Thinkbaby Face & Body Stick Mineral Sunscreen SPF30

Late last year, while looking into schooling for my little one, I learned that early childhood centers preferred no-hands application if they could help it, and if they had to use hands they'd wear gloves. Totally understandable. Touching spread germs and illnesses. Put together a room of several little ones and you'll have a bunch of sick kids. Mine has been sick since he started school in January T.T

Anyway, to my delight, my little one's school straight up requested a doctor's note confirming he's healthy and has no medical exemptions otherwise, his health and up-to-date immunizations records (we visited several schools that allowed "personal and religious" exemptions and we couldn't run out of there fast enough--yikes, haven't they been reading the news?), and sunscreen sticks. Oooh, I haven't owned a sunscreen stick before. Ever. Count this mama intrigued.

Off googling I went. Sure, I found a bunch, but many of them contain avobenzone. Yes, even the ones for kids (*cough* Neutrogena *cough*). Urgh. I wouldn't use sunscreens with avobenzone on myself, much less on my baby toddler. I think sunscreens with avobenzone is no different than a pool floater that disintegrates upon contact with water and requires this and that to delay that disintegration. Erhhh, what?

So I looked for those using only mineral blockers instead. This 0.64oz/18.4g Thinkbaby Face & Body Stick Mineral Sunscreen SPF30 was pretty well-rated so I decided to give it a try.

So far so good. Sure, it's a paste-in-a-stick, thick and sticky and leaves a terribly opaque white cast, but it's for kids so who cares? My little one would come home with white paste smeared all over his face and it actually makes me giggle. 

This stuff supposedly rinses off with water too so be sure to reapply often for swimming sessions. With my little one, I wiped his face with a wet washcloth first, then I use some extra foam from shampooing his hair to wash his face (it's a Mustela hair-and-body wash, will review later). By the time he's done splashing around in his bath, there's no traces of it left on him. 

There's been no skin irritation or reaction to the product, so I'd say it's pretty good. Still, I'll try different brands after he uses up these 3 sticks. On a different note, there's a touch-free Aquaphor Healing Ointment also--neato!

Finally, I thought I'd use this space to tell you an embarrassing story. Because why not? There's a person behind this blog who's perfectly capable of doing utterly stupid things, which I unfortunately did while looking up this product. In frustration, I'd let my arrogance and ignorance get the better of me.

I'd mentioned in my review for Nivea Sun Protect Water Milk Mild that I've been out of the North American sunscreen market for more than a decade and the terms "physical sunscreen" and "chemical sunscreen" currently in use confuse the hell out of me. I'm still stuck in the old-(outdated?)-school notion wherein mineral ingredients mean physical sunblock, perhaps because they literally block-reflect-deflect the rays, and chemical filters mean chemical sunscreen, because they absorb the rays.

I also thought it was universal knowledge that no sunblock or sunscreen can block or filter all, as in 100%, of the sun rays. Nope. I was flat-out wrong. It is not universal knowledge how sunblocks and sunscreens work. A company couldn't market its products within the US of A as "sunblocks" because the FDA thinks the word sunblock "overstates" the effectiveness of the said products.

Of course I learned all that after sending Thinkbaby an email complaining how confusing their product name was. They're all called "Mineral Sunscreen" and my small head just couldn't compute those two words together in the same sentence, so I took my frustration out on a bunch of unsuspecting strangers who had done everything right, at least by law. Of course they knew the difference between mineral and chemical ingredients. Of course they did their due-diligence. Of course I was a total ass-clown (or just an ass) for thinking otherwise. It was a real face-palm moment and I felt like a jerk for days. Hubby said I should just email them back and apologize, but an anonymous and private email would let me off too easy, so I thought I'd write it more publicly: I'm sorry, Thinkbaby.

Note to self: when frustrated, shut up and go drink some tea or something.