Boon provided us with the toys and gizmo shown below, to facilitate our review.  As always, all opinions expressed here are entirely my own (and those of my kids.)

Our bathtub drain has gotten really annoying in recent months.  It’s just a pretty standard drain style – you’re supposed to push down on it to lock it and then push down on it to release it.  But it simply doesn’t work much of the time anymore.  I’m guessing it’s because of our water.  We have the most horribly hard water ever.  It causes all manner of problems.  And probably it’s building up on the gasket and keeping it from creating a proper seal.  Regardless of why, it was getting exasperating.

So when Boon contacted me and asked if we’d like to review their newest bath products, I was thrilled, because one of them is Ray, a drain doohickey!  Ray goes over the drain.  Even if your drain works, it helps prevent bonked heads or heinies or knees or whatever.  And if the drain doesn’t work, this functions as a replacement.

I was a little skeptical of whether it would truly make a good enough seal.  (I mean, Boon is known for good quality, but…well, it just didn’t seem like this could possibly do the job with the big arched part in the middle that accommodates the drain plug.)  But I tossed it on there and turned on the shower (we use the shower to fill the tub because it’s filtered so the chlorine is gone) and it worked great.

I don’t know how well you can tell, but here it is, filling up!

When you’re done with it, you can just hang it on the shower wall on the provided suction cup.  (That doesn’t really look like it would work, either.  But there’s just the slightest bit of a ridge inside the rounded part of the Ray – like a “lip” – that rests atop a tiny protrusion on the suction cup.  Assuming I did it right.  Anyway, it worked.)

But that’s not all.  Boon has some new bath toys, too.  They sent us “Pieces,” a foam bath puzzle, but we haven’t used that yet.  (We might not.  I’m not a big fan of foam bath toys, personally, because the foam stinks.  Literally, I mean.)  They also sent Odd Ducks.  These are so fun – and a great low-key learning tool.

See, Odd Ducks are “rubber” ducks with a twist – they don’t all look alike.  They come in different shapes, different sizes, and different colors.  (Just like people!  Hence the great learning opportunity.)  They’re fun and colorful, and both of my littlest ones enjoyed them.  (In fact, Livia could hardly wait for her brother to hurry up and finish his bath so she could have a shot at them.)

Now, I saw some folks complaining about a few things on the Amazon reviews of these.  I’m not sure if there was a bad batch somewhere along the way or what, because I didn’t have any of the issues people complained about.  The bases of these are sealed on just fine.  Nothing seems to be peeling loose.  (I even “picked at” one, gently, to test it, and it held.)

Nothing is taking on water.  They float upright just fine.  (I didn’t “stage” these photos.  I just set the ducks down on the surface of the tub water and snapped pictures as they floated around.)  They have a very slight odor, if you get your face up next to them and sniff them, but I’m not sure it’s even something I would have noticed if I hadn’t heard complaints about odor.  They certainly don’t “reek of plastic” to me, and I can be pretty picky about that.

Oh, yeah – the bases!  The other awesome thing about these ducks is that they don’t have air holes on the bottom.  That means they don’t fill up with water and get mildewy and gross inside where you can’t clean them. 🙂  (In the picture at the very top of this post you can see the bottom of one.)

I tried to get pictures of the kids playing with the ducks in the tub but, as my kids are constant motion, ‘most everything was full-motion blur!

As far as I’m concerned, both of these seem to be good solutions to typical bathtime problems.