Needle in a Haystack: My Quest for Maybelline Great Lash Limited Edition Shades

Since I became a stay-at-home mother, I’ve found ways to indulge my love for beauty and fashion while still saving money.  I shop online sales often, and you already know about how I maximize my beauty purchases.  If I find a drugstore brand that works as well (or better) than a department store brand, I will gladly switch products.  That’s how I fell in love with Maybelline Great Lash Mascara, and why I was so excited when I first saw this ad in magazines this summer.

For the month of August, Maybelline has released four fun, colored shades of their best-selling mascara.  You can see the advertisements in all the magazines and read about the colors online.  There are even makeup tutorials featuring the colors (Pop of Purple, Blink of Blue, Go Go Green, and Totally Teal) on YouTube.  I particularly like this lesson.  Colored eyelashes have been seen on the runways at Fashion Week and are becoming a little more mainstream, so I thought it would be fun to try a bit of purple for myself, just to see if I could pull it off.

Well, easier said than done!  I guess I blinked, because, while it seems Maybelline has gone to great lengths to publicize their well-timed, limited edition mascara campaign, they overlooked the beauty junkies of Austin, Texas and its surrounding areas.  After a thorough search of my local drug and grocery stores that left me empty-handed, I began a one-woman phone campaign that caused the annoyance of all the cosmetic managers in Central Texas, a few Maybelline customer representatives, and one very patient young man at some store in New Jersey who calmly entered the colors’ names into his computer while trying not to laugh.  Over the course of two days’ worth of naptimes, I spent hours on the phone trying to locate these limited-edition colors,  all to no avail!

Most of my interactions with cosmetic counter managers went a little something like this. (Warning: Not appropriate for children or the workplace.)

On one hand, I completely understand her frustration and desire to amuse herself at the customer’s expense.  I worked retail; I’ve been there.  On the other, though, what’s a girl got to do to find a six dollar bottle of purple mascara?  I followed all of Maybelline’s suggestions, called the numbers they gave me, checked on the status of truck orders, waited while salesclerks checked their storage inventory, and jumped through hoop after hoop, for nothing.

There’s not a single bottle of this mascara in the Austin area.  I know, because I’ve looked.

I even enlisted the help of the members of my online mother’s forum, but their efforts have been unsuccessful, too. I was able to track down one bottle of Pop of Purple from a seller on Amazon, for almost twice the price after shipping, and it arrived in the mail this past weekend.  If not for that, I would doubt the actual existence of this product.

Since my lashes are fairly dark, the effect is somewhat muted, and appears almost gray-purple, seen here with my Laura Mercier Caviar Stick Eye Color in Amethyst and my Chantecaille eye liner.

Still, it’s a fun look to try and I’m keeping my eyes out for the Totally Teal.  I’m not holding my breath, though, and Maybelline has not heard the last of me!  If they refuse to provide popular products to this area of the country, I’ll simply have to shop elsewhere.  Sephora has its  own line of colored mascara, and I’ve got a gift card that’s burning a hole in my pocket.

Have you seen these colored mascaras in your local drugstore?  If so, I’d love to hear where!

**Update:  After this post was written, but before I published it, one of my mother’s forum members located the mascaras at a Target store in Niagara Falls, New York.  This helps to support my theory that the products were shipped to California and New York, and that’s about it.