketed in the first place)
For example, motor oils pretty much ALL meet the API standards for motor oil, so there’s really precious little to differentiate them from each other. Same goes for mascara. But what do you see on TV a lot? Motor oil and mascara commercials. Same for lipstick, nail polish, sugarfree chewing gum, orange juice, kid yogurt, etc…
I mean, there ARE differences, but overall, the products are a whole lot more similar than they are different from each other.
There’s only one difference in mascaras that matters to me, and that’s if they’re washable-off by soap and water. I refuse to use the waterproof kind, because you have to use a greasy makeup remover to get it off. I don’t want to rub grease all over my eyes at the end of the day, thank you. Besides, if they sell you the waterproof kind, then they can also sell you the makeup remover, too.
There’s only one that’s washable that I can find, and that’s L’Oreal’s Telescopic Lengths. I expect it to be discontinued any day now.
I rarely use mascara (a dozen times a year at most), but mine is running out now and I can’t tell one kind from another. I hate when my lashes stick together in like four or five triangle-shaped clumps, but I saw a model with that recently. Weird. And I don’t need lengthening - though I used to get comments on how long my lashes were whenever I wore mascara several mascaras ago, so I guess that one worked (no idea what it was). I’ve heard there are “curling” mascaras. As my eyelashes stick straight out and I have never seen them looked curved like tv commercials, I’m going to guess I don’t have that right now. Sounds nice. Any recommendations for curling, separating mascaras that are cheap?
Unless there are some premium brands that work that way that I don’t know about, no they don’t work that way. They’re sold in tubes, when the product dries out or is used up, you can’t refill the bottle.
What I can’t figure out are the brushes. I’ve tried the fat brushes, the skinny brushes and the ones with high-low alternating bristles and I can’t tell which works better. Anybody have thoughts about that?
It’s not quite that easy. First you would need to clean and sterilize the wand, so there’s no chance of contaminating the new mascara. Then you have to hope the wand fits through the hole in the new tube (I assume that is the"wiper" mentioned).
So, it can be done, but most women wouldn’t want to bother.
Right. Also I kind of hate the bottle/wand designs. There’s like a “flange” on the inside of the mouth of the bottle that scrapes off excess mascara when you pull the wand out. But it also scrapes mascara off when you push the wand in, leading to accumulation of dried out mascara around the edge of the bottle. It’s also very inefficient at scraping off the excess product because lots of times when you pull the wand out there are glops of mascara all over it, and especially at the tip.
The classic example of an undifferentiated product multiplied through marketing is toothpaste. Yes, they’ve started adding all kinds of whiteners, sensitivity agents, and tooth strengthening products, but ultimately it’s all just toothpaste.