Maybelline’s Instant Anti-Age ‘The Eraser’ foundation launches at FeelUnique.com tomorrow and a sample of it landed on my desk this morning for me to try. (It didn’t literally land on my desk, because that would be plain weird. How would the post-lady (Dawn!) be able to throw the package in such a way that it would be able to climb two floors, pass through a closed window, wind it’s way through two doors, a long hallway, another door and make a ninety-degree turn to drop onto the desk? Impossible.)

I don’t normally do this type of review – ie, “I’ll write about it straight away and give my first reactions and thoughts”. Because this is A Model Recommends, and I like to give things a pretty thorough testing before sitting down to have a long hard think about what I like or dislike about them. You wouldn’t believe the amount of things that don’t even make it past the initial testing stage (open it, smell it, swatch it) and end up in the Sin Bin. If I had to sit here writing about all of those products as well as the brilliant ones that I truly love and wholeheartedly recommend, then I would be here for even more hours than I am already. Which is a lot.

Perhaps it doesn’t bode well for today’s product that a good many of the beauty rejects that end up in the Sin Bin tend to be from high-street brands or from the extreme budget end. Call it expensive taste, or call it, if you will, plain taste, but for me many cheaper products just aren’t worth the investment, no matter how small that investment is. But let’s give ‘The Eraser’ a chance shall we? We haven’t even got its little lid off yet!

Here we go; I’m going to take you through the initial A Model Recommends testing process, with my exact thoughts.

“It’s out of the jiffy bag; and what a funny little fella! He has a sponge head and a plastic dome fixed over it like a spaceman. (Spacemen. Monkeys. Five minute brain diversion thinking about monkeys.) Hello…how do we get this little plastic thing off then? Do we need scissors? No, it’s off. I’ll pop the spaceman’s hat off and have a poke at the spongey head. Nice and soft, very clean. How do I get the product into the sponge? Oh crikey – the instructions were on that bit of plastic that I just massacred! Oh well – I’ll just turn the red collar thing until some product appears!

[Short interval with lots of clicking and turning.]

Here we go! Here it comes! Oooh. It’s very orange. That’s going to be a bit dark for me I think – I’ll just tweet that fact to my followers and add a witty aside – “Oompa Loompa.” God I’m hilarious! Swatch some product – back of the hand? No, let’s go straight in for the kill and put a huge stripe on my face. It’s OK, the electricians won’t be here for at least another – [DING DONG!] – oh, here are the electricians. I’ll just pop downstairs and answer the door. They look bemused – obviously blown clean away by the intensity of my beauty. Right, back to the kitchen where I have no mirror and very little natural light. Time to cover my whole face in ‘The Eraser’. What? Tea, you say, electricians? No problemo, I’ll bring it straight up. Try not to mistake my face for your tea, because they’re the same colour.

Whilst I’m up here I’ll just pop into the bedroom and look in the mirror….

Take two: this time with a mirror. The colour (Sun Beige) is too dark, but only slightly – I can cope. For the purpose of testing, it will be fine. The spongey head is actually quite pleasant to use – and it’s handy to be able to blend and apply at the same time. Especially when your fingers are covered in jam, dust and tile grout. The coverage is quite light and the formula doesn’t feel heavy on my skin. Depending on what you’re looking for in your base, this is either good news or bad. Personally, I prefer a to use nice light formula that will even out skin tone and add a little warmth and then cover any circles and blemishes with a concealer, so ‘The Eraser’ gets a tick here. It also (and it weirdly doesn’t advertise this effect, so I hope it’s not my imagination) gives my skin a bit of a ‘glow’, a little ‘lift’ or sheen that isn’t obvious, but is there all the same.

I do wish that this foundation was a shade lighter – it’s hard to be objective when you feel a bit orange. The perils, I suppose, of foundation-by-post. To ‘The Eraser’s credit, it blends out magnificently well and though I wouldn’t be comfortable going to a casting in it, or indeed bumping into anyone belonging to the human race, I would make the journey to my local shop, where there are never any customers who are remotely human.

Concealer: a bit of Myface is Medium 1. Matches pretty, pretty well. Myface. My favourite foundation – how is ‘The Eraser’ holding up in comparison? Silly question! Forty quid foundations have fallen wounded at the feet of MyFace! It’s almost unfair to compare the Maybelline! Oh, OK, I will – it’s not as good. But then, I don’t think that Lancome’s Teint Miracle is even as good as the MyFace, if truth be known, when all things (such as price!) are taken into consideration. So that isn’t really any kind of criticism.

What are my thoughts on ‘The Eraser’ so far? I should jot them down. Is it one for the Sin Bin? Definitely not! It’s light, blends well, doesn’t leave any greasy residue – although the finish is certainly not matte. The effect is rather dewy and sheeny, and really quite nice. The foamy headed Spaceman bottle is a novel touch – yet the applicator is anything but novel, I actually quite like the way that it blends the product! Does the Instant Anti-Age erase the look of fine lines, age spots and enlarged pores as promised? Hnnnn…..it doesn’t seem to be filling anything in as such, but the finish of the makeup does seem to lift my (very tired) skin and make it less dull. In terms of age spots; I don’t have any, but I have three spots of the greasy variety, and ‘The Eraser’ has definitely taken the edge off them.

Interesting that they have called this ‘The Eraser’ because that is a name that would suggest thick, heavy foundation coverage to me. Instead, we have a light, dewier finish – infinitely more youthful anyway, I think. Conclusion: pretty nice, nothing that I particularly dislike apart from the price, £9.99, which could – in my opinion – do with being a couple of quid cheaper. I think that about most products in this kind of price bracket though – the RRPs have kept creeping up and I’m now genuinely surprised when I see some of the price tags of brands that used to be the perfect ‘lunch break’ purchase.”

There you go then – my in-all-honesty first thoughts on Spongehead Spaceman. I quite enjoyed that – it was rather therapeutic! Maybe I will do more Friday Flash Reviews in the future!

You can buy Maybelline’s ‘The Eraser’ at feelunique.com for £9.99 – pre-orders today, and launches tomorrow!