Cult Product Reviews – Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream

Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream is possibly the original cult product. You know how you read magazines and they’ll claim such-and-such was the ‘first’ supermodel? Well I’m gonna claim Eight Hour Cream started the cult trend.

Word on the street is that Eight Hour Cream was first developed during the second world war as a treatment for burns. The highly, highly moisturising nature of the stuff made it a good product to market to the masses in an era when the motto for ‘creams’ was something along the lines of ‘the heavier the better’.

Today though? Having tried this stuff, I have no idea why it has the following it does. It’s touted as the product that does a zillion things in one – I’ve heard everything from healing cracked skin (okay) to in-flight hydration (oooookay) to (wait for it) anti-frizz for hair and body buffing. Given this goo is probably only a heartbeat away from actually being pure oil, I have no idea why you’d want to put it in your hair, or how you might even begin to buff your body with it. On second thoughts, it’s probably worse than pure oil, because unlike oil which might run off, Eight Hour Cream is adhesive. It’s sticky, smells like a hospital and is the most amusing shade of brown.

My fiancee and I have been using it as a cuticle cream after flying which it seems perfectly adequate for, but it takes a good ten minutes to soak in, so Eulactol is probably a better bet. In the interests of trying to find something it was great for before writing this post, I’ve also tried using it as a lip balm (why you’d want a lip balm in a tube that big, however…) which it again seems alright for, but I can think of about thirty other products in more convenient packaging that do a better job and don’t smell quite so… sanitary. I put a tiny bit on my eyebrows to make them stay in place, but it just made my makeup in the area (on my skin) go rather cakey. I rubbed it into my heels as a cure for dry skin and I STILL can’t get the oil stain out of my socks that I put on some 20 minutes after application! I gave consideration to putting a small amount on my finger and blinking over it to get a fine coating on my eyelashes, but from an optical health point of view, given all these other unsuccessful efforts, I thought it was probably better to give that one a miss.

So on the whole, this one is going firmly into the ‘never repurchase’ pile. If anyone out there has found a use for it, please let me know as I have the better part of 7/8 of a tube left and I have no idea how I’m going to use it all up.

BB