Princess packaging, witch concepts, fruit tubes: miss "old K-beauty"?

A nostalgic post in r/AsianBeauty from a Korean user who grew up with these brands. They miss the K-beauty of around 2012–2013: Skinfood's fruit-shaped hand creams and food theme, cupcake lip balms, Etude's princess look, Holika Holika's witch concept, Peripera's pop-art style. Products are better now, they said, but every brand has gone so minimal they can't tell them apart, and the brand shops that used to be on every shopping street have mostly vanished.

What the replies said

• Lots of agreement that "the whimsy is gone", even cute packaging feels sterile now. Some blamed shoppers who assume cute packaging means a weak product; others blamed cost, since custom packaging is pricier than stock bottles with a label.

• Brands still committed to a concept: Chinese labels such as Flower Knows, Girlcult and Catkin, and Japan's Canmake.

• Reformulations stung. One long-time user mourned Innisfree's green tea toner changing from milky to watery.

• Others pointed out Missha and Skinfood are very much alive; the poster clarified they meant the disappearing stores.

• Memory lane: Tony Moly's egg pore products, Etude's bubble-tea sleeping packs, a bouncy jelly BB cream, and watching "Get It Beauty".

• Several said skincare now feels like fast fashion, with a new star ingredient every few months. A counterpoint: the old cute packaging wasted a lot of plastic and was bulky to carry.

Desk note: EDAILY (September 2026) describes how single-brand road shops such as Missha, Innisfree, The Face Shop and Tonymoly led the market from the mid-2000s through the 2010s, while Olive Young now holds more than 90% of the domestic health-and-beauty store market. Its revenue grew from 760.3 billion won in 2015 to 5.8335 trillion won last year.

Which old-school K-beauty product or shop do you miss most?

Original thread: r/AsianBeauty — anyone miss the "old K-beauty"? · See also: EDAILY

#OldSchoolKBeauty #RoadShops #PackagingDesign #KBeauty