Review & Swatches: Rimmel Vinyl Max Gloss

Firstly, I'd like to apologize to Rimmel for taking so long to review this. Unfortunately it was delivered during the time I was without a computer, so I do have an excuse! Now that I'm back on my feet (kinda), I wanted to get this review down. I'm losing track of how many variations or relaunches there has been of Rimmel's Vinyl glosses...quite a few I reckon, this one is 'Vinyl Max Gloss' and comes in 6 shades. It aims to deliver full coverage, thick, voluptuous shine in one effortless stroke. The plumping formula with magnifying complex based on Hyaluronic spheres aims to volumize, smooth lips and reduce fine lines for a fuller, plumper look.
The colour I tried was 211 Desire and I have to be completely honest and say I wouldn't have picked that. Brown lips can get a bit of a bad name in the makeup world, but I'm quite fond of them usually. This gloss is a deep rusty reddish brown though and just isn't a particularly nice colour to look at never mind wear on my lips. However I gave it a good shot and at times it didn't look too bad (it could be sheered out). Swatches below show one swipe from the wand on the right and how dense the colour is on the left.
above 'with flash' and two below without.
The next thing that struck me about this gloss was the size of the wand. We're talking mahoosive. Really. Remember the MAC Wonder Woman supersized lipglass? That size! Ok, so not necessarily a bad thing-it means one stroke application for example. However given that this shade was so dark, it didn't work well with the big doefoot applicator. My MAC one is a pale coloured gloss, so any mistakes aren't noticeable, but with this one, it applied outside my natural lip line (as you can see from the images above) and just looked obviously sloppy. It's not like I wasn't being careful; my party trick is applying lipstick or gloss without a mirror, so I know what I'm doing! However, this made me look like a 12 year old rookie and I was using a mirror!
If you take a look at the comparison pictures between the MAC and Rimmel wands below, you'll see the MAC gloss sits only on the slanted surface of the applicator, not on the sides at all. This is due to the suction within the tube when you remove the wand, it literally takes 'Wonder Woman strength' to pull it out! The Rimmel one doesn't have that and this is why the gloss is all over the wand and yet again, more difficult to apply, regardless of the shade of gloss.
That said, the actual gloss itself is very nice. It has that cooling tingly feeling, similar to Too Faced Glamour Gloss and MAC Plushglass, perhaps not quite as strong. I'm a sucker for that type of gloss, it has to be said. I can easily get addicted to the sting and burn of lip plumpers but even more so to these refreshing, cooling glosses-I love it! My lips did look luscious and full, in part due to the gloss sitting outside my natural lipline though! The packaging aesthetically speaking is 'meh', nothing exciting but it does it's job, kinda! Overall, I love the gloss, dislike the colour and don't like the wand-so a bit of a mixed review on this one really.