Korean Beauty Brand: Etude House and Missing U Harp Seal Hand Cream Review

Etude House is a famous Korean beauty brand whose theme is to make customers feel like princesses living in a dollhouse. Etude House shops are beautifully designed to look pristine and dollhouse-like, matching the brand's theme beautifully, and I wish to visit one someday.

Etude's latest celebrity endorsers are boy band SHINee (one of the collections they promote is Missing U Bee Happy hand creams), along with girl group f(x)'s Krystal and Sulli, who have recently joined to endorse for 2013.

I ordered my hand cream from A-Poly on Amazon.com, since sadly there are no Etude House stores in North America. This seal was approximately $6.50 plus $4.40 for shipping.

The Missing U collection is environmentally friendly and part of the proceeds goes to protecting the particular animal of the product you are buying. This cardboard box is green because it is made of 100% recycled paper and it is printed from soy ink. The box also says that this product won for best packaging in 2011, and I can see why. The soft shape and small size makes this seal super adorable.

As you can see, the seal is so small that it can comfortably sit in the palm of my hand. It holds 30ml of lotion, which is only about one ounce. I can use up one ounce of lotion very quickly, but the packaging is too adorable to pass up so I had to order this!

The Pros

• eco-friendly packaging and helps saves seals
• cute packaging (it makes me want to collect all the Missing U hand creams!)
• small size can be easily stored in purses
• pleasant, subtle green tea scent
• creamy texture moisturizes super dry hands (tried and true, by me!), which is especially handy for the cold, harsh weather I've been facing
• just a penny-sized amount moisturizes my hands
  

The Cons

• small sizes means small amount of lotion (this can be easily used up in a few days, depending on sparingly you use it...okay, I may be exaggerating a bit on this one)
  

Overall, this hand cream is so adorable and I will probably order another animal (most likely the penguin) in the future.

On a related note, I just watched the Behind the Scenes episode of Shut Up Flower Boy Band and there is a scene where Kim Ye Rim gives Kim Myungsoo some hand cream.  By the way, I found out this is episode 14.  It turns out, this hand cream is from the Missing U collection, the Pink Dolphin.  Honestly the Pink Dolphin was the least flattering of the four hand creams, but because Myung Soo touched this, I'm so tempted to buy one for myself...!