Revlon Lash Potion Mascara — Should You Fall Under Its Spell?

Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn, and cauldron bubble! The masterminds at Revlon seem to have taken a cue from Macbeth, hoping to create a mascara formula that will make lashes appear longer and thicker, allowing you to cast a spell simply by batting your eyelashes. In keeping with the magical theme used to market the Revlon Lash Potion by Grow Luscious Volume + Length Mascara ($7.99 at mass food and drug retailers), the tube is wrapped with an adhesive metallic paper featuring scattered dots in shades of emerald green, sapphire blue, cosmic violet, and gradations of magenta, these spots reminiscent of the atomic compositions you’d see when peering through a compound microscope. The screw-off cap, meanwhile, is a metallic magenta hue, completing the enchanting theme.

 Let’s face it: packaging like this is hard to resist — especially when most drugstore brand mascaras are packaged in ho-hum solid colors (be it yellow, orange, or silver). But the adage “it’s what’s on the inside that matters” is as true of mascaras as it is of human beings.  So does the potion within this spellbinding tube have magical properties?

It’s a bit of a mixed bag. The mascara is richly pigmented so that even one coat goes a long way in creating a more dramatic lash line and highlighting those gorgeous little hairs framing your peepers. It also does make lashes look thicker, which is fantastic if you’re looking for a volumizing mascara. In terms of length, while it claims to deliver “supernatural length,” the mascara really doesn’t take lashes to such heights as, say, Clinique’s High Lengths Mascara (one of my absolute favorite mascaras to create the illusion of lashes that seem to go on for miles and miles).

Now, let’s move on to the brush. If you gravitate towards heftier brushes, you’ll appreciate the density and thickness of the Illusionist Wand, which features a triple groove bristle brush designed to instantly deposit mascara on lashes (requiring less coats), maximize volume, and eliminate clumping. The brush successfully accomplishes the first two feats — it does, in fact, deliver a nice amount of color with a single swipe and, as mentioned before, it does create a nice amount of volume. It doesn’t, however, completely eradicate any clumping. It doesn’t promote clumping either, but it doesn’t separate lashes as successfully as, say, Givenchy’s Phenomen’Eyes mascara (arguably my favorite mascara). I kept getting frustrated because, even after curling my lashes and brushing them through, I’d apply the mascara and there would be one area along the lashline with a disproportionate amount of mascara, one area that was just a bit too goopy and requires some clean-up. Personally, I prefer to sacrifice some of the volume if it means cleaner-looking, more natural lashes.

Check out what the brush looks like up close:

Now, so far, these have all been minor flaws. Perhaps the biggest gripe I have with this mascara pertains to its tube. Now, most mascaras are designed so that, regardless of how wide or long their tubes are, there’s a built-in mechanism below the opening of the tube that works to squeeze off any excess mascara so that, once the wand is pulled out completely, the applicator isn’t a gooey, sticky, clumpy mess. This smaller opening, hidden beneath the actual tube opening, is the reason why, when you initially try to pull the mascara wand out of its tube, you sense a bit of resistance.

Unfortunately, the Revlon Lash Potion mascara’s funnel-like device is entirely too wide, so that it really doesn’t do much to clean off that excess mascara from the plush applicator brush. Instead, the opening looks like a black hole of sorts and, without a more effective system to prevent excess mascara from moving upward, the rim of the tube gets dirty and gooey rather quickly (as shown in the photo below).

Granted, you can clean the tube every time you use the mascara, but that’s a bit of a headache. And, then, of course, there’s the worst part of this design flaw: the brush applicator itself tends to catch some of this excess, which you, in turn, need to wipe off rather swiftly to avoid a mascara malfunction. The photo below is a perfect example:

All in all, this is a sound mascara, but it doesn’t quite reach greatness levels — a real shame given that, with just a few tweaks, it could very well be magical.