Essie Mint Candy Apple vs. Blossom Dandy

If you are familiar with Essie nail polishes you are probably familiar with Mint Candy Apple and Blossom Dandy. Both are mint green cremes in the regular line that are very popular and widely loved. Today I want to discuss the differences between them to help you decide if you really need both and, since you can't discuss MCA without bringing up the infamous blue-toned version of it too, we're gonna throw that into the mix too. So, to kick this off let's begin with comparing Blossom Dandy to Mint Candy Apple, the green-toned formulation.

Recently I blogged about my top five favorite Essie polishes and in that I chose Blossom Dandy as one of my top picks over Mint Candy Apple, although I truly love both. MCA already enjoys cult status in the Essie canon, whereas BD is the newbie of the pair being released in the spring of 2015. As you can see from the side-by-side comparison above, color-wise BD is more green, whereas MCA is a bit more white. The formula on BD is best, with it you get a very rich, smooth application and full opacity in two coats. My bottle of MCA has a decent formula, but it is more thin and streaky (especially on that first coat) when compared to BD, and on some nails a third coat could be needed depending on how thin/thick your coats are. The reason I make sure to distinguish "my bottle" of MCA is because many people have reported that their bottles of MCA have terrible formulas, but for me I don't find that to be the case at all. The second coat will generally go on to complete the coverage and absorb any streaks from the first coat. Perhaps I just got lucky though. Do I think you need both? I think it depends on what kind of a polish lover you are. But if you are an Essie fan and avid collector I say "yes." 

Mint Candy Apple, green

Blossom Dandy

Blossom Dandy (left), Mint Candy Apple-green (right)

We can't ignore the fact that there are two formulations of Mint Candy Apple out there, which is a topic that has caused a lot of confusion in the past. Luckily my friend Kindra/@essie_envy did some investigating and got to the bottom of the mystery. The blue version of MCA was actually a manufacturing error and MCA was supposed to be green all along. Check out her detailed post here, it is well worth reading. Now, the irony for me personally is that the first bottle of MCA I owned was the blue version, which I purchased from eBay. At that time I was unaware about the discrepancy, but always wondered why something labeled "mint" was not green at all. Then I became aware that there was a green version out there and, unfortunately, I thought that the green version was the rare one and wound up trading my blue-toned bottle for the green-toned version when a former coworker brought it in to show me. In hindsight I regret that now since the error has since been corrected, though the formula on the green MCA is far superior to the blue-toned version. The collector in me wants to own both, so I'll probably look to get another bottle at some point, but as you can see from the images below the shades are drastically different, although both beautiful. MCA-Blue is your classic Tiffany, robin's egg blue, which I LOVE. If you're looking for a dupe, @bumbleroon has said to check out Zoya's Lillian. 

And finally, just to tie it all together, here are all three shades together. 

So, that completes this comparison of Mint Candy Apple and Blossom Dandy. The bottom line is that the difference in color between MCA-green and BD is subtle, but differences in formulas might help you decide which one to add to your collection. And in the case of the two versions of MCA the blue one is gorgeous, but the formula on the green version is best, although if you can find both, and are an avid Essie collector, you'll probably want both in your collection. 

I hope this has been helpful! If you have any questions feel free to ask, and I'll talk to you again soon! XOXO