The Balm's Mary-Lou Manizer ($24 at Kohls) is my favorite powder highlighter...the color is so on-point, the shimmer is very fine with no chunks of glitter, and the soft buttery texture makes it really easy to blend. I think a lot of you feel the same way about it because over the years, finding a Mary-Lou Manizer dupe is something I've gotten many requests for. Whenever I review a new highlighter, I pull out Mary-Lou and see if it's a dupe, but so far I haven't found anything that comes close to the color...until now!
It came from the most unlikely place too...a bronzer. Hard Candy's So Baked bronzer ($10 at Walmart) comes in four shades and the lightest one, Tiki is more golden than bronze. I assume it's meant to be a bronzer for fair skin tones but it's way too shimmery for all over bronzer use. That got me thinking about using it as a highlighter and when I compared it to Mary-Lou, well...see for yourself!
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| The Balm Mary-Lou Manizer ($24) vs. Hard Candy So Baked Bronzer in Tiki ($10) |
As far as the packaging goes, I think The Balm has Hard Candy beat. Mary-Lou comes with a mirror and it's in a slim metal compact that feels really solid. Tiki is in a cheaper-feeling plastic case with no mirror, but as I've said in the past...packaging isn't everything!
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| Left: Mary-Lou Manizer Right: So Baked in Tiki |
Hard Candy's version is baked while The Balm's is a pressed powder, so I expected them to feel very different. However, Tiki feels just as soft and is just as pigmented as Mary-Lou Manizer! They both lay down a lot of color in one swipe of my finger as you'll see in the swatches below.
Looking at them together in the pans, the shades look pretty similar but Tiki is a little bit of a deeper gold. It's hard to tell from looking at the pans because the Hard Candy one is also domed while The Balm's is flat so the light hits them a little differently.
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| Left: Mary Lou-Manizer Right: So Baked in Tiki |
The true test is in the swatches! As you can see, these swatch very, very close! Mary Lou is a little lighter while Tiki has slightly more gold (as we saw above). But I think there's less difference between them once they're swatched than looking at them in the pans.
Overall, if you're looking for a Mary-Lou Manizer dupe, this is the closest one I've seen so far, plus, there's a $14 price difference! I'm not sure what Hard Candy was thinking when they decided to call Tiki a bronzer, because it's too light even for my fair skin to use as a bronzer, not to mention way too shimmery. But as a highlighter, it's gorgeous, so I would definitely recommend heading to Walmart and picking one up!
What's your favorite powder highlighter? I'd love to hear about it!