Like other gross, disgusting people, I used to start my morning with a famous ritual: a coffee and a cigarette. While I’ve pretty much dispensed with the cigarette since I realized I’m not 100% a starving artist (yet), coffee is completely necessary. The smell of the roasted beans, the dark liquid in a nice mug…

Wait, who am I kidding? I haven’t had a good cup of coffee in literal months. I left my coffee bean grinder back at my parents’ house, along with my French press and drip. It’s been instant ever since I got back to California and yes, my tastebuds weep.

Still, I love coffee — there’s nothing that beats that aroma in the morning, even if it’s artificial. So what better way to wake myself up than with a coffee-smelling scrub? When I saw the Tonymoly Late Art Cappuccino Cream-In Scrub, I had to nab it!

After all, when have I ever been able to resist a food or drink-themed skincare product?

Answer: Never.

The scrub is packaged in a frosted plastic mug, which shows the coffee brown color of the scrub inside. The cap is plastic as well, with a small holder for the spatula. Ah, yes, another spatula to join the plethora of those lost in the anonymous nooks and crannies of my bathroom. Let’s see how long this one lasts.

Ingredients: Glycerin, Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride, Polyglyceryl-3 Methylglucose Distearate, Polysorbate 80, Sucrose, Milk Protein Extract, Coffee Arabica (Coffee) Seed Extract, Theobroma Cacao (Cocoa) Seed Extract, Hedera Helix (Ivy) Leaf/Steam Extract, Hemerocallis Fulva Flower Extract, Nymphaea Odorata Root Extract, Myriophyllum Spicatum Extract, Sansevieria Trifasciata Leaf Extract, Thymus Vulgaris (Thyme) Flower/Leaf Extract, Honey Extract, Glyceryl Stearate, Cetyl Alcohol, Cetearyl Alcohol, PEG-100 Stearate, Microcrystalline Wax, Lactose, Cellulose, Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose, Butylene Glycol, Acetyl Hexapeptide-8, Caffeine, Water, Phenoxyethanol, Caprylyl Glycol, 1,2-Hexanediol, Ethylhexylglycerin, Fragrance. Added to CosDNA for your ingredient referral over yonder.

According to the Tonymoly website, the star ingredients are:

Milk Protein Extract – a non-irritating, moisturizing option that’s very good for sensitive skin. ACTUALLY one of my favorites! — because it is food-derived & I am a sham, let’s be honest.

Caffeine – potentially irritating but works to help constrict blood vessels and thus reduce redness; might also have some kind of impact on fat cells and so might help diminish puffy eyes? |´∀｀●)

Acetylhexa-peptide 8 – a synthetic peptide that helps relax facial muscles (like Botox) (supposedly)

Coffee extract – full of antioxidants with lots of potential (apparently it stimulated collagen synthesis in certain tests?!)

And there are a shit-ton of moisturizing and anti-acne ingredients in there, woah.

While there’s no scent escaping the thick plastic packaging, when you take the cap off and give it a sniff, it’s definitely fragranced. I actually expected something much stronger and darker, more coffee-esque — but really, it’s more on par with a handful of coffee candies. And while the scent is present, it’s hardly overwhelming, even hard to pick out after a few moments. But if you’re buying a coffee-themed face product, I’m assuming that you like the scent and you might be a little sad about this (as I was) (.﹒︣︿﹒︣.)

The texture is a dark brown gel with small little somethings that make up the physical exfoliation aspect of this particular scrub. I’m not entirely sure what these tiny granules are, but they didn’t seem to dissolve. I don’t typically physically exfoliate since my skin is the equivalent of a useless baby when it comes to scratchy things, but this did feel rather gentle while I massaged it into my skin (even if I had no clue any idea what the granules were. Coffee grounds????? Seriously people, WHAT IS IT).

Which brings me to my next point: something very special happens while you massage the gel into your skin. It goes from that brown gel into a light cream right on your skin. Not only that, but it warms up! Not a crazy amount, but enough that I had to stop and be like, wait? Is something happening here? Because I thought maybe it just got a little warm in my room. Is this an allergic reaction? Did I royally fuck up again?!

Nope, that was the black magic of Tonymoly. I have NO idea how they managed this texture change from coffee-to-cream and the instant warming on your cheeks, but it’s a fun little gimmick that definitely adds to the novelty of the product.

I primarily focused my massage on my flakey areas, which typically are near my nostrils behind the creases and my forehead near my eyebrows. When my skin is dry (as it tends to be), I get a ton of sad flaking there that looks like dandruff of the eyebrow. Truly depressing.

Sometimes when I rinse certain products off, I still feel like there’s residue still on my skin. I’ll end up splashing my face for what feels like a lifetime until I just give up and move onto the next step. But even with the gel-turned-cream being rather thick, I didn’t feel as if there was residue or leftover product on my skin. Actually, it felt quite smooth and moisturized, and the flakes near my nose were gone. Plus, not a single inch of overexfoliated or moisture-compromised skin, as I was fearing might happen.

My skin was also significantly brightened, as you can see in the picture above! The effects were not permanent, but you could probably manage a more consistent effect if you used this regularly. Every time I used this scrub, these brightening effects were temporary, lasting, at most, a few hours. After all, this is a wash-off scrub — it does not stay on the skin long enough to really have lasting effect on the skin, in my opinion. This seemed to be the case with me. In all honesty, I wasn’t really expecting much from this product, so any positive change in my skin — even if not lasting — was noticed with delight.

FINAL VERDICT: I loved the temporary brightening effect for instant gratification in a skin emergency and my skin felt a bit more moisturized than usual — but there are other, more consistent options that are more gentle on the skin. Fun for a little extra pampering, but not something I would integrate into my usual routine or would reconsider repurchasing.