Grid two is where the old guard shakes hands with the new. Baby Lips Crystal in Pink Quartz is a shimmery pink balm that can be worn alone or under lip color, while Pink Punch is the fruity one. Then come two balms with founders you can name. Laneige launched in 1994 as an Amorepacific brand in South Korea, and its name comes from the French for snow. Its Lip Glowy Balm is a shea butter formula with a glossy finish, and the shade here reads juicy and tart. Summer Fridays began in 2018 with a single product, the Jet Lag Mask, from Marianna Hewitt and Lauren Ireland. Its Lip Butter Balm followed in 2020, starting with Vanilla, and the shade here is a cool baby pink made with shea and murumuru butters and vegan waxes. Try this: swipe the Summer Fridays pink first and the Crystal balm over it. The shimmer stops looking glittery and starts looking wet.

Grid three is the skincare end. Glow Recipe's Glass Balm uses hyaluronic microspheres and promises up to 12 hours of hydration with a glass-like glow. Christine Chang and Sarah Lee met at L'Oréal Korea in 2005, quit in 2014 to open an online shop for Korean brands, and launched their own products in 2017, so a retailer's eye sits behind the formulas. Oliviaumma's Candy Glow is the clear one, a high-shine balm with ceramide and shea butter. Tower 28 was started in 2019 by Amy Liu, who has lived with eczema for her whole adult life. Her LipSoftie was the brand's first flavored product, a tinted lip balm here in a sheer mauve. Milk Makeup came out of Milk Studios in New York in 2016, and Balmade is its bright pink balm with electrolytes and a raspberry rave flavor. What I would skip is layering three of these at once because they all look good on the shelf. Glossy balms stack into a slick that slides off before lunch. Pick one, and if you want color, let a matte lipstick sit underneath.

Baby Lips was never the most sophisticated balm in the room, and it was never trying to be. For plenty of people it was the first small, fruit-scented tube that simply behaved. Everything in the last grid is a grown-up descendant, with longer ingredient lists and better marketing. My test has not changed: would I reach for it without thinking. Keep one Baby Lips by the door, one of the newer balms by the bed, and see which one gets finished first. If you want to keep browsing, I also put together Lanolips and the Lip Balms for Truly Dry Lips and Plumped Lips, Explained.