Comparison: light-to-medium blue cremes

I've been wearing a lot of blue lately, and I said I might do comparisons. So I picked up 11 blue cremes (or in a couple of cases, things I thought were cremes looking at the bottles), and then I added a crelly later for comparison purposes. These go all the way from light to very dark blue, and I'm breaking them up into two posts to talk about. This is the lighter half, although they're not exactly ordered from light to dark here, are they?

L-R, this is Cerulean (Insta-Dri), Robyn (Zoya), Peri-wink-le Of An Eye (WnW 1 Step Wonder Gel), Mesmerize (Essie), Pacific Blue (SH Xtreme Wear, and this is the old formula), and Intrigue (Revlon Brilliant Strength).  None of these are anything near dupes, but some of them are closer than it looks in the bottles.

As far as availability, the two on the right are definitely discontinued. (You might be able to buy something that Sally Hansen calls Pacific Blue, but it's not the same formula.) The Crayola polishes are LE but just came out in July so hopefully they'll be around for a while. And I didn't go check, but I think the other three should still be available. Essie had changed the name from Mesmerize to Mesmerized the last time I looked, but I'm pretty sure it's still a core color.

Square Hue Odhani is the one that I left out of the original swatches since it's a crelly, but I stuck it on at one end of these swatches. Odhani is #18 on the wheel (at the bottom), then Cerulean is 1 and Robyn is 2.

On the nail, I'd call all of these pretty close, although it takes more coats of Odhani and Robyn to get there. Not dupes, but close. Cerulean is close to being a one-coater. Robyn is a little lighter and brighter, but not as much as you'd think from the bottles. Odhani is a bit dustier - and of course it's the crelly. Crellies really tend to separate, in my experience, and you can see the dark blue separating out at the bottom of the bottle.

In this shot Robyn looks a little lighter than in the one above.

Peri-wink-le Of An Eye (#3 on the wheel) is by far the lightest of all of these, though. It leans just a hair toward the purple side, but really on the nail it read as blue rather than periwinkle, I thought.

I always think that the (old formula) Pacific Blue (#5) has that same effect - it looks periwinkle in the bottle, but not so much on the nail. And I usually think it looks considerably darker on the nail as well (unlike Peri-wink-le Of An Eye).

Pacific Blue is still lighter than Mesmerize (#4), which is the darkest of this bunch. And then I don't really think that Intrigue (#6) is a creme at all, and I'm not sure why I ever imagined it was. But I swatched it already, so I'll talk about it just the same. It's a grayed out medium blue with some shimmer that's either tonal or silver, I'm not sure which. It's very pretty, in a low-key way. (It's also a tiny bit periwinkle-leaning, but not near as much as Pacific Blue.)

(Expect part 2 of this next Friday, assuming I can get organized enough to finish it by then.)

Added, after I had already written the rest of this:
Here's Jess of NineZero and her review of KL Polish's summer Miami collection (I'll explain below why I'm putting this here):

Jess said in the video above that KL's Porter Miami is a really close dupe for Pacific Blue. I already have Pacific Blue, as you've seen above, but the fact is, I usually won't wear it because I know it's not replaceable (or not for any reasonable price) - I just save it for swatching, mostly. I looked at KL's website and waffled around and while I was still waffling, more or less, they put up a sale! I don't have any idea if it will still be there by the time this gets posted but it's buy any two polishes, get a free bottle of Magic City. And so that put me over the edge even though I wasn't really thinking of buying Magic City. I bought Porter Miami and That's What She Said, from the spring collection. (There's a big banner on the website advertising this special, so if you look and that's not there, I imagine it's fair to assume it has ended. I didn't see an expiration date posted.) (Added: still there as of Sunday am. My guess that the actual end date is "when the Magic City runs out", whenever that might be, or maybe at the end of the weekend, since it's lasted this long!)

So I'll have to do some more comparisons when Porter Miami arrives. (Note that Porter Miami is not a one-coater like Pac Blue is, according to Jess - she said she used two coats. But if it's the same color that's still far closer than anything else I've seen.)

(Is it still a bargain if you get something free you weren't sure you wanted in the first place? Anyway, I figure if I don't like it that much, I'll pass it along to somebody else. And I did want the other two.)