Is Solar Buddies Still in Business? (2026 Update)
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Look for Solar Buddies on AmazonFull story →Kelli Aspland and Laura Water had each spent summers wrestling sun cream onto a squirming toddler before designing a roller ball applicator to fix it, pitched in series 20, episode 14 under Kids and Education.
This is one of the cleaner survival stories in the index: the product is still manufactured, still sold, and still on real pharmacy shelves.
A joint deal with no haggling
Before the cameras rolled, the two founders were already moving units through a handful of smaller retail channels, so the panel had real sales figures in front of them rather than a bare prototype. They asked for £80,000 in exchange for 20% of the business, and Peter Jones and Deborah Meaden together put up the full amount at those terms, no renegotiation on either side.
Meaden's own investing pattern leans toward parenting gadgets that solve one small, repeated headache rather than big lifestyle bets, which made this an easy fit for her once the founders proved the mechanism worked.
Why pharmacy shelves matter more than a website here
Landing space at Boots does something a standalone online listing cannot: it puts the roller ball in front of a parent who came in to buy suncream for the family and had not gone looking for this specific gadget at all.
Chemists reassess what earns shelf space every season, dropping anything that stops moving. Nobody forces a pharmacy chain to keep a product on the shelf out of loyalty to a brand that once appeared on television.
Where you can still buy it
The applicator sells today through the company's own website, plus Boots on the UK side and Mulligans and Meaghers across the Irish market.
Three separate pharmacy chains spread across two countries choosing to keep restocking the same small item years after its Den appearance is a far stronger vote of confidence than a brand's own sales page could ever provide on its own.