MAC It's A Strike!: Eyeshadow in Bowlarama, Gutter Gal, Bowl Out, Join My League?, and 300 Game

Last Thursday, MAC launched their first fall collection called It's A Strike!: "Head straight to the fast lane and have a ball with It's A Strike! A set of varsity-chic hues gives you that glamour strike that's sure to bring you luck." It's A Strike! inclues a total of 29 products, and sees the release of six single eyeshadows, of which five are new and limited edition and one is permanent (Carbon, which will not be reviewed here). Each eyeshadow is housed in regular black packaging, contains a total of 1.5 grams of product, and retails for $19. These are applicable for the Back to MAC recycling program.
Clockwise from bottom: Bowlarama, Gutter Gal, Bowl Out, Join My League?, and 300 Game
Bowlarama, Gutter Gal, Bowl Out, Join My League?, and 300 Game

Bowlarama is a medium warm brightened yellowed chartreuse green in a Satin finish. This is a new and limited edition shade. It has a soft, finely-milled texture, and goes on smoothly and evenly. It has high pigmentation and opaque colour pay-off. It can be layered and blended out easily. It is similar to Sour Lemon, slightly more yellow than Bitter, darker and more green than Shock Factor.

Gutter Gal is a light warm dove grey in a Matte finish. This is a new and limited edition shade. It has a soft, finely-milled texture, and goes on smoothly and evenly. It has high pigmentation and opaque colour pay-off. It can be layered and blended out easily. It is lighter and cooler than Omega, cooler and more matte than Patina, and more grey and more matte than Shroom. 

Bowl Out is a medium-dark warm taupe-grey in a Matte finish. This is a new and limited edition shade. It has a soft, finely-milled texture, and goes on smoothly and evenly. It has high pigmentation and opaque colour pay-off. It can be layered and blended out easily. It is lighter and warmer than Print, darker and more grey than Coquette, and lighter and cooler than Brun. 

Join My League? is a dark cool charcoal-brown in a Matte finish. This is a new and limited edition shade. It has a soft, finely-milled texture, and goes on smoothly and evenly. It has high pigmentation and opaque colour pay-off. It can be layered and blended out easily. It is cooler than Brun, more grey than Mystery, and similar to Concrete. 

300 Game is a dark warm burgundy-plum in a Matte finish. This is a new and limited edition shade. It has a slightly drier texture, and as a result, can go on a bit patchy. However, it has high pigmentation and opaque colour pay-off. It can be layered easily, but blends out a bit unevenly. It is more reddened than Sketch, more purple than I'm Into It, and darker and more purple than Deep Damson.

All of these shades with the exception of Gutter Gal are actually very dupeable within MAC's permanent range, but I am loving the retro vibes of these shades. They all somehow go together really nicely to create a great colour story for this collection ("varsity-chic") but the addition of a bright lime green and a blackened cherry keep it more interesting than straight-up neutrals. On that note, though, I like that they focused on making really smooth, pigmented, matte, cool-toned neutrals — a lot of brands do good warm neutrals but cool neutrals tend to veer into mauve territory, and these ones are still squarely in the taupe/grey category. Bowl Out and Join My League? both work double duty as fantastic brow shades, as well. I feel like a lot of people are going to overlook this collection since it was released in between two much bigger launches (Good Luck Trolls, which launched earlier this month, and then Star Trek, which will be launching next week), but it's actually really gorgeous in an understated way that is absolutely perfect for the fall season.