Product Review

As promised a couple of Saturdays ago, here is my product review of 24.7 Skincare Instant Plump Volumizing Lip Shine.

First, I must confess that I swiped the picture on the left off of CVS's website. My original purchase came all nice & tidy in a lovely red hot little box. Very well packaged, professional and sleek. Something of which the executives at 24.7 (or whoever owns them) must be proud. My initial good impression only lasts so long, however. Truth be told, I have issues with packaging:


I'm dealing with it, okay? Let's move on.

I usually don't set out to purchase lip plumpers. My lips are just fine, thank you very much. But I had a $5 off coupon, plus this brand came with an ECB (Extra Care Buck) offer and I like trying out new products for either mega-cheap or free. These elements combined resulted in this little gem finding it's way home with me. Regular retail price is $19.99. I purchased it for $4.99 but because I paid with Extra Bucks, I really got it for free. In all honesty, if it weren't for the big FREE price tag, I never would've given this product a second look.

I took it home and decided to give it a thoroughly scientific test drive and record my findings. Are you ready? Yeah, you're on the edge of your seat, I can tell. Approximately, ten seconds after application, I began to feel a cool burning sensation around the outer edge of my lips. A little scary, but nothing too alarming. Yet.

After about two minutes, the "sensation" started to HURT! For those of you unfamiliar with the parts of the body that are not supposed to burn, this is in the "not good" category. I literally refrained from kissing my baby boy for fear his little cheeks would start to burn. After about four minutes, the burning started to dissipate and was back to the tolerable "cool burning" sensation after that. Several minutes later, it was completely gone.

Here are my lips before 24.7 Instant Plump:

Here are my lips after 1 minute:
And here they are after 5 minutes:
I do see a mild transformation. But what I want to know is: Are they really plumper? Or do they just appear that way because of the small amount of blood rushing to the outer edges in response to the burning?

Whenever I checked myself in the mirror *cougheverytwominutescough*, they really did seem a bit plumper. I liked the way they looked but, to be honest, I couldn't say they looked any different than when I apply my $1.99 Bonnie Bell lip gloss. All lipstick and gloss give the appearance of fuller lips. Isn't that one of the reasons we buy them? And as I went about my day running errands, doing this & that, I was quite disappointed that no one mistook me for Angelina Jolie (you know, like they usually do). For 20 bucks spent on lips, I want to be mistaken for someone! Geesh! Even getting confused with Sandra Bernhard would've meant SOMETHING!

And here they are at the end of the day:

I kid! I kid! *heehee*

The final analysis is this: For $20 I want a lip plumper to have a little more plump in it. Oh, and I also would like for it NOT to burn! That's always a plus, as far as I'm concerned. Maybe the test subjects who first gave this product a whirl feel differently, I don't know. What I do know is this:

Because of price, pain and plumplessness, I give 24.7 Skincare Instant Plump Volumizing Lip Shine 1 out of 5 Mommy Kisses.