Daddy Troy: Welcome back to Gear Daddy I’m your host Daddy Troy. Sunscreens have come a long way since we were kids. Now all these new fangled delivery mechanisms and we’re going to put them to the test today in our sunscreen showdown.

This whole week has been sponsored by, OneStepAhead.com and we’re giving away a gift certificate to OneStepAhead.com. So stick around to the end of the program and I will tell you how to get one. So, I’ve divided all these bottles into 4 different categories. The first category is the kind in which you actually push and it sprays into your child. The second is the kind that you squeeze onto your child. The third is a trigger mechanism. And the fourth is the rub on kind.

The first thing I really like about these spray on bottles is that you can spray them from any angle - unlike the squeeze on bottles, with these you can go up and down the legs, you can go under the arms - it really doesn’t matter what angle you go at. So these bottles come in 2 different types. This is a lotion spray, and this right here is an oil spray. Let me show you how they work.

Lets start with a lotion spray. The lotion spray you will see how it goes on right here, and you can see some white there, so it is actually a lotion. And lets now do the other type, which is more of an oily based type, and it goes on without any whiteness at all. One advantage to the lotion-based spray is that the lotion based sprays you can actually see where it’s been and where it hasn’t been. It’s a little easier to notice what part of the child has actually been sprayed. Now these were from banana boat, lets go ahead and test a similar, which is copper tone for kids and copper tone for kids also has a lotion-based one and an oil based one lets check those out.

This one right here is the quick and easy lotion from copper tone; it’s a nice spray pattern - on that one really nice and even copper tone quality product. Now we have the oily based one right here. It has a much wider spray pattern; it also goes on really evenly - really like the copper tone products. One other reason I like the copper tone products is that you will notice with this banana boat, I have to take the lid off and that lid first of all is going to get lost. More over, unless it is inside your beach bag, your kid’s shoes are going to press on it and it’s going to go all over your set.

With these right here, the really cool thing about the copper tone ones is that you will notice that the cap twists, and so you can close the cap and leave it inside your bag. Another great thing about all of these bottles is their formed factor is very narrow so it can really fit into your bag quite easily. Also they’re not smushable, unlike these ones - that which you have to squeeze them to get them on. We’ve also got a new brand on the market - it’s kind of a generic brand called baby sunscreen. Lets test this one. It also has the cap, which you are going to lose.

This one right here is a lotion spray, so lets see if we see some of the white on this one - and you do. It’s got a pretty nice spray pattern pretty wide; I’d give it a good on that it looks a little bit more oily and smelly than the other ones.

Whereas spray bottles like to get full coverage from any angle, squeeze bottles actually require that you put some - possibly into your hand or touch the kids skin and some kids don’t really like that. When you go to buy one of these, you want to judge the cap. The cap is the number one thing because its going to come open, it might rip off, if it’s a flimsy cap its going to get squeezed inside your bag and its going to go everywhere. So you really want to judge them by the cap.

This one right here is again by banana boat. It’s got a fairly good cap on it, a little bit flimsy. Here is another one I picked up, this is from ocean potion and ocean potion has a really strong cap on it. You can hear the definitive pop when it opens up - it feels like a higher grade plastic. You’ve also got the standard old bottle, which we led the show with, in which you press down in order for it to come up and lets do a few tests on these. For instance here is this bottle right here, its copper tone kids SPF50, and you’ll see it comes out pretty fast. lets do the ocean potion, little bit more viscous.

Next here is a funky bottle by Hawaiian tropic, here is 2 new things by copper tone. This one is water babies and it says water babies right on it. This one is copper tone kids and these come with a cool little care-beaner, which then your kid could then maybe hook onto his or her belt or bag if there are any loops on their clothing. This also helps buying with kids because it comes with a little trinket and the kid thinks it of a toy and tends to hang on to it.

Let me tell you a bit about anything that says babies on it. It means babies over 6 month of age. Without fail all of these say don’t use them on any baby under 6 months of age without your pediatricians recommendation. And finally here is a product by Aveeno baby. Aveeno baby prides itself in making products that are really good for sensitive skin - they’re perfume free. Here is the baby faces and tender places by Hawaiian tropic and what I really found humorous, is that it’s got the lullaby fragrance.

I like this delivery mechanism - really cool delivery mechanism, because most spray bottles in your kitchen, it has both spray factor and a stream factor, watch the spray factor ready? Woo! big wide swathe - look at that right there and watch the stream. here we go you can stand on the other side of the room and still hit your kid with this thing ready? Boom! Smack right there.

Finally the last technology we are going to look at sticks are made specifically for kids faces tend to be more min-able to allowing you to put this on their face rather then some sort of rub in lotion and you never want to put a spray onto a kids face because it could get into his or her eyes. Well that’s all this week for our sunscreen showdown. If you have another product you would like us to review, email me at GearDaddy@dadlabs.com and tell me about it, and we will review it on the show.

Remember we are giving away a gift certificate to OneStepAhead.com. OneStepAhead.com has this really great sun smarty’s line of clothing, and while sunscreens are a great defense, clothing is an even better defense in order to keep the sun off of your kids. So in order to win that gift certificate all you need to do is to go dadlabs.com episode 316 and tell me what you think this ink blab test looks like and you will be in the drawing for the gift certificate to OneStepAhead.com. That’s all this week on Gear Daddy we will see you next week on dadlabs.com