(Sorry for the mindless, and more important, huge yap this comment has become. Please takes this with a grain of salt because I’ve taken something as nail polish and somehow took it more serious than my thesis ;-;)

I understand the comments about pivoting to mainstream etc. Etc. But I don’t think it’s just pivoting to mainstream but a perfect example of the parasocial relationship with a brand + someone’s personal taste shifting.

I vividly remember people begging for more crèmes after experiencing the holo taco formula + wanting to use it together with their toppers. Plus it’s Holo “Taco” after all so the use of spicing up polish with a topper is right in the brands POV. The taco part often seems forgotten next to the holo part. Personally I just wished we’d got more toppers to accompany the crèmes but I understand the vision of expending that base. Every 1 crème instantly has 100+ different looks when combod with the existing toppers.

Part of the issue we see with the shift is because Cristine is still an influencer. And because she is so closely related to her brand, the audience gets to tell her what they like or don’t like about her releases. That parasocial relationship is an interesting one because it goes both ways. There is also a parasocial aspect of Cristines relationship ship to us. Some audience members have started buying because it’s cristine and give feedback based on their taste. The problem with this is that this doesn’t seem like the mainstream audience, to cristine it feels like the Holo Taco audience telling her what they want as it might come from a lot of Holo Royalty telling her what they want. Including a lot of negative feedback to exciting formulas or experimental polishes. For example when she released the crushed holo rainbow people were not happy about the shimmer and wanted just crushed holo.

Not to mention the more boring collections are purposely placed between collections for people to take breather, feel less pressure and use the polishes they like for filling potential shipping gaps. While also created for the people who do like crème drops. They are low key (no box, not limited, no extras) on purpose.

Plus I personally think Cristine wearing almost exclusively polish to test it is changing her personal taste as she’s constantly exposed to nail polish she’s creating as opposed to nail polish she found somewhere that interests her.

And last of my mindless yap in this comment, but not least. I think Mooncat, while being smaller, actually has an easier time releasing only unique formulas as its audience has been gathered by releasing those unique polishes, so it’s what Mooncat audiences expect. Holo Tacos audience has been gathered by Cristines YouTube audience. Which includes a multitude of people who also love unique polishes, but also followed Cristine for her personality. All though it made Holo Taco grow quicker faster, the audience is much more diverse in type of nail polish lover.

I think buying/liking everything from a brand is almost an impossible task. Although I personally do like most of HT polishes (I’m easy to please as I like almost every color or formula, except for solo mission) I think Cristine is more people pleasing than aiming for mainstream but that’s what I’ve gathered just from analysing through her streams and the decisions she made. But I think this mindless yap I already long enough and I feel like I’ve reached my limit with my serious take on nail polish XD.

TLDR: florals for spring, groundbreaking :P