(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

Holiday advent calendars used to be a genuine treat: a clever way to score full-sized products and luxury formulas for a fraction of the price.

Somewhere along the way, though, the beauty industry lost its mind. What was once a win for shoppers has morphed into a triple-digit cash grab, stuffing oversized boxes with low-effort filler behind insulting price tags.

If you spent any time on TikTok recently, you saw the boiling point firsthand. Shoppers paid an eye-watering $148 for Kim Kardashian’s Skims advent calendar, only to unwrap bobby pins, a keyring, and loose bra straps. The backlash was so brutal that Skims had to issue full refunds.

It laid bare the entire advent calendar grift: glossy marketing and faux-luxury packaging designed to offload cheap junk-drawer filler to unsuspecting shoppers.…