I’ve been watching British beauty bloggers/vloggers rave about the Rimmel Apocalips Lip Lacquers for ages now so naturally I was really excited when they finally came to the U.S. under the name “Show Off”

So I popped into the local Walgreens and picked up the two that I had my eye on most, and wore them for a few days so I could get a good idea of how they perform, and you know if I had to have fabulous lips in the process then so be it.

The shades I chose were Apocaliptic- a bright, cool toned, berry pink. As well as Stellar- A bright coral pink. The packaging is pretty cool looking as far as drugstore products go, and it functions well.

The applicator is an interesting one. It looks like a typical doe foot applicator, except that it has an indented little well instead of a flat angled plane. It seems like it is there to pick up enough product so you can apply it to both your lips in a single dip, and it does accomplish that. At the same time, the recessed area also makes it feel a little weird to spread it around. It feels like it would be scraping product off as it puts more down, know what I mean? It actually does go on evenly, but it just feels a little uncomfortable to me.

Now let’s talk turkey, and by turkey I mean…arm swatches. The colors are brighter and more vibrant than they look in the tube, and the finish is creamy with no shimmer. They aren’t quite what I would call glossy but they do have a sheen. A satin finish maybe? I suppose that’s what I would call this.

On the lips they are definitely opaque like a lipstick, no sheer color here. These bad boys are full on. They felt nice on the lips when I first applied them but they seemed drying after a while. I hadn’t put any balm under them because I was trying to test the wear time, but once that was done I tried again with a tiny bit of lip balm and that kept them nice and moist and comfy.

There are two downsides to these:

The first is that I really didn’t find them to be very long wearing. They stayed on fine if I was just hanging around doing nothing, but once eating and drinking came into the picture it was game over.

At one point after biting into some bread it even managed to leave a line of lipstick across my chin, which I don’t think has ever happened to me before. Luckily I saw it right away, but that had potential to make me look like a real D-bag.

In other words, if you are going out eating or drinking be careful. The creamy thickness that gives it a nice finish also make it a touch messy.

The second thing I’m not super crazy about is the scent. It’s fruity and vaguely reminiscent of watermelon, but really artificial. It’s not overpowering and it fades quickly, but if you are picky about the scents in your lip product it may offend your delicate sensibilities. If you are familiar with the smell of Butter London Lippy it actually smells a lot like that but not nearly as strong.

Over all, I like these. For the price ($5.49) they are pretty damn good. The look they give on your lips is really nice, nice enough to look past a few small shortcomings in my opinion, and the colors kick ass so I will definitely be getting a lot of use out of these over the summer.

You can find these at local drugstores that carry Rimmel (in the US and UK) and if you are in the states and are finding they are flying off the shelves before you can get your hands on them you can buy them at Drugstore.com