Review: Maybelline Instant Age Rewind Eraser Dark Circles Treatment Concealer

What a mouthful, right? I picked up the Maybelline Instant Age Rewind Eraser Dark Circles Treatment Concealer last week to try out in Fair. The concealer cost me $10.50 at a local-to-me CVS which honestly is pretty crazy for a drugstore concealer. I haven't tried the eraser foundation, mostly because those spongy tips drive me nuts especially if I'm going to be using them over breakouts. With this going around the eyes, I was less worried about harboring anymore bacteria than it was already going to.

Packaging besides the weird tip is pretty standard. I actually was surprised on how small it is, the promo pics make it appear much larger (or really longer) than it is.

Aside from the whole bacteria issue, the sponge tip is pretty cool. As with most products like this, you twist the little red thing below the sponge to wind the product up. 

Maybelline claims this "Erases dark circles, puffiness and fine lines."

Those are pretty extensive claims for a concealer. I can see it erasing the dark circles, but can you really erase puffiness? Anyway...

I wore this for about 3 days when temperatures were reaching 105 with higher heat indexes. I found this lasted throughout the whole day up till taking my makeup off at night 12+ hours later.

I also found it very pigmented. Very little needed is for application and so the sponge tip can go both ways. Either you twist very little but it's more than enough to cover your eye area or you twist too much and have to rub the excess off on a paper towel. The sponge tip does make application easy. It isn't streaky and is maybe a hair too large for the under eye area if you have deeper set eyes but should work for most people.

My problems with this were two-fold.
1. As evidenced by the sponge tip, this dries a whole lot darker than it is when you first apply it. The Fair color works great in theory, till it dries. It's not super dark or super orange but just enough so for me to notice it on my skin (in the summer no less when I am slightly less pasty than normal) which bugs me.

2. It lasts a long time but it is very drying. It starts flaking about an hour after I put it on and it feels tight and uncomfortable. It's not as though you can really tell from far away but then again, for $10.50, I expect more.

Whether it lives up to the treatment claims is unknown for me, mostly because I returned this already and I didn't use it enough to see any change in my under eye area. I definitely get more results with the Garnier and that feels so wonderful and cool going on.

So I would definitely not repurchase and I already got my money back (thanks to the CVS awesome beauty return policy).

And a quick recommendation, you know how fashion bloggers say to "size up" or "size down". I would recommend getting a shade lighter and "sizing down" than you would expect to need especially if you like to buy eye concealers slightly lighter than your foundation color for a brightening effect.

Have you tried this yet? What were your thoughts?