final fantasy is no stranger to weirdo collabs, the scammy ff15 mobile games, the ff14 camping gear, the various coke and FF elixir crossovers, even a collab with cup noodles for a full quest in ff15. the most interesting of these in years for me though wasn't anything edible or really collectable, or even in one of the games themselves (though the ff15 quest in assassins creed origins was so strange it made me buy the game), the most interesting thing to me was something cosmetic, the FF14 x Schwarzkopf hairdye collab. this is a collab with 3 different hairdyes each taking a colour and style from the game and making them real, a green one, a red one, and for me most interestingly, a pink one. as you can see from my lil avatar in the corner, I dye my hair pink, this isn't just a character I like, it's a lil approximation of how I look and it's a colour I've kept up for more or less over a decade, I made some small detours into purple and blue and one time red by accident but pink has just been my goto colour for years now, so when I saw this and I saw that one of the two shades featured was the same shade that my catboy uses? I mean I had to, right?

so I wanted it and I needed it, but actually getting it was not easy, the thing had a really staggered release that made it hard to actually figure out when or where it was even going to be buyable, my salon girl couldn't see it on any website she used and nor could the people she knew and even after its supposed uk release date I couldn't find it anywhere for the whole of January, it wasn't until mid February that I was able to find it even for sale and it took a further 2 weeks for amazon to even ship the dang thing, but after a month and a half after the release, I had it, it's not too pricy at only £8 a tub and my hair is pretty long so I needed 2, and i might even have needed 3 honestly, still, for dye this is pretty good, but how is the dye itself.

it's... fine? it's far more on the pastel side than i'm used to, I tend to stick to very neon colours because they last far longer and always wash out to pastel, but that just isn't really the case here, the issue with dyes like that are they never come out right, a neon pink will come out a neon pink every time, but pastel ones, unless you have very short hair, tend to be a lot more hit and miss and this is a little like that, while it shows two colours on the box it didn't really come out as either, instead being something inbetween, not a pink and not a blonde but an orangey strawberry'y rose gold, which looks really good though! it's always a gamble you take with these kinds of dyes and I do think I got luckier with it this time. the fact it came out as nice as it did was more or less a miracle and I want to thank my usual salon girl ( https://www.facebook.com/NuYouHairSalonRathcoole/?locale=en_GB ) for doing her best with it, if I had have done this myself there is zero chance it would have came out as good as it did, always find a good local salon if you can for dying and bleaching hair, it'll always come out far better.

another issue is the amount you're given, a single box would barely be enough for short hair and 2 only just covered hair my length, compared to even a manic panic or crazy colour, you just don't get a lot for the price, though that could be the brand crossover making it cost more, this is £8 and the usual ones of this seem to go for about £6, which is fine I guess, for me it was overall worth it, it's something a little different than i'm used to (I prefer neon pink like I said) and the fact it was a cute little brand collab is super cool, I plan to keep the boxes for this as a lil collectable thing, they're neat. though I feel like as far as colours go you can do far better from other brands, or even the other shades which are a far darker style than this one and might come out a little better, would probably last longer too, i'll probably end up just going back to my more neon shade of pink in a month anyway.