So I was at Wal-Mart recently and I just love love love shopping their clearance aisles, especially post-holiday. Well, much to my surprise (and delight), not only did this Wal-Mart I went to have a clearance aisle but they had an entire warehouse-sized room sectioned off specifically for clearance and bargain items. As you can imagine, this shopaholic had a field day! In the midst of my shopping travels, I stumbled upon a row of brightly colored and jewelry-adorned nail polishes for less than a dollar (Regularly, $5.00 each). The nail polishes with their cute, bauble-sized plastic rings were none other than those made by 90s phenomenon-turned-brand-frenzy, Hard Candy. Back in 1995 when Hard Candy nail polishes were first unveiled in upscale (read: expensive) department stores, such as Neiman Marcus, Fred Segal, Nordstroms and the like, as well as high quality (read: high priced) specialty beauty shops, such as Sephora. Hard Candy was the nail polish to be worn by “the stars”. In fact, Alicia Silverstone, at the time riding on the wave of her hugely successful “chick flick”, Clueless, announced on an episode of the Late Show with David Letterman that she was wearing their newest polish, Hard Candy’s “Sky”, a bright blue hue for the fingers, and the rest was a media-frenzied, brand-crazed phenomenon in the history of beauty products.Somewhere along the line, Hard Candy’s 15 minutes were up and they fell off the proverbial marketing block; their cleverly named polishes and cutely accessorized miniature bottles were never to be seen again…..
That is until now….or until recently.
In 2009, Hard Candy partnered with Wal-Mart, the company that tells Americans everywhere to “Save money, live better” and started offering these once rather exclusive products at five bucks a pop! So you can imagine my glee when I saw the brand at a mere fraction of the cost and quickly snatched up my favorite color, a bright apple red, seductively titled “Fishnet”. But I wondered, for $5.00, would the polish live up to the fame of its 90s hype?
It sure did.
For a mere $5.00, I found myself pleasantly surprised at the quality, color, packaging, style, ease of application, and staying power. With just two coats, letting the first dry briefly between the two, my nails looked salon-fantastic or the equivalent to an OPI manicure (usually ringing in at about $8.00 or $9.00 a bottle). What was even better, after about 5 days of hand-washing, typing, texting and exposing my fingers to the arctic chill outside, my candy apple red, “Fishnet” polish was still intact, streak and chip-free and bright as ever. I was definitely a satisfied customer.
So head down to your local Wal-Mart, or order online and choose from a unique variety of polish colors with names like, Mr. Wrong, Envy, Date Night, Frenzy (the old Sky Blue), Sugar Daddy and Hypnotic (just to name a few), and I would be willing to bet (at least five dollarsJ) that you are sure to be happy with the quality, color and of course, the assorted, little fashion rings adorned around each nail polish wand. 5 STARS
***Hard Candy released a FULL line of cosmetics in 2009, a 261 piece set of make-up and beauty products, for your lips, nails, face, eyes and hair. ***
References:
Business Week, online magazine, http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/news/columns/97-09/e3516032.htm; All Lacquered Up, blog; http://www.alllacqueredup.com/2009/08/hard-candy-nail-polish-making.html; Beauty Tips Hub, blog, http://www.beautytipshub.com/cosmetics/hard-candy-cosmetics.html; Steph’s Closet, blog, http://stephscloset.com/blog/beauty/2009/10/646/hard-candy-just-nails-swatches-review/
