As you know last month we jetted off to Egypt for a week of sun and family fun. It was our first trip abroad with the children and I was more than a little bit anxious about it. Through this blog and my twitterstream I was fortunate enough to be given a few items to review and I took with us the Love Bug Mosquito Insect Repellant by Prince Lionheart.
I personally really struggle with reactions to insect bites, insects seem to find me really quite tasty and I also don’t like using pharmaceutical or chemically derived products on the children if I can possibly avoid it. The Love Bug really appealed to me as an insect bite preventative as it wasn’t a spray, a roll on, a lotion or a cream. It’s a simple battery operated plastic ladybird which you clip on/off to your buggy, cot, car seat etc. It emits a safe, low-level tone that imitates the sound of a dragonfly’s wing beat, the mosquito’s natural predator. The Dragonfly being the mosquito’s mortal enemy keeps the biting kind at a distance.
I did wonder if it would really be non-intrusive or if I’d have something buzzing in the background and I can confirm it is silent! Well silent in the sense that you can’t hear it unless you put it to your ear to check if its on, any children background noise will overtake it. Its subtler than a really subtle thing!
Now Egypt in March is pretty much its worse biting season and yes I can confirm we all did collect bites during the week. However interestingly the children had no reaction, they had tiny little red pin pricks, no swelling, no itching. Guess there are just a few perks of not having a fully formed immune system!
Interestingly we had the Love Bug clipped to our double buggy and our pals didn’t have a Love Bug attached to theirs and my two kids had noticeably fewer bites. We did a “count up” on the plane on the way home and the toddler and baby in the buggy without the love bug clipped on it had 45 bites between them and Lil’ H and Baby G had 17 bites – bascially two thirds fewer.
The only downside I can see to the product is that its cute ladybird appearance was a bit of a magnet to the toddlers at first but the interest soon waned with sea, sand & mini-discos on offer.
The Love Bug requires a 9V battery (one of the rectangle ones!) We used this almost evening for a week from about 5pm til midnight and didn’t have to replace the battery during our holiday although we had taken a couple of spares just in case.
I do think it helped prevent my kids getting bitten, I rated it and I will be using it again.
To buy the Love Bug from Prince Lionheart costs about £9 , the cheapest I found it online was here for £8.97
