Flashback Beauty Friday 34: Urban Decay Eyeshadow

Post does not contain affiliate links or PR gifted items.

I thought after mentioning them last week, I'd follow up with a post on Urban Decay's single eyeshadow packaging. Last time, we looked at the Hard Candy Eye Candy and I said how sweet they were in shade names, packaging style and colour and how UD were the complete opposite. The oldest eyeshadow packaging I have, are these little round tins. Living up to their brand name, they looked a bit like drain covers; very industrial and grungy and a far cry from HC's candy coloured sweetie looking compacts last time.

The lid twists off with a round eyeshadow pan inside and the shade name is on the bottom on a self coloured sticker. The tins are proper tins, not plastic and they just feel so authentically Urban Decay, even down to the slashed, scratchy font. I have Roadstripe and Stalker here, the former being a favourite of mine (white with an intense blue/violet sheen).

The revamped line was a little sleeker and although they are made to look like metal, they are actually a very lightweight plastic. Same round shape and pan inside, but this time with a flip lid with a clear insert, so you can see the colour of eyeshadow through the window. They are designed to look like subway tokens with "good for one fare" on the lid.

I have a ton of these (more than shown here) and while the packaging is unique, it felt a little less edgy than the original and the plastic, quite cheap. I do like them though and they were very practical, despite not feeling or looking like a beauty product.

The box reads "Pigment intense shades that glow, shimmer or sparkle with a deluxe, velvety texture. Incredibly blendable. Sweep them on wet or dry for a whole new look at the world". It goes a bit Aladdin magic carpet ride at the end there, but other than that, I have to agree with them. These eyeshadows were the bomb back in the day. The colours were seriously stunning, pigmented and a joy to work with. The glitter shades did have fall-out, but using their primer potion as a base helped prevent that and greatly intensified colours. For the most part, I do think UD still do eyeshadow very well, though I don't have any of their new single ones, I do still buy their palettes. The lighter silver packaging was for various finishes, such as metallic, glitter, duo-tone and shimmer.

The slightly darker compact was for their matte eyeshadow. I have Electric (bold aqua), Narcotic (lighter turquoise) and Chronic (light, bright green) here.

Again all of these eyeshadows come with coloured shade name stickers on the base and the boxes were transparent plastic, so you could easily see the colour, plus there was another coloured shade sticker on the box if you stored them on their side. They certainly made these easy to find, if you had a bigger collection like me. The shades I have here are Shotgun, Acid Rain, Asphyxia, Shattered, Flipside, Vert, Urb and Exhaust. Those names give me serious nostalgia! I found a very old blog post of mine with my collection and the other shades I have are Kiddie Pool, Goddess, Revolver (matte), Cherry, Hotpants and Jones or at least in 2010, that was my stash!

Their eyeshadows had another revamp to the most recent style, which like I say, I don't own. However it's a more polished version of the token compact. Shinier, sleeker and looking more like an eyeshadow compact than previous releases. I have to say, they don't excite me as much, but maybe that's just me. I love these old ones, I actually forgot how much I did, until I dug them out for this post.  Do you remember these? What colours did you own?