Maybelline City Mini Palette Review: Downtown Sunrise

This collection by Maybelline is a very smart step, in that a drugstore company is making a product that consumers will want to buy. This collection had a wide variety of mini palettes, of different shade families and finishes. The question is, though, is the formula up to snuff? Watching a swatch video of the entire collection by Allura Beauty, I was impressed by what appeared to be mostly solid-looking swatches.

However, whenever a product is sold on Amazon, with lots of reviews, I like to run it through Fakespot, an extension that detects the percentage of fake or bought reviews. The results did not look promising:

Still, let us proceed with pictures and swatches:

The swatches are finger swatches, over Ruby Kisses 24 Hour Primer. I will go shade by shade:

1.) The pink-leaning cream matte shade. This had medium pigmentation and was of a very soft formula.

2.) The light pastel peach/orange: This was very sheer and required three applications to be built up.

3.) The matte dark brown: Very pigmented and creamy. Definite winner for the mattes.

4.) Pink shimmer with gold flecks. Not as dark in the pan. Very trendy color- also can be found in Jaclyn Hill Palette (Sissy), and in Carli Bybel's Deluxe palette. Medium pigmentation.

5.) White-pink shifting gold duochrome. Dupe for Too Faced Satin Sheets. Can also be found in the Sleek Goodnight Sweetheart Palette (review here). This had medium pigmentation.

6.) (Top horizontal swatch) Metallic champagne shadow: Of the shimmers, had the best pigmentation.

In sum, all shadows here are creamy. I will note that some of the shimmers- upon opening the palette- appear as if someone pressed their finger to the shadows. I am certain that is the markings left over from the product being poured in. Many reviews online, including Amazon, allege their palette was swatched, but I don't think that is the case for many of them.

Furthermore, I do think this is a good deal and a workable palette. Though the shades don't have intense pigmentation, they do give enough color and variety to create different discernible looks. Primer is a must. I don't think this will be a difficult product to pan.

That being said, this palette has earned ⭐⭐⭐ out of five stars.

**I also heard that the beauty guru Shayla is collaborating with Maybelline on another one of these. I am actually super curious to see what it looks like!