Note from Auntie Snail: I wouldn’t know anywhere near as much as I do about Asian skincare if not for the amazing community over at Reddit’s /r/AsianBeauty. Today, one of those amazing community members, /u/GiveMeABreak25, gives us the scoop on the new My Beauty Diary masks she’s uncovered for 2015!

It all started off as an innocent search for a sheet mask on a slow day at the office.

Since discovering Asian skin care products, I have found my biggest love to be sheet masks. I don’t know where they have been all my life, but now that I have found them, I will never let them go!

Customization is by far one of the greatest aspects of an Asian skin care routine.  I typically have a dry, sensitive and…maturing skin type.  I rarely have a breakout anymore. However, with the weather changing where I live, sometimes the heat, humidity and extra sweat can contribute to small blemishes for me.

So I knew I needed to stock up on sheet masks in general (Gasp! I am falling to a record low of 30 or so!) but first, I needed my trusty My Beauty Diary Apple Polyphenol Mask for the times when I feel a break out coming on.  I logged onto Amazon and began my search. I noticed the box I chose said “New Edition,” which is not unusual for Asian skin care products. Unlike Western brands, Asian companies tend to reformulate or at least repackage their items yearly. Additionally, they manufacture different products for different markets. The boxes that go to US suppliers vary from those destined for other countries.

So off to Google I went to find out if this was a reformulation or just a repackaging. After all, it works so well for me, maybe I should find out what the new edition meant.

Cut to hours and days later and many, many open tabs. I had fallen this time, fallen so hard! I even thought, in all seriousness, “Maybe it’s time to learn another language.” What school had failed to inspire me in, skin care had me contemplating.

Google translate becomes a really handy tool when you only speak/read English. The ability to translate a page is a godsend.  Suddenly I am watching videos I don’t understand, reaching for some kind of context and trying to interpret images. What I found stirred me so much, I had to call on the crazy snail lady to share my excitement–I know she too loves some My Beauty Diary masks!

MY BEAUTY DIARY HAS UPGRADED THEIR SHEET MASKS TO HYDROGELS, GUYS!!!

But before I came to that conclusion, I thought they were keeping the sheet masks and adding hydrogels.  Who could blame me? One of the promo pages showed side-by-side “twins,” one wearing a sheet mask, one wearing a hydrogel.  Plus, when you have translations to sort through like these, who can really be sure???

My Beauty Diary Found upgrade my beautiful natural key piece super facelift listed I felt people in Taiwan for the first time the beta test mask race with old twins dressing will know plus actual smoke mask every day. Pulls out 30,000 yuan Beautiful funds began to experiment

I still was not convinced that I understood what I was reading. After all, maybe the images of water droplets meant they added extra essence (which would be ridiculous, they are already dripping as is!). So, back to more translating.

Pole wire bare skin hydrogel membrane using Tencel fabric to create the ultimate squirt interleaved layer of ultra-thin water-bearing permeable and efficient structure of the essence, so that the skin effectively absorb the essence of the mask, carefully lift the skin moisturizing Hydra touch, not adding chemical adhesives and natural decomposition in the environment, eliminating the burden of skin-friendly sense of the Earth’s ecology

The ultimate squirt! Interleaved layer! Oh yes, MBD has hydrogels!!

This is such great news, as they are the leaders in sheet masks for me and for many others. They are generally inexpensive, usually low on fragrance, and pretty widely available. But I recently have learned to really like hydrogels as well, so this just combines two great things I love!

I went on a hunt for a buyer because I have not gotten comfortable with any buying services yet, found someone I hope I can trust, and placed a very small order of the Black Pearl variety. I would not recommend this for most people. Stick to a buying service and let crazy people like myself throw their cash at an unknown person in the cyber universe.  Better yet, perhaps wait for them to be sold by the company you most trust.

Sadly, it appears some of the standard My Beauty Diary masks, like Royal Jelly and Sake Yeast, did not make the cut. Here’s hoping that changes.

I will be sure to report back to Auntie Snail when I receive my order, presumably with improved and bouncy skin!

~/u/GiveMeABreak25 is not yet a blogger. The sheet mask superhero calls herself “just a regular middle aged mom who works too much and loves to research things most would consider trivial.”