We’ve blogged before about expiration dates for cosmetics and how most well formulated products are good for many years. However, that doesn’t mean everything you find on store shelves is still usable.
Clean & Clear Catastrophe
Case in point – I was in one of the popular discount “dollar stores” this weekend and happened to find this bottle of Revlon Clean & Clear conditioner.
Clean & Clear, for those of you not old enough to remember, was one of the many products to cash in on the “clear” product craze of the 90′s. At that time “clear” was thought to by synonymous with “pure” so EVERYBODY was trying to make their products transparent whether it made sense or not. Do we really need a clear hair conditioner? I’d say not. (I recall a rumor at the time that some company was even working on a clear catsup but thankfully that never came to pass.)
Anyway the reason this product caught my eye is that while it’s still relatively clear the product certainly doesn’t look “clean.” While it started out as white as water it’s now a dingy yellow. That made me wonder how old this product could be. I checked the lot code on the back of the bottle and made a quick call to Revlon which revealed that they have not made this product since at LEAST 2001! That means this bottle was over 12 years old and it’s still for sale! Unbelievable. The moral of the story is that some dollar store deals are too good to be true so always check the product date code before you buy.
Image credit: http://www.xtremecamera.com/
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow! Yucky! That is just sick it used to be clear!! I like a good price but I wouldnt pay anything for something that old!
Sometimes you can tell simply from the packaging that they are old! I have noticed that. I buy almost all my beauty products from walmart because they get fresh stock often. Somethings I dont like about the company but ya know…
I was 6 then.
Two weeks ago at Big Lots I bought a bottle of Puristics face lotion. It was a great price for an expensive drugstore product. Anyway, it had a sour smell, so something had to be wrong with it, and I threw it out. The packaging said that it doesn’t use parabens, so I wonder if it had less-effective, natural preservatives that gave out in some less-than-ideal storage conditions.
I thought that the first Clean and Clear products were for acne, and the name referred to the fact that it would make your skin clear.
Rozy: You are so smart for reading blogs like this and staying informed about cosmetic products. I am way older than you, and back before the glorious internet we just had to buy things and try them out to find out if they worked or not. The only source of information was magazines like Glamour, and they often give rave reviews to products of their advertisers, regardless of how the product works.
It will be much older than that Revlon sold the Clean & Clear brand to Johnson & Johnson in 1991!
So gross! They should have date of manufacture on all that stuff for consumers, we shouldn’t have to call the manufacturer.
Still now I’m going to keep my eyes peeled for these kinds of problems.
bluecatbaby: thanks you’re awesome!
this was my favorite conditioner back in the day. i would love to find this at my dollar store, just to read the ingredients listed on the bottle. don’t think i’d use anything that old!!!!