Walmart Beauty Kits: A Long Winded Review. a.k.a. “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” ― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

Alright kids, this is going to be a doozy, you uh, you might want to grab your coffee for this one. I'm sure I've stated on more than one occasion how much I hate stepping into Walmart. I just don't have the patience anymore for the lines, the crowds, the people asking me how pregnant I am and me being forced to explain I'm not pregnant, it's just baby weight. They don't need to know the baby is 9 months old. And then after such exchanges I just end up wasting a shit load more on apple cider and chocolate or frozen pizza bites as comfort food. Not worth it.

Last weekend though, the planets aligned and suddenly it was worth it. I was skulking through My Subscription Addiction one day and I stumbled across a post announcing Walmart would have beauty boxes. "Oh ha ha, that's great, are these the usually $5 boxes that are mostly foil packets and forgettable?" "No bitch, but that was cute. Remember that money you were promising yourself you wouldn't spend? Mine now. Let's roll." ...And so it goes. There were numerous other kits, these just happen to be the two that caught my attention.

Too Many Target Beauty Boxes (Pt. 1): April 2018

Oh my god, let’s take this all the way back to April for a bit.

Every month Target releases at least one beauty box that ranges in cost from $5 to $10. Let’s be honest, they are usually pretty underwhelming and as a result, I only buy one that piques my interest every 2 to 3 months. The good thing about these boxes is that they are stuffed with items you can find in Target stores or online. The downside is that they are usually extremely generic products (so as to reach a wider audience) or just entirely underwhelming because they are not innovative in the slightest.

This is going to be a mega post of sorts, covering two boxes I purchased back in April and two I bought in July (after writing 6 pages in Microsoft Word I had to just break this into two different posts).

ELF: Same sh*t, new packaging

I don't think I've ever fallen out of love with a brand as hard as I have with ELF. Yet another sleepless night where I find myself perusing their new items and online swatches and I just can't care anymore. They've released their Beautifully Bare and Aqua Beauty lines that have been out for over a year now, and now there's the new Beautifully Precise line that is comprised of tools. I've whined some time back about my theory that they are rebranding to increase prices and phase out their Essentials line, or at the very least whittle it down to the bare bones, thus eliminating the one thing that appealed to me as a company: the super affordability. I used to have no problem spending $1-3 on something that might be incredible or could be total shit. I mean, I would be disappointed if a formula or shade was awful on me but at that cost it wouldn't kill me to pass it on to someone who could actually use it. If their products are (now) no cheaper than your basic drugstore line and my experience with their products is so splotchily hit or miss in the past, I have zero desire to branch out and drop money to try their new products. I can be perfectly content with their items I've fallen in love with in the past. At least the packaging is sleek and pretty?