A unit of "T": Wet N Wild Baked Not Fried Palette

A while back Wet N Wild released three limited edition baked eye shadow palettes (Walgreens Exclusive). A palette of blues (Baked Not Fried), a palette of pinks (Baking a Cake) and a neutral palette (Baked Not Fried). The baked palettes were all paraben free. I was into neutral colors at that point, so I bought the neutral palette called Baked Not Fried.

Wet N Wild's Baked Not Fried Palette

$4.99 - 0.06 oz / 1.8 g

I was really excited because I don't own any baked shadows and heard good things about them. Since there was a bogo on WnW products, I decided to get this along with the matte palette (which is farr better). Apparently, baked shadows can be used wet or dry without damaging the shadows. Some people report regular pressed shadows going hard after touching water (a few shadows of mine turned out that way too). So here are my thoughts about this palette.

I honestly didn't like it. It's not horrible but not what I wanted and was expecting. There are 6 baked eyeshadows, a pearly white, copper, champagne pink, champagne taupe, coppery-bronze and dark(dark) brown. All of these colors contain a significant amount of shimmer and sparkles. It's basically disco ball action for all the shadows except the dark brown, which has shimmer but comparably less. The baked shadows hardened a bit after I tried to use the eye shadows wet, which dinged my grade for the palette significantly. What's the point of baked shadows if I can't use them wet?! Though I still use them wet since I don't really give a flying pan about this palette. The packaging is cheap but that is expected. The cover comes off completely which a lot of people complained about (not really earning brownie points in my book as well). All this bad stuff would have been forgiven if the palette color was gorgeous and pigmented. Well, it's not. The colors are medium-sparse pigmentation. It is more like a sparkly nail polish top coat, to make it look nice, you would need a base color (yay for nail polish reference :]?) . The shadows aren't as horribly pigmented as I make it sound. I can achieve a look but it has to be with my fingers or sponge tip since my brush won't pick up much pigment. The shadows are soft except for the two vein colors. The greatest problem child of the bunch would be the pink vein shadow. It is ridiculously sparse and I dig into the shadow like I'm digging to China. If not, it's just glitter and sparkles on my lids.

Wet N Wild Baked Not Fried
Palette Packaging

The Good

neutral colors
very sparkly
pearly white is gorgeous, a great inner corner highlight
can look good with matte shadows to give eye an extra oomph
paraben free

The Bad

too sparkly if you don't like sparkles
significant fallout
works more like a "sparkly top coat" - i.e. use base colors not from palette before layering colors from Baked Not Fried
most colors are medium-sparse pigmentation, the worst is the pink vein shadow
when used with a wet brush, shadow in pan may turn hard

Grade: C