New Shades of Milani Liquif'eye! (Review + Swatches)

Remember when Milani's Liquif'eye pencils came out and everyone was all "ooooh" and "aaaah" over them? Well, rightfully so! They are fantastic.

One of the only complaints was that there weren't enough colors. Milani has remedied that with an addition to their Liquif'eye line -- a dark blue, a purple and a green.

I spotted these at Walgreens and nabbed the purple and green, and while inspecting them at the checkout I realized that they were the retractable type. You may recall that the original Liquif'eyes were regular pencils. No issue, I was curious to see the difference, if any.

Prices:
Milani website: $5.49
Cherry Culture: $5.49
Walgreens (in store): $7.49

I got home and immediately noticed that the pencil Liquif'eyes were 0.04g while the retractable were 0.01g. I was a bit concerned until I dug through my stash and realized that all of my retractables are that weight. I'm assuming it's because you do lose some product when sharpening a pencil... but who knows. Either way, you get the same amount of product as you would any other retractable liner.

I eagerly opened the green liner and went to twist up... and nothing happened. I could hear a distinct click, click, click... but no product was rolling up. I twisted a few more times and finally product came up, but it was a large chunk that if placed against the eye, would break off. I figured I may have gotten a dud, so I tried the purple one. Same thing happened. The product was rolling up very unsmoothly and was lifting too much product to prevent any breakage.

I contacted customer service and got a response that said that these are propel pencils only.

... Wut?

Apparently I am uncultured in the makeup world and some companies make products that you can twist up, but not twist back down. I guess I wouldn't have too much of an issue with this except that these particular pencils do not twist up smoothly so you are forced to push up too much product. This will end in a huge waste down the road.

At some point, what I had twisted up of the green pencil had broken off. I said, okay, let me try this again. The part that was broken was about 1/2 of an inch worth of product... and no more would twist up. I checked my other push up liners and had easily 4x the amount of product than the Milani was trying to twist up.



















This is another retractable liner pushed out to full length... mind you this has been pretty heavily used:



















I've emailed customer service again, but I do not know what they will say. I have a feeling these liners are just bad. I'm pretty sure my green one is completely defective, as there has to be more product in there than what broke off of the top.

Now, you may be wondering why I'm making such a big deal out of this. Here's the thing: I paid $7.49 for my liners at Walgreens, and for $1.99 I could have bought an Essence brand liner from Ulta that is actually retractable. Even Ulta brand liners like this are fully retractable... and around $7.00 (and often on special, mind you, for 3 for 2 or whatnot... Milani is pretty much never on sale).

I just don't understand why Milani would drop the ball like this. To make matters worse, they have eyeliners that are retractable. What?? Why would you even make one of these and not have the ability to push it back down? It's just a huge waste, to me anyway. Unless mine actually are defective, which I doubt, these may as well just go in the trash can. I don't like the twisting action and I don't like that they couldn't pay a little extra for the retractable patent for these, as they've apparently done in the past! It's just stupid to me.

I'll stick to my Ulta and Essence liners, thanks.

Anyway, here are swatches:























The colors are quite nice, but I've had them for a few weeks and the tip was already dried out (they were kept capped, so that's not an issue). The cap doesn't seem very secure. To be honest, there are a lot of problems with this liner.






















This is after letting them "set" for about 30 seconds and then lightly running my finger over the top. They just don't have the staying power of their pencil counterparts! The pencils aren't even waterproof but are seriously long lasting.

Overall, a fail for me. I'm going to email these pics to Milani so that maybe their customer service can fix the issues: propel only, cap doesn't close securely, and lasting power.

... That's pretty much a completely redone liner, sigh.