Grasshopper New Media Presents...

After I found the Frog Pod and falling in love with the innovative design, I knew I had to do some research on the company that produces it. A quick search on the net and I found Boon’s delicious site. At the time, there were only three products there - the Frog Pod, the Potty Bench (which I will definately review one day, but my oldest two are already trained and my youngest is 18 months old and not quite ready ) and the Flo.

When I saw the Flo Water Deflector, I thought it was the answer to a difficult situation in our home - hair washing - and knew I had to try it. In our home, hair washing is a huge hassle. With each child, I think *this* will be different, but it seems that it’s in their genes. The extremely kind people at Boon sent me a sample to review a few months ago, and the Flo has not left our tub faucet since it arrived!

The Flo Water Deflector is just that - a water deflector - but it’s so much more. It’s also a protective faucet cover and a bubble bath dispenser. It “clips” on to the faucet the same way that a clothespin clips on to a clothesline. There’s a hole in place that allows the shower diverter to remain accessible, so that the Flo can remain in place at all times. The deflector, made of a soft rubbery material, not only makes the water come out into the tub in a waterfall, it also protects your kids’ heads from painful smacks against the faucet. On the top of the Flo is a clear reservoir, in what seems to be Boon’s signature color of green, that holds just enough bubble bath solution for one bath. The bubble bath dispenser is an easy one-touch button. If your child can push a doorbell button, they should be able to activate the dispenser.

My kids’ favorite feature of the Flo is the water deflector. Before we had the Flo attached to our faucet, I would fill the tub with water and the kids would file in afterwards. Now that the Flo is installed, they fight over getting in first, so that they can play with the water as the tub is filling.We don’t always use bubble bath in the dispenser, either. Sometimes I just put a few drops of lavender essential oil (or euchalyptus if they need help getting rid of a cold) and let that mix in with the water as it’s coming out. Mmmmm, it smells wonderful, and is wonderfully relaxing before bed.

After we had used the Flo a few times, we had come up with some ideas that we thought would make the Flo even better. We contacted the kind people at Boon, Inc. with our ideas and what follows are excerpts from our communications, which shows how much time, research and thoughtfulness that Boon puts into their designs.

Barb: My first idea is to make the bubble dispenser button “sticky” - so that it stays in position. This way, a person doesn’t have to continue holding it open while the water runs, which is something I found tedious. I also like the idea of the Flo being able to hold a larger volume of bubble solution - it went through our (rather thin) solution very quickly.

Kate, from Boon, Inc.: Rebecca’s research shows that kids want to dispense the bubble bath into the tub themselves, but that they tend to use too much, wasting a lot of bubble bath. This slow button allows more “fun dispensing time”. She designed the button not to stay open, in order to prevent children from emptying all of the bubble bath into the water at once. Also, the capacity of the bubble bath dispenser is meant to accommodate just enough for one or two baths so that the kids won’t dump it all into one bath. Both these features are meant to help keep children from wasting too much bubble bath.

Barb: My third and favorite idea :-D is to make the water deflector sensitive to heat. So many baby products on the market show if the water is too hot for the child/ren, and I think it would be a perfect feature for your product.

Kate: Regarding the temperature sensor, we actually had that feature in the original design, but in order to make this product to sell at $14.99, we had to remove that feature (would have added $3 to $4 to the price).

Pretty cool, eh?

My 7 year old son also has his own ideas that he’d like me to share with you (and that I shared with Boon).

• He would enjoy it if they made an area for a “fountain” - something so that the kids could play in the fountain of water, but could also drink from it.

• He also thinks they should make something similar to the Flo for bathroom sinks. He thinks it should hold hand soap in it, and there’s a button to push for dispensing the soap. And they could make this have the option to be a drinking fountain as well.

So, this wasn’t the answer to making hair washing easier in our home , but it was a cool addition to our bathtime rituals that just made it a whole lot more fun!

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