The Hunt For The Perfect Lipstick -- Playboy Beauty Calendar Girl Lipstick

Continuing the lipstick hunt, I turn my attention to another beauty.com find, Playboy Beauty Calendar Girl Lipstick.

The short review: Awful.

The longer review follows the jump-cut...



Candidate: Playboy Beauty Calendar Girl Lipstick (Playboy, Inc.)

Purchased: Beauty.com

Cost: $14.00 per tube

Brand Info: http://www.playboybeauty.com/ (also available at Henri Bendel and Beauty.com)
You don't have to use your imagination here; yes, this is lipstick designed by Playboy to "convey the sex kitten status of the Playboy Bunny". This is the "Calendar Girl" line, described as follows: "Weightless formula keeps lips soft. New technology blends a high level of color pigments for true color and shine enhancing polymers for long wear. Formula contains anti-oxidants vitamins A, C and E."

The Tube: Hot pink plastic rectangular sheath with silver Playboy Bunny Logos running down one side. The rectangular sheath encloses a silver lipstick tube. True to the imagery Playboy invokes, there's a large Silver Bunny on what appears to be the top of the tube...until you try to remove the product and discover the Bunny's actually on the bottom and the opening for the lipstick is facing downward as it goes into the protective plastic sheath. (So many jokes, so little web space.)

The Product: Pink. And I mean pink, as in slightly paler that what is commonly called "Barbie pink". On the product page, it looks a lot more red. Trust me, it isn't even close to red. In fact, it's not only not red, it's actually more coral, which means it's yellowy. And I think I detect my arch-enemy, shimmering pigments. The product itself is a traditional bullet shape with a slightly-concaved delivery point.

The Application: Slicker than the slickest lip gloss. It comes out even pinker than it looks in the tube. And it's full of shimmer, which does exactly what I expect it to--find its way into every crevace in my lips and highlight my age lines. Oh, yuck, once it sets up, it's sticky. The worst of the worst of the worst of my hated lipstick features.

The Taste: Did somebody find a bunch of leftover 60's cosmetics and melt 'em down for this? It's perfumy, powdery, almost sweet, a lot like cosmetics my babysitters would let me borrow as a little girl. I remember I hated them then, too. (The cosmetics, not the babysitters.)

The Blot: The blot removes some of the stickiness, thank God. Nice lip print comes off and confirms my suspicions that it's a very bad pale pink coral. I swear, it looks like somebody drew a lip print with a pale pink highligher. A second blot produces only a faint bit of color on the tissue and doesn't clean up any more of the stickiness.

The Wear: Drinking reactivates the stickiness and lets that overly perfumed taste flow in, but it does stick to your lips a lot better than I expected.

The Verdict: I bought it just to check out the colors and it came with a free eyeshadow sample at beauty.com. I've tried three times to find a way to make all of its horrible features work--undercoating for a too-heavy matte; brightener of a too-dark matte, etc.--and none of them work. Would never buy again in a gazillion years. A light coat of Smith's Rosebud Salve takes off a little more of the stickiness, but that's about it. The thing's virtually waterproof. Oy.

Heading off for cold cream...