The Part Time Beauty Hall of Fame: Maybelline Great Lash Mascara

Now I understand that the veteran product junkies among you will be looking at the above picture and thinking hang on a minute, that isn’t Maybelline Great Lash! and, admittedly, you would be right. Well, half right at least. After all, the wand on the original Great Lash is fairly unique and looks more like this, however I accidentally picked up the newer-to-the-market BIG version of Great Lash, which is really only Great Lash in name. But just so we’re clear, in this post I write primarily with regards to the original Great Lash, with the wand we all know and love (ha). Anyway, now that I’ve said Great Lash approximately four hundred times, let’s get into how this product has come to earn a place in the Part Time Beauty Hall of Fame, shall we?

Instantly recognisable thanks to its distinctive pink and green packaging, Maybelline Great Lash has been the biggest selling mascara in the United States for almost fifty years, and it is said that a tube of Great Lash is sold every two seconds. That’s right, every two seconds. That’s a lot of acid-bright tubes of mascara working their way around the world! But aside from the appealingly low price (Great Lash costs just £5.99 here in the UK, for example), just what exactly is so good about this mascara, and how has it managed to endure for so long when so many others have come and gone? In all honesty, I’m not entirely sure…all I can do is tell you why I like it, and perhaps proffer a few theories regarding its ongoing popularity.

While most £5.99 mascaras on the market are so ineffective that one would be better off not bothering at all, Maybelline Great Lash is a genuinely great product with a potent formula which far belies its modest price point. In fact, and I can say this with some confidence as someone who has tried a lot of mascaras, Great Lash outperforms many products four or five times its price. In addition to helping lashes appear thicker, Great Lash also works to condition them, and with regular use you should see a marked improvement in how they feel as well as how they look. Also, it doesn’t seem to flake off or dry out as many cheaper mascaras are wont to do, so you can consider it six pounds well spent.

As well as being a high-performing inexpensive mascara in a sea of relative duds, what Maybelline Great Lash also has working in its favour is something that only a handful of other products can lay claim to: nostalgia. I am forever hearing tales of women having discovered Great Lash through their mothers or grandmothers and, indeed, the first time I glimpsed a tube was when one winked at me, all brightly coloured and enticing, from my late mother’s dressing table. And so when I started wearing mascara myself at the age of thirteen, Maybelline Great Lash in Blackest Black was one of the first I tried, and I vividly remember loving the effect it gave. I suppose this is why there is still a tube in my make-up bag some sixteen or so years later.

The fact that Great Lash remains a bestseller almost half a century later really does speak to its efficacy, and there’s a reason it appears on shortlists such as Allure’s Best of Beauty and InStyle’s Best Beauty Buys again and again — it’s a classic, and it’s affordable. And although Maybelline’s more recent Lash Sensational (a great lengthening mascara, just FYI) may have replaced it in my esteem for the time being, Great Lash is nevertheless a phenomenal product, and one which certainly deserves its icon status. If you don’t believe me, just try working out how many must have sold in the time it took you to read this post…

So, does Maybelline Great Lash Mascara get your vote? Let us know in the comments, or via our Instagram page. :)

This piece was originally published on Part Time Beauty in 2020.