User:Looie496/sandbox

Shielding lotion is a term coined around 2005 by a company called California 21st Century Formulations to describe a group of skin cream products called Skin MD Natural. The term was promoted by the internet marketing agency Expansion Plus, who ran a highly successful campaign that relied on planting information in social media so that it would be picked up and spread virally. The basic principle was to place articles on the skinmdnatural.com website that appeared to be reviews, and then distribute links via news sites and press releases, so that the purported reviews would be replicated elsewhere.

The publicity material claims that these "shielding lotions" are a superior version of barrier creams, which are sometimes used for skin protection by athletes and other people who may be exposed to harmful substances, although their efficacy has long been disputed. The claims of superiority for "shielding lotions" have not been tested scientifically, however.

The Wikipedia article on this topic was created in 2008 by an editor who made a total of three edits and then fell silent. In spite of a strongly promotional tone the article continued to exist in essentially the same form until 2015.