Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

My kids received a Klutz book/ face-paint kit a few years ago, and I have become the designated face-painter, not only for my kids and their friends, but for myself and a couple other adults around Halloween as well. So I was in the market for a new palate of paint, something non-toxic, water-based, that provided good coverage. I bought this set based purely on the reviews - for the price, it seems like a wonderful value. In short, I was not happy with the set I received. These paints did not work as I expected; the paint didn't blend well with the water at all (the water mostly beaded on top of the paint and wouldn't blend!) and coverage of color was weak and watery. It was like trying to make face paint out of wax. I couldn't imagine how it had such good reviews! Of course, by that point I had used the set and tossed the receipt, and I didn't really feel like it was worth the time and effort to deal with contacting the company. So when Blue Squid emailed me for an Amazon review, I took the easy opportunity to reply to their email and told them I was disappointed in the paint. Julie at Blue Squid wrote back immediately - it was a personal note (not an auto-generated reply) expressing her concern that I was anything less than delighted with this product. She immediately offered me a full refund, no questions asked, or a replacement set. Since I couldn't get over all the great reviews this product had, I opted to try another set. My new set arrived on Friday, and I immediately opened it up to test it. This time, a drop of water and a light brush stroke activated the paint. It mixed beautifully - and the coverage was fantastic. More water = a lighter coverage, less water = thicker coverage. The colors are smooth and vibrant, the included brushes make it easy to do fine-line detail work, or broad fill-in coloring. The paints are lightweight and they dry quickly, which is great for adding more color for deeper coverage, or doing detail work on top of a base color. And finally, being water-based - they washed off easily. For the money, this is a wonderful face-paint set with a great variety of colors. And Blue Squid is clearly a company that cares about its customers having only good experiences with their product. I definitely recommend.