I Just Can't Walk Away

It's time for poor financial decisions with Impy! I'll be your host, Impy, as we walk through how I caved for the HT advent calendar and the sale. To be fair, I had set aside funds for both of these things, so it wasn't a surprise beyond being surprised they were doing a calendar to begin with.

It's now since sold out, but I want to ramble on about it and the various nail spaces are being predictably grrr, argh about it and I'm not really into that right now.

We'll begin with my biggest gripe (beyond the price, we shall not speak of that), which is that they didn't offer the option of spoilers before it dropped. HT has gotten much better this year at offering full 'spoilers' for their new releases prior to their official drop, but the one time I think it was totally required, they were still in their playing coy about what you were getting. Look, I get it, people want to be surprised, but at the same time, I want to be an informed customer (a phrase they used repeatedly) and it's really fucking hard to do that when you don't share what's in the box until after it's for sale and the site is on the verge of crashing AND there's a race to check out because everyone and their hamster knew this wasn't going to make it through the weekend (I'm not sure it made it through the day?). THIS is what people who complain about FOMO marketing mean, HT.

It did not help that their spoiler page was half broken, with the zoom function not working. But like, save that shit to Pinterest and we're golden. (The zoom does work now, but it absolutely did not for launch.)

( Spoilers, Damn. )
Overall, I'm pretty happy with snagging this. I realize it's stupidly expensive for what it is, but I love the packaging, like or love nearly all the polishes, and the non-polish stuff will actually be useful, plus the minis will encourage me to actually USE the damn stuff. I hope. I'm trying to be better about that. I also don't remember the last non-cheap candy advent calendar I bought myself, so there's that. I figure once every twenty years I can splurge?

I'll have to try to remember to edit this if more dupes are found. You know, for science.

I did also partake in the sale, though I did rein myself in a little since the sale pricing on the stuff I was most interested in wasn't as good as the sale they do in the spring. I picked up a few polishes I didn't want to roll the dice on being discontinued first. I specifically caved and bought Beach Please because there's no world in which this survives the next culling unless it's because they decide they really, really want to keep a sandy beach color in stock. I'm not sure anything else in my order was an obvious "this is not long for this world" polish though. Oh, I grabbed Rainbow Snow as a backup since I've been meaning to do that for awhile and I also grabbed Camera Shy since that one is being discontinued. Everything else was just stuff I'd wanted when it first came out but didn't want to wait anymore to get. I did forget to pick up a few others (Cardinal Sins for one), but figure since the sale is ongoing and there were three Rewards changes in there (now it's two since they updated today), it gave me time for them to be in the Rewards switch and thus freebies. This week's Rewards has some I would've redeemed over the weekend if they'd been available, but I'm not sure I'd want to place an order specifically to redeem them.

Essentially, I scooped up most of the Renaissance collection, parts of the Pixel collection (rolling the dice on those being rewards), and Stop Buggin' because green flakies? Yes, please. Lest you think this is insane (it is), please consider that Impy of a year ago would've just bought these collections as they came out. This year's Impy waited to get them ON SALE.

Now I've got to curl up in a ball and convince myself that Peri-Social is only on such a deep discount because they just have a lot of her and not because they're going to discontinue her.

Anyone else start a project, get halfway through and realize HOLYSHIT, mistakes have been made?

Last night I decided to actually make good on my promise/threat to organize the nail polish collection. Bottles, not swatches. I had a rough idea of how I thought it would/should go, and my main goal was to sort through the bigger storage boxes and the overflow boxes to get the bigger collections grouped together. Basically this meant putting all the Holo Tacos, BKLs, and WFLs together, plus the Zoyas, Olive Aves, and anyone else in those storage boxes already.

I started with HT because it was the most spread out and also the storage box I knew had the most additional space. It took forever because I was trying to figure out do I group them by color (useless, self, you keep them in their cartons), how likely I am to reach for them (who wants to dig down to the bottom layer for a polish I'm likely to wear more often than say, a yellow?), or just let chaos reign? Chaos won to some degree, btw.
This is the only one I'd call a win, as I got most of the polishes in that tote and the ones that didn't make it in either live in a display on my bookshelf so they have easier access OR I put in my toppers/frequently grabbed for box. We'll come back to that in a bit.

I also used my last swatch wheel (self, order more) to swatch out Violet Nightmares vs Purple Slushie as there was conjecture that PS was retired because the two were pretty similar on the nail versus in the bottle. I gather the similarities are more pronounced in more recent bottles of PS but even mine seem pretty similar to the degree that yeah, you likely don't need both. I think PS is prettier (it's a bit brighter and if memory serves it's actually brighter on the nail vs a swatch) but VN has the better name. While I was there, I also went ahead and swatched my HT purple cremes out of curiosity. No dupes, though I think the purple from the Pastel bundle is the one most likely to be a closer dupe to one of the ones I own. Which is why I don't own it... yet.


HT done. Huzzah! I surveyed my mess and thought huh. Maybe I should stop now.


I should have.


I did not.

I should probably say that as of now, my storage "system" is three 27 gallon storage containers I got from work before they stopped selling them, two smaller storage containers that either came from work or Walmart, I don't remember (my drugstore polishes mostly go in these), and then whatever shoeboxes or larger boxes I had lying around at the time. I really do need to just get an actual storage piece for them with drawers but I've yet to find anything that speaks to my soul. I know Helmers are the go to answer, but it doesn't speak to my soul and every time someone mentions getting a new one, it's almost always paired with a complaint about how shitty they are now.


With that in mind, I decided to go ahead and put the BKL polishes as my second big bin. I have no idea how in the fuck I messed up, but I did, as when I finally called it quits HOURS later, I hadn't fit in nearly as many as I'd taken out (wtf) and it was just a mess. But at this point, I didn't realize I'd fucked up and was riding high on my HT success. Since BKL don't come in cartons, I went more of a rainbow order for them and realized holy shit, I had a type or three when it came to buying them. There was exactly ONE yellow, and that was only there because I got it in a mystery bag. I had a fair amount of reds (they make pretty reds), a respectable amount of oranges (ditto), a sizeable chunk of greens (they make my favorite green), and so many blue and purple polishes that I need to buy more swatch wheels and show you my problem. :P Seriously, so, so many blues and purples. In my small defense, I think the blues come in two categories: one very specific shade of blue in all its many variations and then every other shade of blue. Purple, however, spans so many different shades.


Thing is, when I was done with them, I couldn't get the bin to close properly and I don't know what the fuck I did wrong. I have no memory of whether I managed to sort it out or just moved the next layer to Bin 3. I think I sorted it out but I don't remember how and I'm pretty sure bin 2 still has wasted space. I KNOW Bin 3 does.

At this point I was l tired of this, pissed off at EVERYONE who told me to watch Amazon's Lisa Frank doc, and hungry but couldn't escape because nail polish as far as the eye could see. I should've just stopped, but no. I tried to push on through the last Lisa Frank ep (not realizing it was the last ep) and finish my quest.

Yeah, no. I wound up putting all the Zoyas in the large Amazon shoebox and it kinda works but some have to lay on their sides and I don't like that, nor do I like how I didn't properly rainbow them.
Bin 3 has my square bottles, including the L'oreal polishes, old WnW polishes in my fave bottle (bring them back, WnW!), Essies, Olive Aves, etc. You get the idea. At this point I THOUGHT I'd mostly cleared out the other overflow areas aside from what I could immediately see but it turns out no, no I had not, which I only found out when I started looking for rogue Essies and realized just how much random shit was left. When the LF episode ended, I wound up with two youtube videos and eventually put everything wherever I could and just shut it all down.

Future!me, I know you're reading this so lemme just say this: start with the overflow boxes. Gather all the WFL. You should probably take them out of their cartons so you can rainbow them, as you do find that more satisfying than the HT cartons, and it's not like the WFL ones have the names on them. After you've done that, either take everything out of Bin 3, have bought a proper bin 4, or grab the CB boxes you've been using as overflow and put the WFLs in there. With WFL out of the way, go back and do Pahlish and the rest of the misc indies, then see what you've got to work with. Depending on how things fit, maybe move the Essies and L'Oreals to the overflow box til another storage solution is procured.

Why the fuck I didn't do this last night, I will never know, but I'm blaming Lisa Frank's ex-husband and every asshole who said this was required viewing. It absolutely wasn't. Or maybe it was, but should have a serious trigger warning for what a giant bag of dicks he is. Lisa Frank's assholishness has been known for awhile but JFC.

Not the time, self. Not the time. Anyway, so chaos. Blergh.

On the plus side, I do enjoy going through and basically being delighted at all the pretty colors. I did grab a fair amount to wear this month and next month (and maybe March as well? I know I started to grab those but I might've put them back.) so I don't need to worry about that. Only now I've thought of at least two polishes I do want to wear next month so... crap. Luckily both are from the chaos sections.



Gonna go check on my laundry and see what the weather is up to. Can I just say how jealous I am of all the people who had winter weather? Okay, all the people who had snow. I am jealous of those people.

Anyone want an update on how the HT launch went this weekend? Because damn, was it a clusterfuck to the degree that at some point today I fully plan on watching the whole livestream just to fact check some of this.

Okay, the basics: Holo Taco does at least three full on Limited Edition sets a year, though some years have had more. You've got the Holo Royalty releases in Spring, the brand's birthday in July, and Cristine's birthday release in October. A good chunk of their other collections do have a LE box but the polishes themselves are not LE. Last month they did an 8 piece collection that wasn't LE and didn't have a box. The summer LE release sold out in a surprising amount of time but wasn't an immediate sell out. HT used to have serious problems with selling out day 1 but in the past few years did seem to have found a balance. Last year's Royalty and Brand Birthday collection were both available for months after release and people liked those, so it wasn't a case of no one wanted them.

People's issues with the brand include the leaning on FOMO marketing (and this release absolutely leaned on that, we'll get there in a minute) and how similar the shades they release are to already existing shades in the brand's lineup. Honestly both are valid criticisms and anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something or just being willfully blind. I say all this to let you know that while I love a lot of my HT polishes, I get why people do not and I do not think they're above criticism.

OH. And at the end of September/start of October, Holo Taco became available at Ulta. Not everything, but a decent selection. I mention this because they intentionally grew their audience before this release... but seemingly did not take that into consideration when forecasting their predictions for sales. :P I say seemingly because the fuck do I know?


ANYWAY. On Saturday Cass came over and hung out until a little before noon, so I missed the launch proper. I did wander over to the site and their YT stream and at the time things seemed to be going as expected. She kept repeating that they'd made a HUGE release batch but the promos for this all did say that the best sellers would be restocked. That was literally the marketing approach to this: a battle of the birthstones. Prior to release, I'm pretty sure everyone assumed that the worst sellers (based on past HT sales data) would be August's Peridot and November's Topaz. I was on for the first hour or so's sales data and sure enough those two were in the bottom three, followed by the fucking Ruby shade. (Side note: the fuck is wrong with people? Ruby there is PERFECTION AND is called Ruby, Madly, Deeply, which means I was obligated to buy it because SAVAGE fucking GARDEN!)
Top sellers were December's Tanzanite, June's Alexandrite, and May's Emerald. Sorry for capitalizing the gems but it's easier than typing the names each time. This is where things start to go sideways.

See, there was a bundle for all 12 polishes that basically got you a free polish and a half if you went ahead and got all 12, plus free shipping. There also seemed to be an ungodly high cap for these things, at 25 per polish. There's no reason for it to be so high, even with the international group buys. No one needs 25 of one polish, k? Upon release, we learned the formulas for the polishes, obviously, and December's includes blue reflective glitter which is apparently difficult to source in the quantities she'd need to bring it back, and no one at HT saw it being the best selling polish, let alone the second to sell out. During the livestream, June sells out. December follows suit. Cue the panic, right on time.

I know that when I checked at dinner time (around 6:30pm), the only polishes still available were Jan, Feb, March, October, and Nov. Overnight everything but October sold out. October is still available, btw.

People have not been happy. Multiple times they were reassured that there was a HUGE stock so you'd have time to think it over and that was apparently just not true.

Btw, this is on the polish descriptions:
Best selling Birthstone shades/customers faves will be restocked, remainder will be retired

By the time I went to bed, having ordered my collection because I just FELT it was gonna go sideways if I decided to sleep on it, she had shifted to saying that the window for getting the bundle was narrowing, but in that obvious "time has passed, people are buying" way. Not like "oh shiiiiiiiiiiiiit, y'all are nuts!" way.

One of the things that I like about HT is that they do talk about the BTS reasoning for things, like admitting they shortpacked certain colors (Nov, Aug) because of sales history while also beefing up the stock on what they assumed would be better sellers (Feb, Oct), but did so in a way that, and I'm cackling on the inside at this, would hopefully make it so they all sold out at approximately the same time.

Mission accomplished?

The thing that blows me away is how unprepared the brand was for this given how they marketed it and how they mentioned that to people of a ~cErTaIn aGe~ birthstone stuff was really, really, REALLY popular. Factor that in with getting at least some new fans from the Ulta expansion, people who only buy the LE stuff, resellers who must've had a field day with the absurdly high caps and getting a fucking discount on the bundle to boot, and the fact that these are all pretty polishes...

It's not like they were basing their sales on how Reddit and FB were reacting (poorly. The number of "you can dupe this easily!" posts before the polish formulas were unvieled was insane) so it's a bit odd. They did release a statement that basically said they didn't expect so many people to just go ahead and buy the bundle versus buying just their favorite shades. This is also where they admitted to making the most of Feb and October, with October specifically getting more because they figured people would want the new Frosted Metal* and to maybe pickup their own birthstone and Cristine's as well, plus pinks generally do well for polish companies. Not sure that's true for HT though because their pinks are...weird, but anyway.

Ma'am, you spent the last what, week/week and a half hyping this as a battle so people would be ready to buy, buy, buy and then were all surprised when that's what they did?

I really do think the bundle pricing had a lot to do with the sales on it, as people figured like I did "wtf, I like them all, might as well." Without that, they might've sold more like they originally planned. Then again, I could be wrong. Thing is, HT fans have serious FOMO and when the last LE collection sells out sooner than anyone anticipated, it makes total sense that people would pounce on the newest LE to avoid getting caught unaware again, y'know? Pretty sure that happened last year with the Safiya collab (that sold out in under an hour, one of the items going in like under 15 minutes) and then the seasonal Halloween crackle topper and GITD polishes both sold out pretty damn fast because people didn't trust them to last. So they didn't. Seriously, panic buying isn't a new thing, guys.

The only reason I'm not pissed as shit is because I listened to my shoulder devil who said fuck it, you already planned to do this, so you might as well.


Because here's the thing: when I looked at the listings/swatches for each polish, I wasn't sold on a good chunk of them.

( Thoughts on the polishes themselves. )

Overall, I think the collection was/is very pretty and I get why it's so popular. It suckered me in and I clearly have/had some issues with some of the formulas, but even the shades I'm not in love with, I get why someone else would be or why it was done that way. I mean, I still think Topaz Tears would be 100% prettier as a glitter though.

But the brand forgot to cancel/didn't see the point in cancelling their promo emails, like the battle of the polishes email sent yesterday when the only polish left was Birthday Brat. This isn't the first time they've done this and their fans still don't like it. I love that people are only bringing up the Julien collab, but I know it happened for the thermals and the Safiya collab (that one I don't think they got as much flak for because they did restock and it was a surprise sell out to them, but shouldn't have been given Safiya's fanbase but whatever), and I'm pretty sure the seasonal stuff last year, too. Basically someone at the brand ain't thinking shit through.

Oh, and by the time most of the PR/swatcher videos went up, at least two of the polishes had sold out, if not more. There was ONE I know made it up before that happened, but it's not a swatcher I watch (nothing personal) so I didn't watch that one.

On the plus side, any asshole who now tries to say HT doesn't push FOMO marketing "anymore" can get easily smacked down with just the words "Birthstone Collection." I might add bitch at the end for fun. This on the back of the thermal collection? Yeah. No, get fucked, stans. Seriously lost track of the number of people trying to defend this release's marketing prior to the absolute implosion but I lowkey wanna go back and see if any of them either deleted or ate their words because daaaaaaaaaaaaamn. We fucking told you so.

eta: I'd originally planned to watch the stream and then edit in things where they belong but I talk too much and my god, this stream was/is damn near 5 hours and I have a sinus headache that is stubbornly sticking around. BOO.

Anyway, the stream starts at 11am, the lauch happens at 11:30am, probably actually a minute or two earlier because Shopify almost always starts early. An hour and a half in there's word that there will be a sellout likely on stream but the polish isn't named to avoid making it sell out sooner.
2 and a half hours in, the first polish sells out and she does warn people then that a) there's no guarantee that they'll be able to source the components to restock June or any of the more difficult polishes (December for sure), and b) mentions that the other two top sellers (December, May) aren't too far behind in the sellout predictions. At 3 hours and 49 minutes (god bless these editors), December goes buhbye.

The big issues here are that at no point before the launch did they make it crystal clear that there would likely be supply issues that would prevent certain shades from coming back, even if they were the best sellers and the company's cap per bottle was way too high for a LE launch. I get not wanting to say hey, *specific shades* are not likely to come back because we can't get more of the components because that would've caused them to sell out even faster, but being more upfront and issuing the warning she did at the hour and a half mark about certain, not named, shades being harder to bring back during the marketing phase? Would've solved a LOT of anger issues. It's one thing to be told "hey, buy your favorites and we'll bring them back!" and one thing to be told after you do so that hey, you bought/liked the ones we can't bring back, so sad/too bad.

Or, alternatively, be careful what you wish for because you just might get it re: wanting a near uniform sellout.

Ugh, 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.

( Listen to me blather for eons. )
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?

Update on the log all polishes project. Tell me why after *looks* 320 polishes I decided I should've been noting any of the collection names and release dates. WHY. I may abandon this any second as I've really only done it for like four polishes.

Anyway, before we hit the purples proper, we're at 322.

Oops.

Further proof that I am nothing if not inconsistent, I went out of my way to describe various shades of blue, green, and even the yellows and oranges, but most of the reds are listed as "Red."

Last leg of this project... before I can go through and figure out who needs to be swatched. One thing at a time, self.

My Target order finally arrived. I am a bit irked about it running late but I won't fuss too terribly much about it since COVID and holiday messes are still likely for such things. But also maybe don't travel from Georgia to North Carolina and then circle back to SC?

No, the real annoyance was grabbing the box from the wall (where it was guaranteed to get soaked with the next rain band as well as being Super Fucking Obvious to any porch pirates wandering through, Fedex)and realizing I could hear the glass bottles clinking against one another. Unlike my Halloween Essie order, this one had them just thrown in a box with some of the air pillow stuff that allowed them to shift so they were all in the same corner of the box and only a miracle kept them from breaking. Two of the bottles did chip, but not in a cut yourself or even really notice it beyond running your hand over the bottle looking for flaws. Naturally they were the two colors I was already kind of regretting. I'll take pictures tomorrow, but You Know The Espadrille and Madrid It For The 'Gram are both more washed out than I was expecting. In the bottle, anyway. Not sure if that'll be the same on the nail or not, and Mom was eying one or both of them when I was telling her my mini tale of shipping woe. Target was kind enough to give me a partial refund and since I was just trying to get it on record not to ship glass without padding it properly, that was nice.

Wink of Sleep is definitely purple in the bottle, btw. Tomorrow we'll swatch things on my wheel of fun. Not my nails because I finally have them all the same color which I would normally link but uh, it's sold out and I'm too tired to hunt down a blog with swatches. Holo Taco's Got Cake? is way prettier than I thought it would be and I kind of regret not getting a second bottle but I also bought it because it was LE and I didn't want to decide later that I wish I'd gotten it. The promo pictures didn't do much for me but on my nails it's like fairy frosting. Which makes sense to midnight!me but morning me is going to have questions, I'm sure.

Mom's nearly done with her home health stuff. I wonder if they'll come and take the accessories on the last day of her regular nurse coming or if someone else will grab 'em all special like. *muse* More on things tomorrow.

Ozma and I are off to watch Netflix. ♥

( shitty pics are pics all the same. )

Dear Zoya, please have a half off or 70% sale when I have money. Probably in November. There are many a shiny I would like to buy but lack funds.

Also, I'm waiting to see color comparisons on a few so I don't wind up repeating my Sedona/Kalista goof from last year.

Now I'm going to find something to listen to while I paint the nails that did not survive work last night. I've gotten a fair number of compliments this week on my nails and I'm thinking it's Zyler the Cat (holographic glitter orange) but it could be the combo as the left hand had Essie's Broom With A View and the right hand had Essie's Like A Charm and both are fairly dark. I'm going to go with Zoya's Isa to replace the Essie on the right hand. Left ones are still holding on and I hate breaking out the acetone if I don't have to.

One more week (+1 day) til vacation.