It doesn't get me any points in the battles against plastic, but it is a tick in the smaller, nicer companies column - Childs Farm sell my new favourite children's toiletries
Advertising is powerful stuff isn't it? What have I always bought for my children's bath time? Johnson & Johnson of course. Heaven knows how many times I've seen adverts of distinctly unstressed or untired mummies dabbing a blob of bubbles on their adorable infant's nose at bath time. The wholesome and happy nature of this company and their baby products has been drilled into my brain since I was the same hight my daughter is now. (She is somewhat shielded from the craziness of advertising as our tv aerial doesn't work properly so she pretty much only watches iplayer or netflix.) They're a trusted brand, so why on earth would I look at what goes in them, or what their ethical record is. Well, the reality is, that nothing too awful does go in their baby range, they even have a decent palm oil policy.
However, when trying to dream up things to put in Christmas stockings that would the children would like and wouldn't be entirely waste plastic crap, I thought some nice shampoo and bubble bath might do the trick. (It did, both children were actually quite excited.) But I wanted to get something nice that I could feel positive about buying. I can't remember what I searched for, but I ended up on the Childs Farm website where they were running a handy Christmas promotion. The big bottle of moisturiser was free and the company is based about half an hour away from me which is also quite nice.
And the products? They're made of pretty much all natural products, not tested on animals and they smell so very nice. The strawberry and mint hair care is adored by Sally and doesn't seem to have done anything to make her super curls any more impossible to do anything with. I think my favourite is the grapefruit and green tea cream though. Both Pip and Sally get quite dry skin and this is light, absorbs straight away, and makes them smell so yummy I could eat them all up. I wouldn't because that would make me an insane person in jail, but that seems to be an acceptable metaphor to use for some bizarre reason. I could also just go with: it smells so nice and is so soft on your skin that I've pinched it a few times already to rub on the rotund protuberance that is currently housing the third child.
The rub? The cost - £4 a bottle for most of the products in the size bottles shown above (250ml). Johnson's oh so heavily advertised Baby bath and bubbles is £2.90 for 500ml. Johnson's also get picked for 2 for 1 offers and I've not seen that be the case with Childs Farm at my local Tesco. The website is currently running a promotion of 20% off on orders over £20, but I'm stocked up enough on toiletries to last me a few months at least. We'll see where we are when I next run out of children's hair products. The last bottle of shampoo Sally had lasted about a year and that was free in a My Little Pony promotion, if this four pounds lasts a whole year then I expect my bank account can probably take the knock!
Oh, and there are PONIES on the bottle. It's hard to argue with that!