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Why We Are Building a Tingle Cream, and Why It Is Taking a Year

Why We Are Building a Tingle Cream, and Why It Is Taking a Year - Delux Tanners
In development

Why we are building
a tingle cream, and why it is taking a year.

Tingle is the most requested product we do not sell. It is also the category with the biggest gap between what the tube promises and what the ingredients do. So we are building one, it has been over a year, and it is still not out. Here is what a tingle cream actually is, what is wrong with most of them, and what ours has to do before we will put our name on it.

12+months in development
0nicotinates in ours
4thwhere acetyl tyrosine sits on our list
0caramel, bronzer or colourant
1What a tingle is2What is wrong with most3What ours does differently4Why it is late5Who it is for6FAQ
A tingle is a sensation, not a result. The heat is your circulation. The tan still comes from melanin under UV.
Most tingle creams are a warming agent in a moisturiser. The accelerator, if present, sits below the fragrance.
Ours has to carry the full stack under the heat, with a warmth that does not fight the rest of the formula.
It ships when it beats the best tingle we can buy. Not before.

Part one

What a tingle cream actually is

A tingle cream contains an ingredient that makes skin flush and feel hot for the length of a session. Experienced tanners like it: it feels like something is happening, and on a sunbed that feeling is part of the ritual. What is worth knowing is that the feeling and the tan are separate. The warmth is blood flow near the surface of the skin. Melanin is made by different cells for a different reason, in response to UV. A tingle can sit on top of a real accelerator or on top of a plain moisturiser, and the heat feels the same either way. Which one you are buying is decided by the rest of the list.

Part two

What is wrong with most of them

Most tingle creams get their heat from nicotinates, methyl or benzyl nicotinate. They work. They open the small blood vessels near the surface so you go red and warm within minutes. Two problems. First, that redness gets sold as a deeper, darker tan when it is a flush that fades with the session. Second, the same tubes often contain caffeine, which closes blood vessels, so the formula is opening and closing the same vessels at once. Underneath the warmth, the accelerator is usually tyrosine after the fragrance, or nothing, and the colour promised on the front comes from caramel at the back. A hot flush, a sugar tint, and a moisturiser. That is the category, and it is why we did not have a tingle for a year and still do not.

Two ingredients that make you flush, one that colours you brown, and a body cream. That is what most tingle tubes are. Ours could not be that.

Part three

What ours does differently

The warmth comes from vanillyl butyl ether, a vanilla-derived warming agent, not a nicotinate. It builds heat without the vascular flush and without the ingredient that caffeine would then be fighting. Pepper and ginger extracts round it out.
It is balanced by three cooling agents, menthone glycerin acetal, ethyl menthane carboxamide and methyl diisopropyl propionamide, so the sensation is warm and clean rather than hot and sore. Tuning that balance is most of the year.
The full stack sits underneath. Acetyl tyrosine fourth on the list, above the emulsifiers. Niacinamide fifth. MelanoBronze. Acetyl hexapeptide-1. The same actives as the Next-Gen creams, in a tingle.
The skin is looked after. Ceramide NP, sodium hyaluronate, and the same skin-first thinking as the rest of the range, because a tingle asks more of skin than any other tanning product.
No caramel, no bronzer, no colourant. Whatever colour you see after a session with ours is yours.

A typical tingle cream

Flush
NicotinatesCaffeine in the same tubeCaramel for colourMelanin stack

Heat, tint, moisturiser.

VS

The Delux tingle

Stack
Vanilla-derived warmthThree cooling agentsTyrosine fourthMelanoBronzeNo colourant

Heat over a real accelerator.

Part four

Why it is late

Because the easy version was ready a year ago. A nicotinate, a fragrance, our base: it would have sold. It would also have been the category we just described, with our name on it. The version we want is harder: a warmth strong enough that tingle regulars are satisfied, clean enough that it does not sting, balanced so the cooling agents do not cancel it, and all of it sitting on top of the full stack without the stack dropping down the list to make room. Every sample has moved one of those and cost another. Our testing process does not care that it has been a year. It only asks whether the current sample beats the best tingle we can buy. When it does, you will hear about it.

Part five

Who it will be for, and who it will not

For tingle regulars who like the sensation and have wondered what was actually under it. For experienced sunbed users who want the full Delux stack in a tingle format. Not for first-timers, not for faces, not for broken or sensitive skin, and not for anyone who wants a tingle to do the tanning for them, because it cannot. In the meantime, the Next-Gen creams run the same stack without the heat, and our sunbed cream guide explains where tingle sits against everything else.

Quick answers

Frequently asked

Does a tingle cream tan you faster?
The tingle itself does not. It is a sensation from blood flow. Any extra tanning comes from the accelerator underneath it, if there is one.
When is the Delux tingle launching?
When it beats the best tingle we can buy in our own testing. It has been over a year and we do not announce dates.
Will it use nicotinates?
No. The warmth is vanilla-derived, balanced with cooling agents, on top of the full Delux melanin stack.
Is tingle safe for beginners?
We would not recommend it. Start with a non-tingle cream, learn how your skin behaves on a bed, then decide.

Until then, the stack without the heat.

The Next-Gen creams carry the same actives the tingle will. Start there.

Shop the Next-Gen creams
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