Prickly Power: Meet Glow Recipe’s Latest Superfruit Serum

Glow Recipe has always felt like a sunny corner of skincare—fruit-forward, playful and obsessively tactile. But behind the pastel jars and gummy textures sits serious science. Their newest launch, the Prickly Pear Mucin Serum, proves the point: this is a brand that can make a product feel delightful and deliver measurable results.

“We already knew the power of the prickly pear cactus since it’s in our bestselling Watermelon Pore-Tight Toner—it has 40+ bioactive compounds including amino acids, electrolytes and fatty acids that make it an incredibly healing and efficacious ingredient on skin,” says co-founder and co-CEO Christine Chang. “Prickly pear mucin is a highly effective product we formulated to help hydrate and strengthen the skin barrier. Our clinical studies showed that 100 per cent of participants experienced improved hydration and barrier strength after just one use.”

The serum is positioned as a vegan mucin alternative—one that delivers the plumping, barrier-repair benefits long associated with snail mucin without ethical baggage. “We wanted to stay true to our brand values and create a vegan, cruelty-free mucin alternative that’s highly efficacious,” explains co-founder Sarah Lee. “We worked with our Korean labs to harvest a stretchy mucin from the natural mucilage of prickly cactus and use an 81 per cent prickly pear concentration. After four weeks, our tests showed a 30 per cent increase in skin density.”

That combination of feel and proof is quintessential Glow Recipe. The co-founders lean on their Korean heritage both as inspiration and methodology—think rituals passed down through families, translated into modern, research-backed formats. “Our approach to skincare and formulation philosophy have largely been influenced by our Korean upbringing and traditions taught to us by our mothers and grandmothers,” Lee says. “We create multi-tasking formulations inspired by that heritage to make skincare fun, approachable and clinically effective.”

Practicality meets ritual in their favourite hacks. Chang swears by the “three-skin method”—layering a hydrating toner three times to flood skin with moisture. “I still do this every morning and night with the Watermelon Glow Pore Tight Toner—it’s concentrated yet gentle and you can really see the glow,” she says. Lee’s go-to? Toner-soaked cotton pads as mini masks before makeup: “Saturate each pad and press for five to 10 minutes for silky-smooth, glass skin.”

Sustainability is threaded through the launch. The prickly pear cactus is sustainably farmed—no wild harvesting, minimal irrigation—and leftover plant matter is composted to restore soil. Packaging uses FSC-certified paper printed with soy and vegetable inks.

“We call what we do ‘edutainment’—snackable, fun skincare education,” Chang adds. It’s a neat distillation of Glow Recipe’s ethos: joyful formats, cultural authenticity and rigorous testing. With Prickly Pear Mucin Serum, the brand proves a playful aesthetic and serious results can coexist—fruit-forward, science-forward, and designed to be loved every day. —Noa Nichol