Max Factor Fantasy Fire Swatch and Review

I know the hype over Max Factor Fantasy Fire has mostly died down by now, but I still wanted to review it in case there are some people who haven't seen this gem of a polish! It's supposedly a dupe of the most coveted Clarins 230 (aka Unicorn Pee) which I sadly do not own.

This polish is a gorgeous purple with shimmer that shifts to all colours of the rainbow. It really is mesmerising!  Fantasy Fire is the perfect name for it. I made a GIF to show you just how shape-shifting (well, colour-shifting) this polish is.

It seriously looks like three completely different polishes at these three different angles!

The polish itself was very sheer, and I did 5 thin coats to achieve maximum opacity. To save polish and to avoid doing so many coats, you can layer it over a similar purple. I used Seche Vite for a glossy finish.

This is what it looks like front on and what it looks like most of the time. It's a medium royal purple with pinky-redy-purpley shimmer. It has so much depth to it.

Here the shimmer is an olive green and almost a bronze colour.

The shimmer is shifting to gold and peachy coloured.

It is orangey-pink here.

At extreme acute angles, the shimmer becomes an intense green and teal, and you can see a bit of yellow as well.

A few more pictures where you can see several different colours at once! (Sorry for the tipwear, these were taken when the manicure was a few days old.)

This reminds me of a lizard... somehow... lol.

The bottle is tiny though!

You can see how small it is next to a regular-sized Revlon bottle.

And here it is next to my Nikon lenscap haha.

 Pros:
- THE SHIMMER IS COLOUR SHIFTING FROM BLUE TO GREEN TO YELLOW TO RED!!!!!!!!!! So incredibly awesome!
- The base purple is a beautiful colour. I would love it even if the shimmer isn't colour-shifting.
- Might satisfy some people's lemmings for Clarins 230.

Cons:
- Pretty hard to find. Only sold in the UK... I got mine on eBay a few months ago, and it seems like the price has dropped since then. So if you haven't bought this, now is a good time ;)
- Bottle is tinyyyy, only 4.5 mL...
- Very sheer, probably better over a purple base colour if you want to conserve polish.

Dupes?
- See Scrangie for a great comparison of Fantasy Fire with several similar polishes.

Overall: 
9.5/10

Thanks for stopping by!

- J