Nivea Sun Protect Water Milk Mild SPF50+ PA+++

With the weather warming up really fast and the sun is back out in full blast, I went nuts restocking my sunscreen supply having only a few bottles left from 2016 when hubby and I lugged a boat load home from Tokyo. One of those old bottles from 2016 is this 30mL Nivea Sun Protect Water Milk Mild SPF50+ PA+++.

Since 2016, unfortunately both the Nivea Sun Protect Plus UV Waterproof UV Milk as well as the Creamy UV Essence have been discontinued (white packaging was from 2015, blue packaging was from 2016), leaving only this Milk Mild available and even then, it too has been repackaged, though I'm not sure if the formulation has changed. The newest players in the family are now Creme Care UV Cream, UV Milky Gel, Zero Feeling UV Lotion, and a reformulation and repackaging of the men's line UV Protector. I've picked up a couple bottles of each and hopefully won't take years to go through them all, so stay tuned for these.

Anyway, I was reading up on sunscreens recently and learned many new things, the most important of which are that:
1. Thanks to FDA rulings that took effect the summer of 2012, the word "sunscreens" has since come to encompass both physical blockers and reflectors as well as the chemical absorbers, giving rise to the terms "physical sunscreens" and "chemical sunscreens," both of which are confusing as hell to me as I've been out of the North American sunscreen market for 12+ years. More on this later, in a different post.
2. Within the past couple of years, some studies have found that octinoxate and oxybenzone can be toxic to both humans and the environment, in particular the coral reefs where many humans like to frolic after having slathered on sunscreens with said active ingredients.
3. With the exception of a very few, all the sunscreens I've stocked up and been using on myself, hubby, and our little one contain octinoxate. GAH *head desks*

Well guess what, (unless I missed it along the list of ingredients--please do correct me!) this Milk Mild happens to be one of those very few sunscreens that is octinoxate-free, how incredible is that? Even better, it's alcohol-free and yet amazingly enough, to me it feels absolutely no different than those loaded with alcohol. It sets quickly and gives a completely powdery matte finish. WOAH.

The catch (and you know there's always a catch, right?) is the opacity. It's a very opaque white milk with its two main active ingredients being zinc oxide (酸化亜鉛) and titanium dioxide (酸化チタン). It leaves a visible white cast on my medium-fair complexion, and after a few hours, this white cast started to shift around in white patches. I suspect there may be some kind of powder in its ingredients, but either way it exacerbates the dry patches on my dry-combo skin. Once, I thought to try it on top of Pixi Beauty Rose Flash Balm, which was a big mistake because the balm was already mattefying to begin with, and layering two mattefying products on top of each other meant my whole face glued and caked up. DAMMIT.

 
Welp, onto to mixing cocktails I went. As usual, the first mixing candidate was the Allie gel. I mixed 30 drops of Nivea Mild with 5 loops of Allie, and that got me a milk so thick it was almost a runny cream. This runny cream then went on thick and left me with a pasty, white mask. Thankfully, the white cast more or less disappeared after it set, leaving a finish that was still matte but less powdery.

But I still didn't like how thick it was and how pasty it felt going on, so I introduced yet a third sunscreen to thin it out some. I didn't fall back on Sunkiller Perfect Strong Moisture though. I wanted to try something new and so I picked Anessa Perfect UV Sunscreen Aqua Booster Mild (reformulated and repackaged as Perfect UV Sunscreen Mild Milk in 2018, will review next), which is also octinoxate and alcohol-free. I reduced Nivea Milk Mild to 20 drops, add 10 drops of Anessa Mild, and finally 5 loops of Allie. This gave me a milk still thick but not cream-like, and it went on much less pasty and set faster to a dewy matte finish. Yeshhh!