When it comes to skincare and the scarring that I have from acne, snail ampoules are one of my go-to products. It’s great for the skin and has many benefits as well, especially when you have dry skin like me. When I was shopping one day on Hautelook, a Nordstrom Company that runs events that give great discounts on products, I noticed that a K-Beauty one was up and running. Low and behold, the Scinic All In One Snail Ampoule (싸이닉 스네일 올인원 앰플) was a part of one of the events. When I saw it, I quickly knew I had to buy it.
Whenever I buy K-Beauty, I do shop at a couple of different places. If you want to see all of the places that I shop at, you can check them all out here. Just like my last post though, I cannot for the life of me find this online. So, I think it is discontinued. I will talk about why I believe it was discontinued down below. If you are looking for K-Beauty products though, with Ulta and Sephora, you can also use E-Bates for cash back off of your purchases on their site.
What is E-Bates?
E-Bates is a cashback site that gives you money for purchases you may have already made. They even have an extension for multiple browsers so when you go to a website that uses Ebates, it will automatically pop up the cashback button to make sure you are saving money. I use this all the time, and I got over 80$ back from them for purchases I was going to make anyway. That’s about 3 more albums I can buy!
If you’ve never used EBates before, you can use this link to get $10 when making a qualified purchase of $25 when using EBates. You will also get whatever percent cashback is being offered from the site you are purchasing from. Sephora, typically has 4% cashback, through here. Sokoglam typically has 3%. These percentages Many other major retailers are on there as well.
Things to know about the Scinic All in One Snail Ampoule:
This product is formulated with the following ingredients that are good for your skin*:
- Snail Mucin (This is the first ingredient in the list) – Snail mucin is a moisturizer and collagen-stimulant. Since it stimulates collagen, it is perfect for healing the skin and acne marks.
- Glycerin (Third ingredient after water) – Glycerin is a humectant which means that it draws water to the skin. As such, if you have dry skin, this is an ingredient for you.
- Niacinamide (eighth ingredient) – Niacinamide (AKA B3 vitamin) is an excellent ingredient for improving uneven skin tone, soften wrinkles, and brighten skin. It also improves the skin’ s barrier. This is one of my favorite ingredients in skincare as it does so much and is an overall superstar.
- Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Extract (eleventh ingredient) – This well-known ingredient is perfect for burns, scrapes, inflammatory acne, and dry skin. Although a bit lower in the ingredient list, I love seeing ingredients like this is products.
- Centella Asiatica Extract (twelfth ingredient) – Centella Asiatica is huge in skincare at the moment. It is full of antioxidants and amino acids which makes it excellent for soothing the skin. There is also some evidence that suggests that it could mitigate the effects of sun damage
- Camellia Sinensis Leaf Extract (fifteenth ingredient) – This is green tea extract which in some studies has shown to be full of antioxidants that can potentially prevent and reduce sun damage.
This product is formulated with the following ingredients that are “bad” irritants for your skin:
- Fragrance – This is the very last ingredient in the product and as such, it is the lowest concentration. That being said, there is a high enough concentration that I can smell it. Fragrance can be highly irritating to the skin, especially if you use multiple products with fragrance in it.
- Castor Oil – Castor oil has a number of very good benefits such as preventing acne and wrinkles, reducing puffiness, and soothing burns. Despite all of these great benefits, this ingredient can be irritating to those with relatively sensitive skin.
- Phenoxyethanol – an antibacterial ingredient that although safe in small doses, if it accumulates, it can cause an adverse reaction and cause blistering.
- Triethanolamine – This is the second to last ingredient in the product and it is a pH balancer to ensure that the product is at an appropriate pH for the skin. That being said, this product, like the others on this list, can be irritation to the skin.
K-Points: 9/10
So, for beauty reviews, unlike my album unboxings, I will be much harsher on because this can directly impact your health, where buying K-Pop albums does not. It just impacts your wallet. As such, all of my beauty reviews will be out of 10 points. I will not be going over that number.
There are a lot of things that I love about this product. Out of all of the ingredients in this product that could be potential irritants, only one of them, fragrance, has a high potential of being an irritant. Additionally, the ingredient that they are touting as the primary ingredient to pay attention to in this product is the first ingredient listed, which means it is, in fact, the highest concentration.
Although I have no issues with this product, I believe that this was pulled off the market due to the Korean reviews. The formulation is quite good, in my opinion, but I don’t have sensitive skin. My skin is only dry. I have been using this product for about 2 weeks now, and it is really good at keeping me hydrated. I also haven’t seen any issues with my skin. So, let’s talk more about what the Koreans are saying.
What are the Koreans saying?
I was digging through reviews on 화해**, a Korean skincare app that lists out the ingredients of products from many brands for people to look through as well as post reviews. I believe that the reason that this product was discontinued is that it wasn’t good for those with sensitive skin. Koreans are typically known for having sensitive skin for a variety of reasons, one of which is high levels of pollution at certain times of the year. If a product isn’t good for sensitive skin in Korea, it has a high probability of not surviving.
For these Korean companies, the response of the Korean public is what is most important. Typically foreigners’ opinions don’t matter in keeping a product on the shelves. What I love about this is that generally speaking, Koreans are far more educated on skincare. As such, the probability of a bad product staying on the shelves for these Korean companies is much lower. For this reason alone, you are probably much safer purchasing products from Korea than Western brands. They have more rigorous testing, more advanced ingredients, and the general population is ruthless on products.
Have any of you tried snail products, K-Nuggets? What were your thoughts? Let me know in the comments down below!
사랑합니다!
–Rachel
*Linked to Paula’s choice ingredient dictionary articles when they can be found
**Note: 화해 still only exists in Korean, but some of the products can be searched for in English.
