Collection: Hard Candy, Summer 2015, 20th Anniversary

Wal-Mart isn’t someplace I shop at very often. I’m not a fan of their business practices, and anyway, the nearest location is not really easy for me to get to these days. But of course, the nail polish fanatic in me just had to make a trip over to see if I could get my grubby hands on Hard Candy‘s 20th Anniversary Collection. (Hard Candy makeup is available online on Wal-Mart’s US and Canadian websites, but not this limited edition collection.)

Back in the 1990s, Hard Candy was priced like a mid-to-high end brand; for nail polish, it was positively expensive for a college student! I picked up a few of their polishes here and there via sales, eBay, and swapping. They were awesome colors, even if the formula was not actually super fantastic. Plus, they came with cute little color-coordinated rings, and Alicia Silverstone wore it, and Hard Candy was a pretty big deal.

Fast forward to the 10s and Hard Candy is now exclusively sold at Wal-Mart. Whaaaa?

To be fair, I never thought the Hard Candy makeup I tried (some eyeshadows and lip stuff) were especially good quality. It was all funky colors, glitter, cool packaging, and hype. So perhaps they have done well to re-position themselves as a low-end, mass-market brand appealing to teens.

Once they made the move to Wal-Mart, the entire line was revamped. The nail polish is currently packaged in cheap-looking little cylinders. Very boring.

But, earlier this year, Hard Candy celebrated their 20th Anniversary and dutifully released a collection of 8 polishes packaged in their original square bottles! Retailing for $4! WITH the cool little rings! And 5 of the colors are from the original collection! As a 90s girl, I say AAAAAAAAH!

So now I’m kicking myself for waiting until now to get over to Wally World. Luckily, they still had the display up, and the rings, which are (not very well-)sealed to the bottle, were all still attached. I was able to get five colors, but not Sky, which made Hard Candy hugely popular when it was worn by Alicia Silverstone on The Late Show with David Letterman. 😥

Still, the colors I did get are pretty cool:

From left to right, that’s Mint, Scam, Claws Up!, Coconut, and Zombie (new color). (The three I did not find were Sky and the other two new colors, Girlie and Tangerini.)

Scam and Zombie appear to be strong shimmers, and Mint, Claws Up!, and Coconut have fine, pearly shimmer.

I also picked up one of the cheaply-packaged regular Hard Candy polishes, in Piece of Papaya:

For fun, I rounded up a couple of my old Hard Candy polishes and took a Hard Candy Generations photo. I apologize for not having the rings to my old Hard Candy polishes in the photos. At some point I gathered all the rings and put them into a box for safe-keeping, since they just get in the way when you’re actually trying to use the polish. I still have the box somewhere, but I don’t want to go rummaging around for it right now.

The first bottle (Mermaid) is the original. The second was introduced sometime pre-Wal-Mart. When Hard Candy first started being sold at Wal-Mart, their polishes looked like this (I don’t own one):

The third bottle is the current one sold at Wal-Mart. The last one is the current 20th Anniversary Edition sold at Wal-Mart.

As you can see, the 20th Anniversary bottle is very close to the original, though not entirely identical. The new caps are slightly smaller.

I really hope they’ll wake up and realize the square bottles are way cooler than what they are currently using. I mean, I’d be so much more willing to buy their current polishes if they came in the square bottles. Isn’t that ridiculous? 🙂

Hard Candy Nail Color is sold exclusively at Wal-Mart and retails for US$4.00 / CA$3.98 (I don’t understand, but I’m not complaining!). However, the regular cylindrical bottles contain 0.26 fl oz / 7.8 mL, while the 20th Anniversary square bottles contain 0.46 fl oz / 13.5 mL. It is free of toluene, formaldehyde, and dibutyl phthalate (DBP). Hard Candy is cruelty-free and made in the USA.

P.S.

I also hauled a few other things, and I’ll just include their pictures here.