A few months ago The Sims Team announced their partnership between The Sims 4 and MAC Cosmetics – a Makeup brand that offers a variety of different beauty products. The collaboration first brought a variety of new makeup in The Sims 4 including lipsticks, eyeshadows, blushes and more with a variety of different presets. Those makeup options became even better with December 2020’s Makeup and Skintone Sliders Update that lets you fully customize the appearance of the new MAC makeup.
The collaborative efforts between these two brands didn’t stop there. Just a few days ago MAC has announced a limited edition Sims Eyeshadow Palette that’s currently available only in the United States. The eyeshadow palette, listed at 32 US Dollars, offers 9 “different” eyeshadow colors.
At the time of writing this article the eyeshadow palette had already been sold out:
What’s so controversial about this palette? For starters, the eyeshadow colors chosen for this palette have no relation whatsoever to The Sims, its branding nor the namings of each palette color. The only thing tied with The Sims is the blue branding color and The Sims logo slapped on top of the palette box.
Look – I’m not a makeup expert nor do I know a lot about the beauty world besides the few beauty influencers I follow on social media. However, anyone with functional eyesight would realize that this isn’t good. None of the 9 colors have any relation whatsoever to The Sims’ branding.
Makeup palettes these days usually like to go an extra lenght and follow along the theme of the palette with custom names and colors that fit the palette’s overall theme. However, this palette does nothing of that sort. I’m pretty sure that “Blackberry”, “Moon Rock”, “Quarry” and others aren’t related to The Sims.
To make things even worse, this palette is nothing more than an old palette with a new packaging. Twitter user @spillseshYT pointed out that the eyeshadow palette that MAC tried to promote as a Sims palette was already released before by MAC – with the exact same colors and names:
MAC Cosmetics’ official Instagram account replied to a question asking how is The Sims eyeshadow palette related to The Sims’ brand. Their answer to a rehashed palette only added more fuel to the fire with a confusing answer that only tries to excuse MAC’s decision to recycle their old palette:
There’s so many different ways that this collaboration could have went. The Sims’ branding is pretty unique and colorful full of iconic names and colors.
Twitter was already bringing up some great ideas and suggestions at how this collaboration actually should’ve been done. Check out some of the ideas below:
Alright, so MAC released a palette that was supposedly done in collaboration with The Sims… its so fucking BORING and the SHADE NAMES SUCK, so I made my own version. pic.twitter.com/53iKjEltcz
— Cali Hanna 😏 (@c4lij4de) January 4, 2021
What you should have done instead of quick cash grab. pic.twitter.com/NxwMXuXLfR
— doodlesbythebunny (@doodlesbythebun) January 5, 2021
These are the swatches that we wanted. With NAMES that play on The Sims. pic.twitter.com/oaC10WPGSc
— Fernando 🏳️🌈 (@nandoandstitch) January 5, 2021
It’s also interesting how the creation of MAC makeup for The Sims 4 went. MAC’s Director Romero Jennings was using colorful swatches to bring the MAC Makeup into The Sims 4. It’s a shame that the same thing wasn’t done when the real-life palette was being made…
I don’t use makeup so this doesn’t bother me at all, but The Sims community (not the website the actual community) is out here coming out with better palettes than what was released. EA should’ve collab with Colourpop, I’ve heard it’s a good company… idk, as I said I don’t use makeup.
I agree that it’s disappointing that the only thing that is pointing out to sims is the package, but I would love to buy it if it was available in Germany. These are the colors that people are wearing to office every day in real life. Colorpop is famous for its collabs but they are targeted at a younger audience and it’s a different price range.