Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream Lip Protectant Stick Sunscreen SPF 15 Review

There are two drugs in this lipstick tube, legally speaking, and they deserve to be reviewed separately, because the stick is superb at one of them and a relic at the other. The first is petrolatum at 30.2 percent, the OTC skin-protectant active that has defined Eight Hour Cream since Elizabeth Arden mixed the original salve in 1930. The second is a sunscreen, padimate O at 8 percent and oxybenzone at 3, rated SPF 15. Everything good about the product flows from the first; most of what is wrong with it flows from the second and from the base around both.

Start with the good. Petrolatum is the most effective occlusive in skincare, reducing water loss from the skin by more than any other single ingredient, and lips, which have no oil glands and a thin barrier, need occlusion more than any other part of the face. Wrap that petrolatum in castor oil for gloss and slip, lanolin for softening, and ozokerite, candelilla, carnauba and beeswax for structure, and you have a stick that drags a little on the first pass and then lays down a thick, glossy, long-wearing layer that survives coffee and conversation. Cracked winter lips feel sealed within minutes and look healed within a day or two, which is what the brand's 105-person panel reported and what several thousand reviews across decades confirm. Under lipstick it is a glossy, cushioning base, though the petrolatum can make a long-wear formula slide a little if you do not let it settle first. This is the Eight Hour Cream people keep in every handbag, in stick form, and it works.

Now the sunscreen. Padimate O is a PABA derivative that most of the industry stopped using in the 1990s, partly over sensitisation and partly because better UVB filters arrived; oxybenzone is the filter with the most regulatory baggage in the category, FDA-permitted but among the most frequently sensitising, restricted in several places, and under an open FDA request for more safety data. Together they give SPF 15, and the label makes no broad-spectrum claim, which means UVA coverage is limited. Lip products also wear off with eating and licking within an hour or two, so the practical protection from this stick is a modest, short-lived UVB buffer. For a walk to the office, fine. For a beach day or a ski slope, where lip sun damage actually happens, a broad-spectrum SPF 30 lip product is the tool, and this is not it.

The base is the other half of the problem. The Eight Hour scent is genuinely iconic, herbal and slightly medicinal, and for many people it is the reason to buy; it is carried by a fragrance that declares citral, citronellol, geraniol, limonene and linalool, five allergens on a product applied to the lips and, inevitably, ingested a little through the day. Lanolin, wonderful for chapped lips, is a classic contact allergen. Butylparaben and propylparaben preserve it, along with BHT. Flavour and fragrance are the leading causes of allergic cheilitis in patch-test clinics, and this stick assembles most of the usual suspects in one tube. Most lips tolerate it, as the reviews attest; the minority who do not tend to find out within a few days.

Which brings us to the arithmetic. Thirty-eight dollars for 3.7 grams is roughly ten dollars a gram, and the thing doing the work is petrolatum, castor oil and wax, ingredients that cost almost nothing and are sold in tubes for a few dollars with a modern broad-spectrum filter and no fragrance. The premium buys the Eight Hour name and its ninety-year story, the figure-eight tube, the scent, and the pleasure of a heritage object; those are real to the people who love them, and there are a great many such people. The value score is low because the gap between what the stick does and what a plain petrolatum balm does is small, while the gap in price is enormous, and because the one thing that might have justified a premium, a modern sunscreen system, is the part that was never updated.

The stick has been in the line for decades, registered as an OTC drug, and its thousands of ratings are as consistent as any product in the catalogue: soft lips, long wear, great under lipstick, the scent, the price, and a steady undertow of people who reacted to it or who wish the filters were newer.

So: if you love Eight Hour Cream and want it in a tube that fits a pocket, this is that, and it will keep your lips comfortable through a winter. If you want sun protection for your lips, look for broad-spectrum SPF 30. If your lips react to fragrance or lanolin, look anywhere else. And if you simply want the occlusion, a few dollars will buy it without the scent and without the museum-piece filters.