Hard Candy Nail Polish in Beetle

Does anyone else miss the old Hard Candy line? I loved it when Sephora carried it, and then it disappeared all of the sudden! It's been resurrected at a drugstore price point exclusively through Walmart, and while there are certainly products I like in this line, it's not the same as the old Hard Candy... However, there are still products worth checking out! Like the original Hard Candy line, the new Walmart exclusive line has a gaggle of funky nail polish colors. I normally stick to reds and metallics, with infrequent forays into pink, but Beetle caught my eye; it's an oil-slick kind of iridescent, flashing olive green, purple, and sometimes hinting at teal depending on the light and angle, with gold shimmer throughout. These all come shrink wrapped, so you know no one else has tried your bottle in the store, and they also come with a hard plastic novelty ring; Beetle's was a metallic purple heart. Hard Candy does not do animal testing. These are available online for $4, although I think my bottle in the store was $5, and they come with .35 ounces of product.  I found mine relatively easy to apply, going mostly opaque in two coats. Once I got into bright sunlight, I noticed there were some areas that could have used a third coat; next time I'll either do three thin coats or two heavy ones. I used a L'Oreal base coat and Seche Vite top coat, and this color stayed on my nails maybe a day longer than what is average for me (I find "average wear time" very subjective, based on experience, so let's just go with slightly better than average, rather than trying to quantify this with a number of days). I don't experience any trouble with the packaging or brush, even if it's not the best I've ever used; the handle isn't a particularly easy shape to grip, but it's fine, and the handle isn't so long that big drips form; the brush is about average. It gets the job done, but doesn't make application easier than usual.

This color was really difficult to photograph; bear in mind that the dark parts look more olive green in real life, and that while the brighter areas have the purple-pink shimmer, in lower light it tends to just look like a darker purple.

Hard Candy "Just Nails" nail color in Beetle

Hard Candy Beetle, no flash

Hard Candy Beetle, flash

Hard Candy Beetle no flash again, a different angle!

Rating: 6 out of 10

The formula is fine, but nothing special. If these were run of the mill colors, I wouldn't go out of my way to purchase Hard Candy's formulation. However, the colors Hard Candy offers are really neat, and I like that they are doing some funkier shades at this price point. Beetle is definitely something different, and I look forward to wearing it on my toes this summer! It's eye catching and flashy, and looks great in sunlight. I feel like a lot of iridescent colors that are supposed to have an oil-slick effect end up looking muddy on the nail, but Beetle gets as close to succeeding as anything I've seen yet!