Updated Too Faced Chocolate Bar Palette Review

 

Two years ago today as I write this, I posted my First Impressions on the Too Faced Chocolate Bar palette. I wanted to do an updated review on it, since I now have a better understanding of what I look for in my makeup, and that initial post no longer reflects my opinions as well!

First up: I wrote in my first post that I felt the chocolate scent wasn't very strong. I don't know if I had a cold that day or if the scent gets stronger with use but I can definitely smell it as soon as I open the lid now, and I love that. It really is a gorgeous, chocolatey scent.

I do still stand by my point as well that the packaging is beautifully designed and the metal tin feel sturdy and luxurious. That said, something to do with the seal of mine has broken, and the tin is very easy to open now. I don't travel with it often and as far as I can remember, I've never dropped it, so I don't know how that's happened. It's possible that the hinge or magnet gives out over time.

I have a little bit of beef with this palette. I find that the majority of the shades aren't very pigmented at all when applied with a brush. In my first post, you can see finger swatches where the shades look perfectly fine, but since I typically don't apply eyeshadow with my fingers, I find it very frustrating that I don't get a good colour payoff when using brushes.

I like the shade 'White Chocolate' - it's very smooth and finely milled, and I use it often to set my eyeshadow primer. The shade 'Salted Caramel' is a nice light brown matte. I find it blendable and buildable and it looks really pretty. Shimmery champagne shade 'Marzipan' is another one I like. It's again very pretty and applies nicely. It goes very well with 'Salted Caramel' as well. And 'Champagne Truffle' makes for a very nice inner corner highlight, or indeed a full face highlight if you use a fan brush.

While I do like the way 'Amaretto', 'Hazelnut', and 'Haute Chocolate' look on the eye, there's no need for all three of them at all. They all look almost identical on the eye. If I chose 'Amaretto', I wanted that reddish-brown, not just generic brown shimmer. And the same goes for 'Hazelnut' which looks like a nice rich brown and 'Haute Chocolate' which looks like a perfect chocolatey brown in the pan. They're interchangable, and that's really disappointing.

The remaining matte shades are 'Milk Chocolate', 'Semi-Sweet', 'Triple Fudge', and 'Cherry Cordial'. Again, I find the pigmentation to be rather poor, and the blendability isn't good. In some places they stick, in some places they blend away to nothing, and in all places they just become muddy and unattractive on the eyelid. 'Cherry Cordial' in particular makes me sad, because the reason I chose the Chocolate Bar palette and not the Semi Sweet is because of that burgundy shade. WHAT BURGUNDY SHADE? It looks rich and red in the pan, and like a muddy brown the second you try to apply it.

'Gilded Ganache', 'Black Forest Truffle', and 'Creme Brulee' look nice in the pans, but not on the eye. In particular, I find that 'Gilded Ganache' and 'Black Forest Truffle' have a gritty texture and the glitter that you see in the pan is nowhere to be found on the eyelid. 'Creme Brulee' isn't guilty of the same.

The final shades I have to talk about are 'Strawberry Bon Bon' and 'Candied Violet', and honestly there's no nice way to say it: in my opinion, these shadows are just bad. 'Strawberry Bon Bon' gives practically no colour payoff whatsoever, and you can kind of see in the photos just how badly it sealed up in the pan. And 'Candied Violet' looks nothing like what is promised in the pan. The pink purple glitter? Gone. The blue base? Just a gross brown. It also sealed up very badly as well.

Honestly, while there are things I love about this palette, such as the scent, the packaging, and the shades I mentioned before, it's honestly disappointed me a lot. It's just so hard to make so many of the shades look good. I shouldn't have to work as hard as I do with this palette.

And that's not all to say that I dislike all Too Faced powder products. The Sweet Peach Glow is beautiful - I use that blusher and highlighter all the time and love it. The Sweet Peach palette is also much better than this one. I just don't feel confident and comfortable in recommending the Too Faced Chocolate Bar palette to my readers; in my experience, it has a lot of issues.