Softymo Super Eye Makeup Remover

I've been using this Softymo Super Eye Makeup Remover for a while now, not wanting to bother with rinsing my face after wiping off eye makeup with BeautyMate Aqua Makeup Removing Wipe. Plus using a whole sheet of wipe for just my eyes seems wasteful.

Softymo Super Eye Makeup Remover is an unscented milky emulsion that's supposed to be gentle, taking eye makeup off without drying or irritating the eye area. Also, there is no need to rinse my face afterwards, which is what I look for in an eye makeup remover (otherwise I wouldn't bother with it and just wash my face off with an oil cleanser!). And although it says eye makeup remover, it can also be used for lips. Other pluses include the fact that it's more affordable, being a few hundred yens for a huge 230 mL bottle that will probably take me months to use up since I only need a small dollop at a time. Despite the fact that I prefer the dual-layer liquid eye makeup removers like Lancome Bi-Facil, between this big bottle and several others that were half the size and twice the price, I couldn't help but giving this a chance. The Cosme Award (from Cosme.net, a sprawling Japanese cosmetics and skincare information and reviews site) sticker on the bottle definitely helped my purchasing decision!

But oh boy, I think I found an instance of false advertisement in a Japanese drug store item! I went home and checked out this award thing and discovered that the Cosme Award was really for the 2008-2009 formulation of this product that had been discontinued. Worse, the 2010 formulation I have is actually very poorly rated on the same board! WTF?!? Technically it's the same product by name, but given they had changed the formulation and discontinued the old ones, it's outrageous that they slyly "transferred" the same award onto the new formulation despite its actual poor ratings! And I fell for it, which is exactly what they wanted! Grrr... Given the old formulation was so well rated and they discontinued it, only to put something else crappy in its place, this counts as another instant of dumb decision Japanese cosmetics companies make, and I'm not happy to say they make decisions like these surprisingly more often than I'd expect any profit-minded company would.

Anyway, I was still curious about the product's actual performance and why the formulation is so poorly rated so I wasn't about to throw it out or anything. Sadly, one try was all it took to see why the new formula sucks. Sure, it took my eye makeup off, but it also burned the hell out of my eyes! This eye makeup remover is unfortunately tricky to use, solely because I have to avoid getting it into my eyes, which is kind of difficult since I am trying to remove eye liners and makeup long the tear lines. And when I say it burns, I don't mean it burns a little. It actually burns a lot and is quite painful! So it's very unfortunate, but an eye makeup remover that burns your eyes is a rather true and counterintuitive description for this new formulation of the Softymo Super Eye Makeup Remover. I'm sure there are other eye makeup removers out there that burns your eyes too, but luckily I haven't encountered one, until now, that is. The BeautyMate and both the Lancome ones never bothered my eyes at all!

On an entirely different note, I am including a picture of the back of the bottle because it has Braille on it! How neat is that?