Pure Shower UV Cut Water Gel SPF30 PA+++

Having gone through a few bottles of Nivea Sun Protect Water Gel for Kids, I figured it was time for something new and opened this 280g/9.9oz pump bottle of Pure Shower UV Cut Water Gel SPF30 PA+++ for our little one as his daily sunscreen. I use it for him but really this was meant for the whole family.

This sunscreen comes out of the pump a light cream but applies like gel cream and melts into a "watery" texture no different than the popular Nivea Sun. It's an easy-on easy-off formula that we put on our guy every morning before heading out to school. Sounds like great stuff, but I see two glaring strikes against it.

When I first saw this sunscreen online, there was a big sticker right at the neck of the bottle that says it can be used on kids older than one. That claim alone sold me and I bought it. Now that I have it in hand and am using it on my 2-year old, I'm reading through the ingredients and, correct me if I'm wrong, don't see any other UV absorbers/blockers aside from octinoxate (メトキシケイヒ酸エチルヘキシル), the second on the list. To be honest, I'm now feeling a bit iffy with this single-active ingredient sunscreen, a chemical filter at that, especially on children so young. I may end up "help" use it up so we can move on to something else, hopefully better. I won't repurchase for this alone.

Secondly, this sunscreen is scented. Sure, the scent is rather mild and pleasant, a crisp and clean fruity flowery fragrance, but still, it's fragrance and I wish they hadn't added it :( So there, if you're curious and want to try it for yourself, sure. But for kids at little as one? I wouldn't.

As a side note, while looking up ingredients online, I saw a slightly different packaging for this sunscreen, also in a pump bottle but with only 250g instead of 280g. This makes me think they've repackaged this stuff recently. I don't know if they've reformulated it also, but a quick glance at the ingredients for the different-looking smaller bottle, I still only see octinoxate. At the time of this writing, the official product page still shows the packaging I have. However, the whole line has been pulled from the brand's online store.

And if I may digress a little more, I feel (and am generalizing here) Japanese companies have this super annoying thing they do that drives me crazy as a consumer: they have one website for the company/brand which may or may not contain product info, another website for the products with product info, and yet a third webstore of course with product info. So as you can see, in many cases they double and triple their own workload to maintain and update 2-3 different websites (sometimes more!), all contain mostly the same information with only slightly different functions. As a consumer, I'm often going around in circles jumping from their brand/company site to the product site and then to the webstore, and even then I still don't find what I'm looking for (a list of ingredients!!!). It drives me bonkers! Why not just have ONE website with brand/company info, product info, and a purchasing function? Is it really that hard?