Collection: Hard Candy, Summer 2015, 20th Anniversary

I recently braved my nearest Wal-Mart and bought five of the eight 20th Anniversary Collection nail polishes released this spring by Hard Candy. The packaging for this collection is a throwback to the old school Hard Candy polish bottles, and it was the main reason I was keen to pick them up! (I am sad that I couldn’t find the last three shades, which were Sky, the color that made Hard Candy famous in the 90s, and two new shades.)

The five I bought are: Claws Up!, Coconut, Mint, Scam (all re-releases from the original polishes), and Zombie (a new shade).

Today’s review is for Coconut, one of the five shades I was able to get. Coconut is one of the five re-released shades in the collection. In the bottle, it’s a not-entirely-stark white with sparse, pink and blue iridescent shimmer.

I’ll start with the positive. The packaging is adorable. I loved the original Hard Candy bottles, and the new ones are really very close. (You can see a comparison in my haul post.) The brush isn’t the same, though: it has the now-ubiquitous flattened brush. I normally don’t really like anything too wide, but Hard Candy’s brush is a good width and I do like it. For a $4 polish, it’s actually a great brush.

Time will tell whether the new cap will keep the nail polish from evaporating too much. Many of the older Hard Candy bottles I own have dried up pretty quickly. Not the best caps and threads.

Onto the color. Now, I’m used to most whitened polishes being a major pain to apply. They tend to be chalky, streaky, and in need of at least four coats to even them out properly. Coconut is, unfortunately, no exception. It’s actually one of the worst I’ve tried.

Four coats is needed for full opacity and evenness. The finish, when dry, isn’t smooth at all. It looks a little bit like I’d pressed my half-dry nails gently into a piece of fabric: it just had a subtle texture to it that I am quite sure is not supposed to be there.

Worst of all, the shimmer! WHERE IS IT?! You can barely see the pink and blue shimmer. When I removed the polish, I saw that most of the shimmer had sunk to the bottom, and it was resting directly on my nail. The shimmer is simply too sparse in this polish.

It’s not a great shot, but you can see the shimmer in this photo:

I will note that I haven’t been able to check the polish out in sunlight, as it’s been grey and raining all weekend here. Perhaps the microglitter is visible in the sun! I can see it some shimmer under halogen lighting, but with regular indoor lighting or on an overcast day outside? Nada. It mostly looks like a slightly dull white cream. Personally, to get the same effect, I’d just use a nicer white cream and apply a sheer iridescent pink shimmer over it (Essie Anniversary Gala is one of my fave sheer pink shimmers, but CND also have some great sheer, sparkly top coats).

I can’t recommend this polish at all, unless you’re OK with spending $4 just to have the cute bottle and ring—and it does look really cute in white and pink!

Hard Candy Nail Color 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.

Hard Candy LLC is currently owned by Falic Fashion Group, a subsidiary of Duty Free Americas, Inc. (FFG purchased the company from LVMH, who had bought the company in 1999.) Hard Candy is sold exclusively at Wal-Mart.