We Tried $3,338 Worth Of Skin Care — & This Was The Best Of 2018

If 2018 turned out anything like '80s science fiction promised, we'd have immersive computer-generated realities and robot law enforcement instead of Fortnite and mini drones you can buy at Kohl's. But here we are, approaching 2019, with nothing to show for it but 3D printers and hoverboards you can't even ride on public property in case they catch fire.

But we shouldn't lose hope for the future — at least, not where innovations in beauty are concerned. Nobody can really predict what the hell is going to happen in the next few years, good or bad, but every day brings us a new skin-care product that we would've thought impossible five years ago. A resurfacing serum that leaves you practically baby-skinned overnight. A moisturizer that feels like nothing on your face, but hydrates as well as a heavy cream. Stickers that suck the life out of pimples but disappear into skin, so you can go about your life like you don't have a whitehead the size of a planet on which we may someday live.

So, until the real future arrives (and it will eventually, right?), we'll take the major skin-care advances that the beauty world brought us this year. We tried $3,338 worth of moisturizers, acne cure-alls, face masks, cleansers, and eye creams, and even products that claimed to bring us one step closer to the IRL Fountain of Youth, all in the name of tracking down the best of the best of what 2018 had to offer for our Beauty Innovator Awards. Ahead, the skin-care products we wouldn't board a spaceship without — because if you're facing off against the future, why not do it with the best skin of your life?