No Squid Were Harmed in the Making of this Soap

I recently agreed to receive a sample of Squid Soap to review. Despite the name, it’s really a plain liquid handsoap for kids, with once extra feature: a small stamp of red vegetable dye on the top of the pump. When a child presses the pump to get soap, the stamp makes a mark on his or her palm. It takes a full 20 seconds of washing to remove the ink, thus ensuring that the child scrubs for the length of time recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It’s a clever idea, but I put it to the test with my four-year-old, who is already a fine handwasher. In fact, I spend more time telling him to hurry up and move along to rinse than I do bugging him to wash. He loved the name “Squid Soap,” however, and the bonus rubber squid toy wrapped around the bottle. The novelty of the bottle was a good incentive to get him to put down his toys and go wash for dinner, but the ink didn’t seem to change his washing habits much. In fact, I noticed it made him spend more time on his palms, but didn’t offer any incentive to get between his fingers and on the back of his hands.

Squid Soap also seems to be more expensive than plain soap. Since prices vary from area to area, I did a quick lookup at Amazon, and found an 8.4-oz. bottle of Squid Soap for $4.62, or $0.55 per ounce, versus a case of Softsoap, which works out to $0.30 per ounce. (Squid Soap does not seem to come by the case.) One could probably do even better at a warehouse store.

It’s possible, of course, to buy one bottle of Squid Soap and keep it topped up with an off-brand refill jug. It remains an open question, however, as to how long the ink will last before drying up, or if a few drops of food coloring could “recharge” it.

If your child needs a little motivation to wash well, then Squid Soap could certainly do the trick—and if it only takes a bottle or two to teach them, the difference in price won’t matter over the long run. Otherwise, it may not be worth the extra money.

(Full disclosure: I do get a small referral fee from Amazon for purchases made through links on this site.)