2011-07-13

Fancl Mild Cleansing Oil (MCO) review

Fancl Mild Cleansing Oil (or MCO as it's nicknamed) must be the most famous product from Fancl (and among most other cleansing oils).

It's a coconutty scented (as the base is some coconut oil and other types of oils), a medium thickish cloudy gel oil, targeted at removing full face makeup (including foundation and eye makeup).

I'm using the limited edition bottle (every now and then Fancl collaborates with specific designers etc and make limited edition print bottles, this one is the pink ballerina one, how could I not get this =)  )

It's 120ml, in a convenient pump bottle. I usually just need 1 full pump for the full face, or 1 and half pump if i had extra makeup or want extra slip to it.

Just showing I've used up the whole bottle below before my review, you can see there's literally just 3-4 uses left at the base:


 Here's the testing time, with MAC black swan eyeliner (a  shimmery black coal colored liner) and Shu Uemura shimmer eyeliner liquid below, both usually require the use of a specific eyemakeup remover:
 
I dropped a few drops of fancl MCO on this:


Massage in lightly (preferrably with dry hand on dry skin), it quickly dissolves and melts away makeup:


Then I add a few drops of water as instructed, the oil quickly emulsifies into a cloudy liquid:


Then rinse with water and pat dry, clean skin!


Generally for a full face makeup, what I do is use a full pump on middle of palm, rub my palms together to warm the liquid up a bit, then massage on dry face. Then it's importnat to keep massaging for another 30 seconds or so, trying to melt away all the makeup on the face (and with finger tips around the eye area to get rid of any eye makeup), then gradually add a bit of water (like just enough to wet your hand), then massage another 30 seconds, until everything's fully emulsified.

Then I just rinse my face until it's clean.

Afterwards my face feels very clean, not tight afterwards, however generally I follow with any other foaming facial cleanser.

If you wear quite heavy eye makeup, I would still recommend using a separate eye makeup remover before using this, just to make sure everything comes off completely. Occassionally with very tough waterproof Japanese mascaras (e.g. Fasio) I find that Fancl may not clean this completely off, leaving a slight black cast still.

Overall 5/5, this is my 3rd bottle. Every now and then I do get sidetracked with other Japanese brand cleansing oil, but I come back to this one quite often as a staple.

The only thing to watch out for is Fancl products are preservative free, that means they have a very short shelf life- 1 year from manufacture date (if unopened) or 3 months after opening. It's surprisingly hard to finish 120ml of cleansing oil in 3 months. Usually takes me 4 months but as with most Fancl products, going over the 3 month period never seemed to result in any issues (no change in consistency or effect), the 3 month is a recommended use by date.

(However Australian climate is extremely good for keeping makeup shelf lives because it's very dry- so not sure whether the above holds for other climates).

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