Eye Cream Stick — Twist-Up Under-Eye Moisturizer, 0.11 oz (3 g)
Eye Cream Stick — Twist-Up Under-Eye Moisturizer, 0.11 oz (3 g)
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One stick, 0.11 oz (3 g), no jar and no fingers
A twist-up moisturizer for the thin skin under your eye
It is a slim pink barrel about the size of a lip balm. You wind up a sliver of soft white balm, glide it along the bone under your eye, and pat it in with a fingertip. That is the whole product.
Most eye moisturizers come in a small glass pot. You dip a finger in, and every dip puts whatever is on that finger back into the pot. A stick skips that entirely. The balm only ever touches your skin, the barrel closes, and it goes in a pocket without leaking.
It is a moisturizer. It softens and conditions dry skin around the eye, and skin that is not dry looks smoother and less papery than skin that is. That is what we claim and it is the whole of what we claim.
Read this before you read anything else
The name on this carton says retinol. The ingredient list on the same carton does not.
The maker, Shantou Youjia E-Commerce Co., Ltd. (FDA establishment number 711173127), filed the printed artwork for this exact carton with the US Food and Drug Administration under NDC 84067-381 — the pink 3 g stick, 2 x 2 x 8.3 cm, barcode EE012211191-3g. That is the box we ship, and the filed artwork is a picture of it.
Here is the ingredient panel printed on that box, word for word: ascorbic acid, hyaluronic acid, squalane, persea gratissima (avocado) fruit. The filing's own ingredient rows add water and jojoba oil. Retinol is not on the panel and it is not anywhere in the filing.
Then the box contradicts itself. On another face of the same carton, the benefit copy reads: "Contains rich and effective formula, specially added retinol." One side of the packaging says the ingredient is in there. The side whose job is to list the ingredients does not list it. The same manufacturer printed both and filed both in the same document.
Between a marketing sentence and an ingredient declaration, we go with the declaration. So we are not selling this as a retinol product. We took the word out of our title, our tags and our search listing, because we will not put an ingredient in the name of something when the ingredient list does not support it. The carton you receive still carries it — we do not relabel what we ship.
If you are shopping specifically for retinol, do not buy this one. Buy from a brand that will put a percentage on the box and stand behind it. We would rather lose the sale than take it on a word we cannot support.
You can read the filing yourself on DailyMed, the National Library of Medicine's label database: NDC 84067-381, set id 13c2064e-c1e5-36a4-e063-6394a90a6184. The carton artwork is the label image attached to it. Records like this are submitted by the manufacturer and are not reviewed or approved by the FDA — which is the point here. It is the manufacturer's own account of its own box.
Ingredients
What is declared, and the large part that is not
The filed panel is short, and the arithmetic shows it is not the whole story. Water is given as 0.9 mL of a 3 g stick, roughly thirty percent, and the five named ingredients come to under a tenth of one percent between them. That leaves most of what is in your hand undeclared, including whatever wax and oil base makes it solid enough to be a stick at all.
No source anywhere states a retinol concentration. We went through roughly twenty-five sellers listing this stick and not one of them puts a percentage on it. That is worth knowing even though the filed panel names no retinol at all: a number nobody will state is a number nobody is standing behind.
No panel names a preservative. Not the filed one, and not the ingredient list of any seller we could find. Several of those seller panels declare water first. A water-containing cosmetic that keeps on a shelf almost certainly has a preservative system in it, and nobody has said what it is.
We have asked the supplier for the full declaration ordered by predominance. We do not have it yet.
What this means for you. If you have a known cosmetic allergy or reactive skin, this is not the product to take a chance on, because we cannot tell you everything you would be avoiding. Everyone else: patch test on the inside of your forearm for a couple of days before it goes anywhere near your eye.
Why the format is the point
The case for a stick, honestly made
Nothing goes back in
A pot gets a finger in it twice a day for months. A stick has no reservoir to contaminate — the surface you touch is the surface you use up.
Survives a bag
Solid balm in a capped barrel. It does not leak into a wash bag on a flight the way a pump or a tub lid can.
You use what you need
Wind up a sliver, not a scoop. The under-eye is a small area and a stick makes it easy to apply a small amount to it.
Trade-offs, since they are real: a stick is a harder, waxier texture than a light gel or lotion, so it drags more on very dry skin unless you warm it in for a second. It is also a small amount of product — 0.11 oz (3 g) — which is normal for an eye stick and short of what a full-size pot holds.
Using it
Four steps, and one of them is a patch test
Patch test first
Inner forearm, once a day for two days. Stop if it stings, reddens or itches.
Start clean and dry
Wash and dry the area. Balm sits better on dry skin than on damp skin.
Wind up a sliver
Barely any. Glide once along the bone under the eye, not up onto the lash line.
Pat it in
Ring finger, light taps until it stops looking waxy. Cap it and put it away.
Keep it out of your eye. If it gets in, rinse with water. If the skin stays irritated, stop using it. Store it capped and out of direct heat — it is a solid balm and a hot car will soften it. The manufacturer's own carton warning reads: keep out of reach of children, do not swallow, clean your hands before use, discontinue use if signs of irritation or rash occur, store in a cool and dry place.
What this page used to say
We took the promises off this listing
An earlier version of this page told you what this stick would do to the structure of your skin, and it showed you supplier pictures staged as proof. Under US law a cosmetic is something that cleanses, beautifies or alters appearance. The moment a product is sold as changing how skin is built or how it functions, it is being sold as a drug, and a drug needs an approval this one does not have. Those claims were not ours to make.
The pictures went with them. One was a grid of eye pairs labeled before and after — the pairs are not the same person, and the word "before" is misspelled on the image. One was a stock concept photograph of a woman with a graphic peeled away from her face. Neither showed this product doing anything. We deleted them rather than move them down the page.
The page also claimed a certification. It named an overseas notification portal, which is a place you file a form, not a body that approves anything, and it has no bearing on a sale in the United States. That has gone too.
What we can actually state
Deliberately not stated, because we cannot document it: the complete ingredient declaration, the base and preservative system, the shelf life once opened, any stability data, and any certification. The stick and its carton carry the manufacturer's own brand name; we do not relabel it and we do not sell it as our own formulation.
A small stick of moisturizer, described accurately
If a clean, portable way to put moisturizer on the skin under your eye is worth having, this does that well and costs very little. If you need it to do more than that, buy something with a manufacturer standing behind the claim.
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