Review: Tony Moly Shiny Foot Peeling Liquid

Today, dear readers I'm going to be talking about my feet.  I appreciate that feet are a bit of a polarising topic - some people hate them, and some people are ambivalent towards them, and very few people actually like them.  The following review may contain pictures of my feet in plastic booties (not so bad) and of my feet after applying this peeling product (not so nice).  Read on after the jump if you're curious.



I'm not quite sure where I read about Tony Moly's Shiny Foot Peeling Liquid, with its disturbing use of baby feet all over the packaging, but my curiosity was piqued when I read about how it works.  Essentially, you put your feet in some plastic booties, pour in the peeling liquid, leave on for an hour or so, and then wait.  Five days or so later, the top layer of skin starts peeling off your feet, leaving them soft and smooth.

Disgusting, right?  And yet also kind of appealing in a sort of squeamish way?  Damn right.

I bought a box from eBay, which cost me around £9.  Shipping from Tony Moly's native Korea took around a week and a half, which only allowed me to build up a little more dry skin on my feet.  Sorry.  Disgusting, I know.

When it did arrive, I eagerly laid down the pizza carpet (a piece of carpet we use to protect the actual carpet from takeaways and nail polish) and began.  The plastic booties are easy enough to put on the feet, and they are sturdy enough to safely contain the peeling liquid you pour into them, provided your toenails aren't too sharp, and provided you sit relatively still whilst it's processing.  

The peeling liquid itself felt really cold when I poured it into the booties atop my feet, but I didn't really feel anything else - no tingling, no burning, no nothing.  I left my feet in the booties for an hour and a quarter, and then went upstairs and rinsed off the excess liquid in the shower.  There wasn't really a lot left in the booties; most of it had been absorbed into the skin.

Five days later, and my skin started peeling off in little bits.  The instructions tell you quite firmly not to pick and peel at the bits of skin, which I found really hard - I was one of those kids who spread PVA glue on her hand just to peel it off at school.  After eight or nine days, though, most of the peeling had stopped.  

I've seen some horrific pictures of people with huge flaps of skin peeling off their feet, but I didn't really experience anything quite so extreme - nor were the results particularly life changing.  I had hoped that the areas of really hard skin (brought on by wearing orthotics) would be sorted out, but only the top layer of the skin peeled.  Granted, my heels were significantly softer and smoother after use, but the balls of my feet didn't really seem much different.

It's also probably important to note that the liquid itself must be pretty strong stuff - I was wearing gel polish on my toe nails, and it peeled right off once I removed the booties!

Overall, this was a fun experiment, and maybe something I'd do again just before summer to make sure my feet looked their best - but it's not the silver bullet I'd been hoping for.  Find Tony Moly's Shiny Foot Peeling Liquid on eBay now.