Review: Daiso Skin Products Part I

Say what? Ada's doing another review? Yehp. You got that right.

This one's actually been requested by a fangirl friend of mine so I went ahead and did a review of a few Daiso beauty products I picked up earlier. I'll be splitting this up into two parts for review, so keep reading and stay tuned!

From left to right, I have in my hands the Daiso Natural Nose Pack, Charcoal Natural Pack and Charcoal Cleansing Cream. These all cost me 85 PHP, or more or less 2USD each. Pretty much a steal, but do they really live up to some of the hype they've been receiving (1) (2) (3), or do you get what you pay for? Excuse my fugly hair. I tied it up into a bun so it wouldn't bother me while I was reviewing but it ended up looking like I chopped all my hair off.

The Packaging. Why is Japanese Packaging always so cute?

So let's start with the Charcoal Cleansing Cream. Consistency-wise it's more of a hybrid of a gel and cream than a cream itself. It comes out of the bottle a rather unsightly grey with small specks of black in it (click pictures to enlarge), but otherwise it's quite normal.

Description: Small tiny halls of charcoal absorb dust or pollution. It helps to clean dust from skin pores and to make up.


Okay, so I'm assuming the description means balls of charcoal. Personally, I find the Engrish quite endearing.

Scientific Basis (skip if you're not into this kind of stuff): 
Engrish aside, the basis of this product, and the one I'll be reviewing later lies on the capacity of activated charcoal to act as a micromolecular sponge. Because activated charcoal is porous in nature, the high surface area actually allows sediments to bind to the tiny holes by chemical adhesion. In fact, activated charcoal is often used in water filtration for organic contaminants. You know what other organic contaminants there are? The oil and sebum in your face. So basically, this cleansing cream should theoretically work in two ways: 1) through physical adsorption (scrubbing) of contaminants in your face. This would include stray oils and small particulate contaminants like dust and makeup and 2) through chemical adhesion to remnant contaminants. I hope that didn't come off as too nerdy. Learn more about activated carbon/charcoal here.

Aside from the cleansing properties, the cream also has an aspect of moisture in it judging by it s consistency and the fineness of the particulate charcoal.

I mentioned once before that it had an odd smell to it and while the predominant smell was floral in nature, there was a rather prominent smell of plastic once applied. It reminded me of one of the skin products my mother had purchased for me in Thailand when I was in high school for my then quite annoying skin problem and while it did work, the smell sort of bothered me. I'm guessing this product uses the same formulation because of the similar smell.

Directions: Squeeze proper amount of the cleansing on hand and wipe out with tissue. *We recommend a charcoal cleansing foam which is bought separately after using it.

Uh so yeah. I lost the cleansing foam. Seriously. I BOUGHT IT, BUT - I lost it. To be completely honest, I don't think it would have done much for me anyway :P I'll tell you guys a secret: I don't actually even use facial wash =_= I just end up using my Olay body wash on my face ahaha. I know it's a bad habit, but it's worked for me all these years, plus the exfoliating beads are quite handy. But I digress.

Since this is a cream, it's not exactly meant to be left on your skin for a long time. Thus, a word of caution. This is not only true for this cream but for other cleansing creams meant for exfoliation and or particulate absorption: leaving it on doesn't guarantee everything gets absorbed/removed. In fact, it's the other way around. There's a greater chance of the product settling into your pores and clogging them instead, so the trick is to actually massage the product on your face in a gentle circular motion to keep the product and particulates mobile, not allowing them to settle in. And then you immediately wipe it off with a soft cloth or wipe. Unless it is stated that a product must be left on, DON'T LEAVE IT ON. It's that simple.

After the initial apprehension and a full week of use, I can probably say that for the price, it does what it says it does. Because it's a cream/gel it does leave my face feeling supple and moisturized, but I never use this before I'm about to go out in fear of total oil-face. I've ended up using this as my makeup remover instead of my much more expensive Olay remover. But my Pond's Cold Cream is still my staple.

As you can probably not tell by the picture, my skin's noticably more moisturized and after each application I end up having that healthy glow. Because I didn't have the foresight to snap a before photo, let me just testify with my honest word that the skin on my nose doesn't peel anymore after regular use of this product haha. I think that's the only major thing that came out of my use of this. In fact, I'm sure if I'd have been as diligent with any other moisturizer application as I had with this one, I'd have the same results. It's just that I'm a complete slob and utterly lazy when it comes to proper skin care. I should change that, but to be completely honest, my skin isn't actually sensitive to anything except vigorous exfoliation. But what sets this cream apart from all the other moisturizers that might have worked in just the same way as this one is that this doubles as a cleanser/makeup remover and that you get an entire tube for just 85 pesos. Haha. Yehp, I think that's pretty worth it.

Overall: This gets 3/5. It's nothing spectacular, but it's cheap, and the its cleansing action is backed up by science, which I like. (Srsly, all those moisturizers with GOLD BEADS etc etc are bullcrap. Research people, research)

Stay tuned for the next review in which I'll be featuring the two peel masks that have been receiving a lot of hype lately :) Hope this helped! :)