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The original Wet n Wild I Need A Refresh-Mint
(retail: $1.99, 0.45 oz)
Heads-up, I Need A Refresh-Mint fans! By now, we all pretty much know that I Need A Refresh-Mint is practically a spot-on dupe for China Glaze For Audrey. If you love this shade, I strongly advise you to get out and buy it while you can still find it, because it looks like Wet n Wild has changed the color!
The first reader to report this shade difference is Cristina, who also took the time to create this side-by-side collage of both the old and new shades:
image credit: Cristina for Nouveau Cheap
Left: original
Right: new
And just the other day, reader Miss Kitty Nails left this comment here on the blog:
There must be two different formulas for the I Need a Refresh-Mint. I have seen the color in the stores actually be stocked in the place of Retro Mint because it looked so green. My I Need a Refresh-Mint is super blue. I just got For Audrey today and swatched them and they are nothing alike. For Audrey is actually lighter and seems to have a more green tint. I love them both but like I said there has to be something different with my bottles because they are world's apart.It's clear that Miss Kitty Nails owns the new shade, based on her description. Especially since I can barely tell the difference between my bottle of I Need A Refresh-Mint (provided to me back in Feb. of 2012) and China Glaze For Audrey (see side-by-side swatches here).
If you don't already own I Need A Refresh-Mint and you want the For Audrey dupe, look for a light, mint-greenish shade at your local drugstores. If the shade you see at your drugstores is bluer and darker, that's the NEW color.
NOTE: I realize that this might be an unintentional batch difference, but since two unrelated readers in (presumably) different parts of the country have noticed this change in color, I think it could be an official change. I will try to get more info and update this post if I hear differently, but I wanted to put this out there now, so that IF it is an official change, you'll still have a shot at finding the original if you want it.
Thanks so much, Cristina, for the heads-up about this and the great side-by-side photos. And thanks Miss Kitty Nails for your helpful comment!
I have 2 words for Wet n Wild: New Coke.
ReplyDeleteI hate that companies do this. Just change the name!
ReplyDeleteI purchased a new bottle about two weeks ago from Walgreens (I'm in Northern California) and it has indeed changed. It is still a great color, but has a heavy blue tint.
ReplyDeleteThanks for letting us know. I love this color and I wish they wouldn't change it.
ReplyDeleteI just purchased I Need A Refresh-Mint for the first time, and it's definitely blue. I wouldn't even think of calling it mint green. More like Tiffany blue or sky blue.
ReplyDeleteI started noticing it a few months ago at my Walgreens and Dollar General. I honestly thought my eyes were just deceiving me. I'm glad to know there is an actual difference! I have the old color, but I think I might buy the new one too. I'm in middle Georgia, btw.
ReplyDeleteI have the same issue with my sally hansen csm in ruby do. I have two bottles but one is burgundy and the other is pink. I bought both. Lol
ReplyDeleteIt's weird that they would do this, if it was intentional. The original shade is easily Wet 'n' Wild's most popular nail polish. :/
ReplyDeleteI had purchased this shade about a year ago maybe & then I got another bottle maybe a month or so later because I forgot I had bought it already & I noticed a difference in the color. The newer bottle was definitely bluer but I just thought the batch was off. They were both bought in San Diego.
ReplyDeleteYep, looking at my bottle of Refresh-Mint, it is definitely more blue (like Karen said -- Tiffany blue). It's definitely more blue than Revlon's Top Speed in Jaded (the only other minty color I have).
ReplyDeleteThis makes a lot of sense because I bought it just a few weeks ago and on my nails, they just looked blue. It didn't match the swatches I saw online and was wondering if I was just seeing things. I have an Ott-Lite too so I checked the color under that bulb to see if it was just the light in my apt, but it still looked blue! I like the color a lot, but I was expecting it to be mintier and am disappointed in the change. Guess I still need an inexpensive mint polish!
ReplyDeleteI'm actually happy they changed it! I didn't realize it was a dupe for For Audrey, which I already own. I gave that old bottle to a friend. Now I'll have to go get the new color! Because it's entirely different....yes.
ReplyDeleteI have the new one too I guess...it is a Tiffany blue I think I bought it like two months ago..I had no idea :p
ReplyDeleteHi! I work for Inglot Cosmetics in NYC and I have noticed that the older the polish is the different it is from when you originally bought it, this happens to me a lot with the #390 nail polish that we carry, which is sort of similar to this color. When exposed to light these minty shades lose their original color, it also happens as they get older.
ReplyDeleteOMG I thought I was the only one! Unfortunately over the past few years, the nail polish that ever broke was my favorite one, the refreshmint. So I went to the store and the old and new ones were side by side and they looked completely different. I was so confused and didn't know which one was the original formula. I actually thought maybe it was just a bad batch.. Sad to know the only available dupe of for Audrey is gone :( why would wet n wild reformulate their best selling shade? Sometimes I really don't understand cosmetic companies at all.. It's like when Revlon reformulated the super lustrous glosses
ReplyDeleteI went to the store and saw two completely different shades with the same name..thought it was a bad batch. WTF why would wnw reformulated their best selling shade? Cosmetic companies are so out of it sometimes
ReplyDeleteMy friend is the one that warned me that the color changed. I bought it for her last year, and she was almost done with the bottle (I was in shock because I never finish nail polish). I though she was looking at the wrong color. I saw the new one in a few stores before finding a couple of bottles of the old one. I bought us both a replacement just in case this is personal. When I gave in and bought the new shade (which I do think is awesome as well) I finally was able to compare side by side. This is why I tweeted you the pic G. I'm in NYC by the way.
ReplyDeleteO/*\O I'm a Cristina without an H, also! I think we are sisters in our suffering. For instance, everyone adding an H to our name or never being able to find personalized items with our spelling on them! Sorry, just had to comment on it!
DeleteI am in the Bay Area of California and have also seen the 2 versions of this color. I don't know whether it's a permanent change or not. Unfortunately, other companies have done the same thing recently, and their changes seem to be permanent. Specifically, OPI changed Gargantuan Green Grape from a yellow green pastel to a mint green one, and China Glaze change Flip Flop Fantasy from a coral neon to a more peachy neon. Marta over at Chit Chat Nails has a post about the OPI and ChG changes. :(
DeleteAnd I thought it was just me - I bought one of the 3-packs at Walgreens to get the color that's supposed to be a Dollar General Dupe, but the bottle of I Need A Refresh-Mint from that set is definitely more blue than my other bottle. Thought it had something to do with it being in the set!
ReplyDeleteI have the new one and i was a bit confused because to me it looks like a light teal, as opposed to mint. But now im not confused! Lol :)
ReplyDeleteI've had mine since at least last winter and it is much darker and bluer so I guess this change happened a while back.
ReplyDeleteI have had mine for at least a year and mine looks very blue not at all a mint green!
ReplyDeleteI am in upstate NY and just last week I saw what I now realize is the new I Need a Refresh-mint in a blister pack with a clear top coat. Initially I grabbed it thinking "New Color" (I liked it!) then I saw the shade name! Anyway I did not buy it because I have I Need a Refresh-mint (old shade) and didn't need another, but now I see them side by side and kind of want the new shade too!!! Am I nuts or what?! p.s. how much does anyone want to bet I go back for the new shade?!
ReplyDeleteI bought my bottle of I need a refresh-mint this summer when I realized it was an almost duplicate of butter London's "Poole". Sad to hear they might have changed the color.
ReplyDeleteI hate it when companies do this. It's bad enough to find out a company has reissued the same color with a different name, but I find that keeping the same name and changing the color is far more irritating to me.
ReplyDeleteYep the color has definitely changed! I remember you talked about the original a long time ago, so I always wanted to go pick it up when I have a chance. However, most of the time, it was always out of stock. However, I finally found it one time, must have been like almost a year already, and I was so excited!! But when I brought it home, it was more blue color rather than mint green. Love the color still, but I wanted mint green in my collection. To sum it up, the change is actually not a new change, I bought the bottle a long time ago. Only those who bought the original, or read your blog would know the difference. I, myself, did not remember much about the original, so I accepted the fact that it's the right color. Now, I know why that I always question the color and its name when I used it. Someone in the factory must be feeling "blue" when mixing this color.
ReplyDeleteThey should have just made this new one w a different shade and left the other alone. We all love the old color.
ReplyDeleteSeems to remind me of China Glaze Aquadelic now rather than For Audrey.
ReplyDeleteI bought this today and I own the original one. It is a color change for sure.
ReplyDeleteBought this last year and it was very blue.. Never knew it was a for audrey dupe because the bottle I had was soooo blue!
ReplyDeleteI live in India and had heard so much about this color that I had one of my cousins send it to me. But when I used it, it was more bluish. Little disappointed :(
ReplyDeleteI'm a little bummed because I think I have the newer bluer formula, with high hopes. I just picked up NYC's Tudor City Teal on sale at Rite Aid, and that's looking more like what I'd hoped Refresh-mint would be.
ReplyDeleteI have an older bottle (2-ish years old?) that is bluer, and I recently found the greener one at Walgreens! Actually whenever I saw mention of this nail polish online it didn't click that it was the color I owned, because it's not very minty! So now I have both. And we can see that this is not a new phenomenon.
ReplyDeleteJUST today i went look for the green shade and when i looked nothing the same shade caught my eye, so i went for the blue. I glanced at the label and saw it was the polish i was looking for! But it was nothing close to the mint color i was looking for that i saw online. So disappointed, but am happy with the bluer shade(:
ReplyDeleteThank you! I was going crazy looking at swatches because I wanted a the tiffany blue version but when you look it up in google there are two completely different shades, this explains it all!
ReplyDelete