Last week, on a family vacation at a resort in Scottsdale, Ariz., Alexa Johnson grabbed a canister containing a substance that looked like whipped cream, felt like whipped cream and made the same whooshing sound as whipped cream. But it wasn’t whipped cream at all. It was sunscreen.
Her children, 9 and 6, immediately extended their hands, then smeared generous helpings all over their arms and legs.
“It looked ridiculous,” said Ms. Johnson, a 37-year-old brand consultant who lives in Seattle. “We were all laughing.”
That is sort of the point. Marty Bell, a partner at Vacation, a sunscreen company based in Miami, which released Classic Whip sunscreen in August 2022, said the idea came out of a brainstorming session that wandered onto the topic of foods.
“We couldn’t stop laughing at the idea of a whipped cream sunscreen,” he said. “There’s something incredibly nostalgic and playful about whipped cream,” he said, adding that the team “became determined to find a way to replicate that whole experience with sunscreen.”
Applying sunscreen can be a laborious summertime chore, especially for parents trying to corral kids, a cohort notorious for their objections to sun protection. Brands like Supergoop, EVY Technology and Vacation have each produced a mousse product that aims to put fun in the sun(screen).
