Parnell Cicamanu 92 Serum

What is this product?

Parnell's Cicamanu 92 Serum is a light soothing gel for skin that is merely irritated, not a treatment-strength cica serum, and the brand's own label is what settles it: centella is printed at 744 ppm, manuka leaf extract and madecassoside at 20 ppm each, honey extract at 900 ppb, and the melatonin the marketing leads with sits last of 32 ingredients with no amount at all. Check one thing before buying, because the overseas listing calls it hypoallergenic: mugwort oil is on the label, mugwort is in the daisy family, so skin that reacts to chamomile or ragweed should patch test.

What makes it different?

Parnell prints real amounts on four ingredients, which almost no soothing serum does, and those four figures are what make this product readable instead of guessable: 744 ppm centella, 20 ppm manuka leaf, 20 ppm madecassoside, 900 ppb honey. The barrier lipids people reach for a cica serum to get, ceramide NP and phytosphingosine, sit at the very end of the 32 with no figure, so this supports a barrier rather than rebuilding one, and it needs a cream over it on anything drier than dehydrated. That listing also advertises it as clinically tested, printing a 21.67 percent redness reduction and a 101.13 percent hydration increase, while Parnell publishes no panel size, duration, control group or report behind either number, and neither of them measures the speed the Korean copy promises. The same listing calls it hypoallergenic and then files it under an active ingredient of soy, and neither the 32-item Korean list nor the 30-item English list on that page carries a single soy entry, the only other soy on the page being a printing ink named in a packaging line.

What is in it?

The full ingredient list as the brand publishes it, in the printed order. Each name links to what we know about that ingredient.

Key ingredientWorth a closer look

• Water
• Butylene Glycol
• Glycerin
• 1,2-Hexanediol
• Centella Asiatica Extract
• Carbomer
• Tromethamine
• Propanediol
• Polyglyceryl-10 Laurate
• Lactobacillus Ferment
• Coptis Japonica Root Extract
• Melia Azadirachta Leaf Extract
• Theobroma Cacao (Cocoa) Seed Extract
• Ethylhexylglycerin
• Artemisia Vulgaris Oil
• Melia Azadirachta Flower Extract
• Sodium Polyacrylate
• Dextrin
• Disodium EDTA
• Pentylene Glycol
• Leptospermum Scoparium Leaf Extract
• Madecassoside
• Honey Extract
• Limnanthes Alba (Meadowfoam) Seed Oil
• Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride
• Olea Europaea (Olive) Fruit Oil
• Hydrogenated Lecithin
• Ceramide NP
• Phytosphingosine
• Melatonin

Ingredients with no mark are ones we found nothing notable about, and when marks overlap on one ingredient we show the caution first.

Did the ad claims hold up?

We checked 6 lines this product advertises against the ingredient list and public documents. None of them hold up on their own. They are partly right at best.

Claims translated from Korean, originals preserved.

Each line is quoted as the brand published it, and each one was read on its own against the ingredient list and the documents the brand publishes.

How we read these lines