To Dupe or Not To Dupe: Hard Candy Crush on Lava vs. MAC Mean & Green

 

Welcome one and all to the lastest edition of To Dupe or Not To Dupe. Now, lets jump right into it!

 

I was (and still am) excited about this one. Now, let us take a trip down memory lane to when MAC released their Venomous Villians collection which was based off of Disney Villians. There were several sought after nail polishes from that collection, one being Mean & Green. 

Venomous Villians has long been discontinued, but there are dupes out there of these polishes, some perfect dupes (ie Orly Space Cadet, not sure if those are now discontinued though) and some not so perfect dupes.

Mean & Green is a teal based duochrome polish where to the naked eye gives off a shimmer of copper, purple and pink depending on how the light hits it. It is a gorgeous colors, and if you couldn't tell by my bottle, I used it quite a bit. With the flash on, it appears to have a blue hue to the pink of the duochrome. The formula for Mean & Green also is on the thin side, at least mine is.

So now the possible dupe?

Crush on Lava is from Hard Candy new polish line. It is another duochrome, but not as prominent as Mean & Green. The duochrome is mainly pink, red and copper. So where is the difference? There is no teal base with Crush on Lava. The base appears to be more of a bronze base. Formula on Crush on Lava is thin as well, right on par with Mean & Green.

To the naked eye (and polish challenged) one wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two.

Would I call them Dupes? Not quite, they're similar and could pass, but up close Crush on Lava appears to be more warm, while Mean & Green seems to be on the cooler side. 

Price: Hard Candy is available at Walmart for $4.97 (mine however sells it for $5.00 so be sure to check the price), Mean & Green is discontinued.