#gel pack

[image description: a round watermelon water bead ice pack, sitting on a red watermelon slice pillow. The pack is a circle of two pieces of clear vinyl fused together at the edges, with a white-green rind printed on the front side and two rough circles of black seeds printed inside the rind. The pack is filled with multiple small red water beads/orbeez. The pack sits inside a plastic bag with a light blue snowflake backdrop and the header, showing a photo of the ice pack sitting atop a lunch box, has the English text “ice pack” beside the red and white Daiso logo.]

Watermelon Ice Pack - Daiso, $2.80 AUD.

Yet another birthday gift! I ended up with watermelons being an accidental theme despite the fact that they’re not my favourite fruit, so now I am gifted watermelon things whenever folks run into them.

(I’ve got several watermelon items now--I should take a photo.)

I’ve had another of the Daiso cool packs that had that very strong musty vinyl smell--it smells like the unholy merging of cheap plastic and my grandparents’ mothball-scented house. I was relieved to discover that this one was only slightly scented and has fully aired out to be a usable toy.

I don’t like it quite as much as my ladybird Cool It pack, as I prefer the matte texture of the vinyl over the glossy, slightly rubbery texture of the watermelon pack, but I’d say that’s more about individual preference than a criticism. The pack is nicely full and makes little in the way of creaking or rustling sounds, very nice for squishing and poking. Unlike conventional jelly or orbeez squishies, it isn’t sticky, and I prefer the gel and water bead cooler packs over the commercial toys for this reason. It’s so much nicer to me to handle.

The beads do slowly crush down as I squish the pack, so folks should keep in mind that they won’t stay whole forever. Eventually, I end up with a crushed mess of red polymer instead of round, red beads. I don’t think this will work for more forceful stimmers, as I do worry that pressing too hard will pop the vinyl!

[image description: a seafoam/aqua green plastic zipper pencil case sitting on a red watermelon slice pillow. The pencil case has a clear plastic front pocket filled with a clear gel, rainbow glitter pieces and paper cut-outs of various kawaii-style pictures: unicorn, sausage dog in a hotdog bun, hamburger, rainbow, ice-cream, shooting star. A vinyl rainbow charm hangs from the aqua zipper pull and a white and black plastic tag is attached to said zipper pull by a silver ball chain. Type on the tag reads “Anko Liquid Pencil Case 3+ years”.]

Liquid Pencil Case - K-Mart, $3 AUD.

Dimensions: 18 x 11 cm.

This is another liquid or gel-filled pencil case with a front pocket filled with gel, glitter and paper-style images of cute objects.

I do feel that this is slightly overpriced, but the gel inside the front pocket of the pencil case is very nice to squish. It also retains coolness very well, for folks who like handing cold toys or having a cold temperature element in their stimming--if you leave it in a cool room, or perhaps even the fridge for short periods of time, the pencil case becomes quite cold to the touch and takes a decent amount of handling to warm up. I actually find it a little too good at remaining cold, at least in the winter--even with the heater going in my room, the case is much cooler to the touch than my desk and keyboard.

I will say that as a squish toy, which is how I’ve been using this case, it works best without pencils or anything else inside. I can easily just push the paper images and glitter about the case without anything hard underneath. If you just want to turn it about for the movement of the glitter, it’ll work as a pencil case (or for smaller stim toys) but I find detracts from the squishability of the gel filler. Unlike mermaid sequin pouches, I’m not using this for storage.

Because it’s entirely plastic, it may work for storing chewables, but I wouldn’t zip the case entirely closed if so.

[image description: a photo of an Independence Studios Ladybug Cool It! gel pack, sitting on a red watermelon slice pillow background. The gel pack is a round pack of frosted clear plastic containing a clear gel; on the front is printed a ladybug with red-and-white-spotted wings, four black-line legs on each side, and a rounded head with round eyes--a white outline surrounding a black dot with a white pupil--and black antennae with black dots on the end. The gel pack is housed inside a clear plastic box with a white cardboard backing slip that reads “Cool It!” on the top in all-caps sans-serif type in blue and black. A blue trim at the bottom displays the circular red and white IS logo. One white price sticker on the box reads “$4.99” while a sticker below it reads “$2.99”.]

Ladybug Cool It! Gel Pack - Toyworld, $2.99 AUD.

My Shannon Avenue Toyworld has a few things in their Independence Studios display--a shelf of various putties, slimes, gel packs and other stationary items at the front of the store--on discount, so I finally bought one of the Cool It gel packs at a price I consider more acceptable.

IS has a wide variety of these--here’s a link showing their current selection.

Unlike the Daiso gel pack, this has a very low plastic scent without that musty tinge. The frosted plastic has a matte texture, and I find it quite nice to touch and squish. It isn’t as thick, though, meaning there’s less space inside the pack for the gel, so you don’t quite get the same stimmy sense of pushing the gel around the pack. For me, though, the decreased smell is worth the trade off.

The instructions say that you can cool this by placing it in the fridge for an hour, or warm it by placing pack in hot (not boiling) for seven minutes. You can’t microwave these, which means that I am never going to use this as a heat pack: I am simply not going to do something as spoons-intensive as boil water, let water cool to merely hot, put this inside the water and then wait for it to heat. This might work for others, but I’ll just heat a wheat bag in the microwave instead, as it’s much, much quicker.

As a cool pack, you absolutely have to put it in the fridge for an hour. I had mine in for half an hour, and while the gel did thicken (becoming almost unsquishable) and the pack was quite cold, the effect lasted for about five minutes once the pack was in my hands. If you want to stim with it and have the cooling effect last for a halfway-decent amount of time, half an hour isn’t enough.

I would recommend getting two or three of these, if you like stimming with cool temperature toys (less attractive for our Northern Hemisphere stimmers right now, but great for us Southern Hemisphere folks). It would be more practical to store them in the fridge so you can pull one out when wanted and replace it with the warmed-up pack, rotating through them. One on its own, I think, will warm up too quickly, especially if you have to then wait another hour for it to cool again.

For a small, cute gel pack though, that can be stimmed as is or as a cold pack, I don’t have real complaints. I think $5 AUD is too high a price for so small an object, but at a sale price I’m glad to own it.

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