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Jan. 15th, 2024 09:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
impyUgh, pretty sure period is about to kick down the door and say hello. Hopefully not Kool-Aid Man style though. Ew.
Anyway, while I whinge to myself about various aches and pains, I figured I'd also whinge to myself but in text form about the latest round of Holo Taco retirements. I stayed up hours after my ass wanted to be in bed (and about two hours after it SHOULD have been) to hear which shades were getting the axe because I knew that as soon as they were announced, at least some of them would sell out. Also, I wanted to snag the two returning polishes from the seasonal launch before they get shoved into a closet for another year.
Honestly, if not for the ticking clock for my sleep requirements and the twitchiness over the retirement announcement, I'd probably have been in nerd heaven because I love that HT releases their sales data (well, some of it) including their best and worst selling shades. It's fascinating to see what people buy and what they don't. And because they do this every year, you also get to compare it to previous years and see if there's improvement (yay, Zyler the Cat isn't in the bottom ten this year!) and sometimes not. Also, I really do love it when someone obviously cares a ton about whatever they're talking about and HT's creator really does love nail polish and data, so those two together and she's pretty clearly also in nerd heaven.
To be fair though, I don't really remember any of the worst sellers unless people repeatedly mention them (see Zyler) and same goes for the best sellers aside from One Coat Black which is their best seller by such a large margin that I really don't think it's worth mentioning as anything other than a quick affirmation that yes, it's still number one, woo. Gimme the top 12, because Not Milky White also always makes the list, though this one I am a little confused about because OCB has a fairly solid reputation as being good/great and NMW, even after being reformulated, is still mixed reviews at best.
Anyway. So. People have been betting on which shades were getting the axe this go round and the actual list is both shocking and not all at the same time.
We're gonna start with Fairy Tail. It's from the Magnetic Collection and I'm not really surprised because a) that collection has a terrible reputation and even if FT was one of the ones that people did actually like from it, it's brown and it stains like a MOFO apparently. I own it but I haven't worked up the desire to use it yet because of the staining warning which was issued pretty much as soon as anyone had time to wear it after the release. Combined with people loving the barista Collection for their brown/nudes, I get it.
Trophy Life is one I'm kind of surprised by and kind of not. On the one hand, the Chrome collection isn't even a year old and yet it's pretty polarizing and has been since it came out. Chromes aren't new in the polish world and Sally Hansen's got their Color Foil line with a gold that you can pop out and buy pretty easily and for less. Add in HT's tendency to make their yellows/golds green-adjacent and the fact that HT covered their asses a little too well with the disclaimers about the Chromes (psa: you don't need the special base coat, you can top coat it and it won't make a huge difference in the finish, and it lasts just fine on a lot of people without chipping, me included) and this one was always going to be a niche launch. Trophy Life itself was the one in the collection I was least interested in and only got because I got the whole collection so, again, not surprising really.
Full Charge is from my absolute favorite collection and I am so fucking sad that it's already sold out. It's the prettiest lime green holo and WHY?! I gather it's been on the worst seller list every year so it makes sense from that standpoint but the electric holo collection is SO FUCKING PERFECT. I didn't realize it kept making the bottom of the list... I do hope that they'll bring this one back one day. Also, Holo Taco, why are we dropping the holos? Particularly the ones that do not have a close color cousin left available?
Here For the Payday is the only creme being retired. I guess now's as good a time as any to point out that greens, yellows, browns, and oranges make up the worst seller lists over the years, with certain shades of blue popping in as well. Payday is from the Work Life collection and I really don't see a lot of people talking about that one. I don't pay a lot of attention to the cremes though, so that probably helps. I think it's a nice enough shade and I'd have sacrificed Chai before this one because I think Chai is ugly AF and Payday at least seems to make pretty Halloween art, and when I saw it make the worst list, I knew it was done for... I'd even kind of meant to pick it up but just didn't. I think it's because I don't tend to buy HT cremes unless I've got a sale or a collection to make it worth it. This is the only shade I don't own from this bunch, btw. Because it's a creme.
Lemon Spritzer is technically a yellow, but it looks really green here, huh? See? HT's yellows are really, really green. To the point that someone was bemoaning all the greens on the list... at the point where we were seeing all the yellows. :P (the yellows were maybe the top three worst sellers and the actual greens were the bottom three or four) I think a lot of people thought Spritzer was safe because it's part of the pastel rainbow collection and Cristine's said previously that getting rid of any of the rainbows was something they were avoiding to keep the rainbow bundles intact. Honestly surprised that of the yellows, Spritzer got the axe over Sucker especially given how similar this, Full Charge, and Payday look even if I know Spritzer isn't that close in reality. Clearly they were on a roll, color wise. I admit I bought this during one of the sales because I knew its time was limited.
Aquafoil is one of my two big surprises and one of my two wails of agony. LOOK AT IT. It's so PRETTY, dammit, and unlike Trophy, it does not have a Sally dupe or even one that's close enough. I also didn't think it was a horrible seller, even taking into consideration the chrome of it all. I think this one got sacrificed for a couple of reasons. She mentioned that the chromes have serious pigment sourcing issues, so add that to the fact that this color is pretty close in other formulas (not necessarily in my opinion but other people think so) and I can see why they're letting this one go. I don't agree with it, but I get it, particularly with the chrome sourcing issues. Shame though, because of all the chromes, it's the most unique.
Frost Light is my biggest shock because it's one of those polishes people mention loving (and using) all the time and I tend to think of the HT glitter formula as being a staple but apparently people are not onboard the glitter train. Cowards. I 100% believe this one got the axe because of how people feel about the glitters and because they intended Crystal Skies to be a replacement for it. Crystal Skies is far more cloudy and gray and there are square (you can call them diamonds all you want but they're squares) glitters so I don't consider it a fair trade. I snagged this one during one of the sales and then wondered why I waited.
Fake Date is a Frosted Metal, which is one of those formulas that you either love or don't realize you love it because you haven't tried it. I really thought FD was the best seller from that formulation aside from maybe Favorite Sister which is newer, but still. I was a bit surprised until I remembered that this one, like Cold Shoulder (a previously retired shade) before, it also has a problem with color stability. This one has been known to change colors, though not as drastically as CS. I'm sad because FD is really pretty as its pink variation, but I will never believe this was sacrificed in favor of Pink Steel (the pink chrome) and not because of the color changing. Maybe both, but the color stability definitely played a part even if she never says it. I'm not sure HT has ever mentioned the color changing for CS so I'm not expecting anything on FD either. I need to check mine tomorrow. (eta: I did check and I do think mine is starting to tarnish. It's not a huge change and I'll need to compare it to my swatch stick to see if I'm cuckoo bananas.)
(as an aside: I think it's this formula in general that has issues. I think whatever the 'metal' component is will tarnish in certain colors because another brand did a whole rainbow of these and most people's bottles tarnished to the degree that it's an absolute rarity to find a bottle of any color for those that hasn't changed. I don't think this is a HT issue, basically.)
Queen's Curse is another of the magnetic collection but unlike Fairy Tail, I'm not surprised in the slightest because as pretty a purple as it is, it's the least magnetic of the set and even people who can work magic have a hard time getting it to do its job. So yeah, I get why it was dropped. It also sold out less than a half an hour after being announced.
Encryption Key is from the Lite Mode collection and I'm honestly surprised more of those didn't get sent packing given the amount of hand-wringing people have done over them in the past year or so. I'm sad though because I think Key is much, much prettier than Sunset Simulation. Seriously, why did Key hit the bottom 10 when Simulation is so much uglier?! Ugh. People. Are my tastes really that far off from everyone else's or did they literally just forget about Simulation to such a degree that it's somehow safe? Nah, it's probably just me.
Going into this, the general consensus seemed to be that if you wanted anything from the Lite Mode collection, Chrome, or Magnetics, you should probably get it sooner rather than later. Ditto any yellows from anything other than gold flakie because that one is actually gold-gold and not whatever green leaning gold is most likely to show up in a HT collection. Frosted Metal fans were also on edge because while they didn't make the bottom 10, they did pretty much take up the bottom 20... but it's obviously a case of Cristine loving them and saving them, so there's that.
Other things of note, while I'm here. Burned Bridges made the bottom 10 and she kept mentioning how people just don't like browns, with the exception of the barista collection, and the whole time I'm thinking AHA! You finally admit it's brown! When it came out you tried pawning it off as orange and everyone else went dude, you tried to slip a brown into a rainbow collection!
I hadn't realized Laven-duh had been a best seller for 2022 and still got the axe in favor of them bringing out Cereal Killer. I knew it was a case of swapping one for the other but not that the original had made the top ten and still got sent packing. It explains a lot of complaints over the year.
When watching the bottom ten get revealed, it was basically a list of polishes I'd bought last year... kind of anticipating them getting the axe. Not all of them, as I truly do love Full Charge, Orange Drink, and Green Taffy and I didn't think Sonic US would be on the list at all, but I did finally buy it because I think the blue is pretty. (I do absolutely think it makes sense when people see it over white and it's fucking yellow.) But when you pick up half the bottom sellers list on sale... it makes sense. I did my part to save you. Just not well enough in some cases.
I am curious as to what the other ten polishes would've been had she gone ahead with the original plan to retire 20 polishes. More Frosted Metals? The Lite Mode collection?
Also curious as to how much certain factors like availability played in determining things. Like Zyler the Cat spent some time being completely unavailable, though I don't remember when it came back in stock. I know it was out of stock for ages in 2022 and at least the start of 2023 if memory serves. A good chunk of the barista Collection and the Chromes were also out of stock, but two of the baristas were in the top 10 anyway. It was clearly taken into consideration, but how much wiggle room did that buy some? Or how much did it affect their ability to be anywhere near the top 10? I'm also curious as to how getting rid of colors that'll now nullify the ability to get the bundle will affect the rest of the colors in that bundle. Like will getting rid of Encryption Key send Simulation to hell? Will they just reform the bundle without the missing color? That option seems most likely for Lemon Spritzer since the Rainbow bundles are so popular, but for stuff like Full Charge or Key, maybe not worth it? Ditto on taking out 2/5 Chromes, with two of the remaining 5 being out of stock a lot. Not sure on the purple, honestly. A little less so for the magnetics, though this is also taking two of theirs, but also... the magnetics have a shitty rep at this point without the cult following the Chromes do.
I should probably go through and work on swatching the rest of my HT collection soon. But not now, as now it's time to work on breakfast and then finally resume my embroidery. Mebbe?
Anyway, while I whinge to myself about various aches and pains, I figured I'd also whinge to myself but in text form about the latest round of Holo Taco retirements. I stayed up hours after my ass wanted to be in bed (and about two hours after it SHOULD have been) to hear which shades were getting the axe because I knew that as soon as they were announced, at least some of them would sell out. Also, I wanted to snag the two returning polishes from the seasonal launch before they get shoved into a closet for another year.
Honestly, if not for the ticking clock for my sleep requirements and the twitchiness over the retirement announcement, I'd probably have been in nerd heaven because I love that HT releases their sales data (well, some of it) including their best and worst selling shades. It's fascinating to see what people buy and what they don't. And because they do this every year, you also get to compare it to previous years and see if there's improvement (yay, Zyler the Cat isn't in the bottom ten this year!) and sometimes not. Also, I really do love it when someone obviously cares a ton about whatever they're talking about and HT's creator really does love nail polish and data, so those two together and she's pretty clearly also in nerd heaven.
To be fair though, I don't really remember any of the worst sellers unless people repeatedly mention them (see Zyler) and same goes for the best sellers aside from One Coat Black which is their best seller by such a large margin that I really don't think it's worth mentioning as anything other than a quick affirmation that yes, it's still number one, woo. Gimme the top 12, because Not Milky White also always makes the list, though this one I am a little confused about because OCB has a fairly solid reputation as being good/great and NMW, even after being reformulated, is still mixed reviews at best.
Anyway. So. People have been betting on which shades were getting the axe this go round and the actual list is both shocking and not all at the same time.
We're gonna start with Fairy Tail. It's from the Magnetic Collection and I'm not really surprised because a) that collection has a terrible reputation and even if FT was one of the ones that people did actually like from it, it's brown and it stains like a MOFO apparently. I own it but I haven't worked up the desire to use it yet because of the staining warning which was issued pretty much as soon as anyone had time to wear it after the release. Combined with people loving the barista Collection for their brown/nudes, I get it.
Trophy Life is one I'm kind of surprised by and kind of not. On the one hand, the Chrome collection isn't even a year old and yet it's pretty polarizing and has been since it came out. Chromes aren't new in the polish world and Sally Hansen's got their Color Foil line with a gold that you can pop out and buy pretty easily and for less. Add in HT's tendency to make their yellows/golds green-adjacent and the fact that HT covered their asses a little too well with the disclaimers about the Chromes (psa: you don't need the special base coat, you can top coat it and it won't make a huge difference in the finish, and it lasts just fine on a lot of people without chipping, me included) and this one was always going to be a niche launch. Trophy Life itself was the one in the collection I was least interested in and only got because I got the whole collection so, again, not surprising really.
Full Charge is from my absolute favorite collection and I am so fucking sad that it's already sold out. It's the prettiest lime green holo and WHY?! I gather it's been on the worst seller list every year so it makes sense from that standpoint but the electric holo collection is SO FUCKING PERFECT. I didn't realize it kept making the bottom of the list... I do hope that they'll bring this one back one day. Also, Holo Taco, why are we dropping the holos? Particularly the ones that do not have a close color cousin left available?
Here For the Payday is the only creme being retired. I guess now's as good a time as any to point out that greens, yellows, browns, and oranges make up the worst seller lists over the years, with certain shades of blue popping in as well. Payday is from the Work Life collection and I really don't see a lot of people talking about that one. I don't pay a lot of attention to the cremes though, so that probably helps. I think it's a nice enough shade and I'd have sacrificed Chai before this one because I think Chai is ugly AF and Payday at least seems to make pretty Halloween art, and when I saw it make the worst list, I knew it was done for... I'd even kind of meant to pick it up but just didn't. I think it's because I don't tend to buy HT cremes unless I've got a sale or a collection to make it worth it. This is the only shade I don't own from this bunch, btw. Because it's a creme.
Lemon Spritzer is technically a yellow, but it looks really green here, huh? See? HT's yellows are really, really green. To the point that someone was bemoaning all the greens on the list... at the point where we were seeing all the yellows. :P (the yellows were maybe the top three worst sellers and the actual greens were the bottom three or four) I think a lot of people thought Spritzer was safe because it's part of the pastel rainbow collection and Cristine's said previously that getting rid of any of the rainbows was something they were avoiding to keep the rainbow bundles intact. Honestly surprised that of the yellows, Spritzer got the axe over Sucker especially given how similar this, Full Charge, and Payday look even if I know Spritzer isn't that close in reality. Clearly they were on a roll, color wise. I admit I bought this during one of the sales because I knew its time was limited.
Aquafoil is one of my two big surprises and one of my two wails of agony. LOOK AT IT. It's so PRETTY, dammit, and unlike Trophy, it does not have a Sally dupe or even one that's close enough. I also didn't think it was a horrible seller, even taking into consideration the chrome of it all. I think this one got sacrificed for a couple of reasons. She mentioned that the chromes have serious pigment sourcing issues, so add that to the fact that this color is pretty close in other formulas (not necessarily in my opinion but other people think so) and I can see why they're letting this one go. I don't agree with it, but I get it, particularly with the chrome sourcing issues. Shame though, because of all the chromes, it's the most unique.
Frost Light is my biggest shock because it's one of those polishes people mention loving (and using) all the time and I tend to think of the HT glitter formula as being a staple but apparently people are not onboard the glitter train. Cowards. I 100% believe this one got the axe because of how people feel about the glitters and because they intended Crystal Skies to be a replacement for it. Crystal Skies is far more cloudy and gray and there are square (you can call them diamonds all you want but they're squares) glitters so I don't consider it a fair trade. I snagged this one during one of the sales and then wondered why I waited.
Fake Date is a Frosted Metal, which is one of those formulas that you either love or don't realize you love it because you haven't tried it. I really thought FD was the best seller from that formulation aside from maybe Favorite Sister which is newer, but still. I was a bit surprised until I remembered that this one, like Cold Shoulder (a previously retired shade) before, it also has a problem with color stability. This one has been known to change colors, though not as drastically as CS. I'm sad because FD is really pretty as its pink variation, but I will never believe this was sacrificed in favor of Pink Steel (the pink chrome) and not because of the color changing. Maybe both, but the color stability definitely played a part even if she never says it. I'm not sure HT has ever mentioned the color changing for CS so I'm not expecting anything on FD either. I need to check mine tomorrow. (eta: I did check and I do think mine is starting to tarnish. It's not a huge change and I'll need to compare it to my swatch stick to see if I'm cuckoo bananas.)
(as an aside: I think it's this formula in general that has issues. I think whatever the 'metal' component is will tarnish in certain colors because another brand did a whole rainbow of these and most people's bottles tarnished to the degree that it's an absolute rarity to find a bottle of any color for those that hasn't changed. I don't think this is a HT issue, basically.)
Queen's Curse is another of the magnetic collection but unlike Fairy Tail, I'm not surprised in the slightest because as pretty a purple as it is, it's the least magnetic of the set and even people who can work magic have a hard time getting it to do its job. So yeah, I get why it was dropped. It also sold out less than a half an hour after being announced.
Encryption Key is from the Lite Mode collection and I'm honestly surprised more of those didn't get sent packing given the amount of hand-wringing people have done over them in the past year or so. I'm sad though because I think Key is much, much prettier than Sunset Simulation. Seriously, why did Key hit the bottom 10 when Simulation is so much uglier?! Ugh. People. Are my tastes really that far off from everyone else's or did they literally just forget about Simulation to such a degree that it's somehow safe? Nah, it's probably just me.
Going into this, the general consensus seemed to be that if you wanted anything from the Lite Mode collection, Chrome, or Magnetics, you should probably get it sooner rather than later. Ditto any yellows from anything other than gold flakie because that one is actually gold-gold and not whatever green leaning gold is most likely to show up in a HT collection. Frosted Metal fans were also on edge because while they didn't make the bottom 10, they did pretty much take up the bottom 20... but it's obviously a case of Cristine loving them and saving them, so there's that.
Other things of note, while I'm here. Burned Bridges made the bottom 10 and she kept mentioning how people just don't like browns, with the exception of the barista collection, and the whole time I'm thinking AHA! You finally admit it's brown! When it came out you tried pawning it off as orange and everyone else went dude, you tried to slip a brown into a rainbow collection!
I hadn't realized Laven-duh had been a best seller for 2022 and still got the axe in favor of them bringing out Cereal Killer. I knew it was a case of swapping one for the other but not that the original had made the top ten and still got sent packing. It explains a lot of complaints over the year.
When watching the bottom ten get revealed, it was basically a list of polishes I'd bought last year... kind of anticipating them getting the axe. Not all of them, as I truly do love Full Charge, Orange Drink, and Green Taffy and I didn't think Sonic US would be on the list at all, but I did finally buy it because I think the blue is pretty. (I do absolutely think it makes sense when people see it over white and it's fucking yellow.) But when you pick up half the bottom sellers list on sale... it makes sense. I did my part to save you. Just not well enough in some cases.
I am curious as to what the other ten polishes would've been had she gone ahead with the original plan to retire 20 polishes. More Frosted Metals? The Lite Mode collection?
Also curious as to how much certain factors like availability played in determining things. Like Zyler the Cat spent some time being completely unavailable, though I don't remember when it came back in stock. I know it was out of stock for ages in 2022 and at least the start of 2023 if memory serves. A good chunk of the barista Collection and the Chromes were also out of stock, but two of the baristas were in the top 10 anyway. It was clearly taken into consideration, but how much wiggle room did that buy some? Or how much did it affect their ability to be anywhere near the top 10? I'm also curious as to how getting rid of colors that'll now nullify the ability to get the bundle will affect the rest of the colors in that bundle. Like will getting rid of Encryption Key send Simulation to hell? Will they just reform the bundle without the missing color? That option seems most likely for Lemon Spritzer since the Rainbow bundles are so popular, but for stuff like Full Charge or Key, maybe not worth it? Ditto on taking out 2/5 Chromes, with two of the remaining 5 being out of stock a lot. Not sure on the purple, honestly. A little less so for the magnetics, though this is also taking two of theirs, but also... the magnetics have a shitty rep at this point without the cult following the Chromes do.
I should probably go through and work on swatching the rest of my HT collection soon. But not now, as now it's time to work on breakfast and then finally resume my embroidery. Mebbe?