Happy 40th Birthday, Maybelline Great Lash! Now Please Go Away.

This is one makeup product that has a great PR machine behind it: Somehow it's survived 4 decades without package redesign or reformulation and still makes magazine editors' Best of lists year after year. This is what tipped me off to the real possibility that those lists are driven by top advertising and other politics.

The reality: The consumer doesn't like this mascara. I thought it was just me until I read reviews on consumer sites like MakeupAlley (which gives it an average rating of 2 out of 5 "lippies") and other beauty discussion boards. The overwhelming consensus is this product doesn't deliver: The formula is signature Maybelline wet, which means it doesn't hold curl and weighs your lashes down; the brush is too sparse and small, which means no volume or essentially weight-lifting the brush to get anything out of the product. What I hear is that Great Lash doesn't clump. The thing is, so many mascaras are sophisticated enough not to clump. This doesn't distinguish the product enough to keep it alive.

Maybelline, please let go.

The baffling thing is the company has launched some winners: Colossal Volume and One by One. As a brand, they've proven they can keep up with consumer tastes and put out a quality mascara. They also randomly discontinue ingenious products like their Dream Mousse Concealer. I try to get in these companies' heads sometimes on what constitutes a discontinue, because it doesn't always seem to be consumer demand and loyalty.

So why keep Great Lash, which is the paltry and anemic predecessor of Maybelline's newer launches? My only guess is nostalgia: It's that green and pink tube that lured many of us into trying the product but never repurchasing. Please put a better formula and brush into the green and pink tube and have a relaunch party, not a birthday party. Yes, Maybelline is celebrating Great Lash's 40th birthday with various artists putting signature designs on the tube. I'd be more impressed if there was some work put on the inside of this product - or holding a symbolic burial.