Product Review: National Geographic Power Snaps

We recently reviewed our first Piggies Paradise subscription box, but held off on reviewing one of the products inside of it until later: National Geographic Power Snaps. This was because this product had a long list of ingredients, so we knew it would take a little time to review, and we didn't want to hold up our Piggies Paradise review just for one product. Now, we're going to take a more in-depth look at Power Snaps.

Okay, let's see what's in these things.

There are a few ingredients in these treats we think are worth discussing:

• Sugar, corn syrup - As we originally mentioned in the Piggies Paradise review, these treats contain added sugar and corn syrup, and guinea pigs shouldn't be eating too much sugar.
• Dried plain beet pulp - According to the GuineaLynx, forum, this ingredient is "Considered low-quality fiber that can clog the villi of the intestine. Common in all animal feed since it is a byproduct of many human products."
• Flaked corn, Ground Corn - GuineaLynx forum says: "There is no legal definition of 'corn' alone in animal feed, so it may be any combination of products. Corn is not a normal feed for cavies, may contribute to allergies, and can be high in fat and certain sugars/starch depending on the product."
• Calcium carbonate - This is an ingredient we have a tough time deciding if it's okay or not. On the one hand, Oxbow uses it in some of their products, and Oxbow uses an advisory board of veterinarians and scientists to develop their products. On the other hand, some people on guineapigcages.com have expressed concern about Oxbow's use of calcium carbonate in their pellets, and thus have switched to KMS Hayloft pellets. 
• Dehydrated alfalfa meal - Alfalfa should generally be restricted to young (under 1 year) and pregnant or lactating guinea pigs due to high levels of calcium.
• Vegetable oil, ground flax seed - GuineaLynx forum says that nuts, seeds and oils are "too high in fat and protein, not a natural food source, often present in animal feeds in seed byproducts that have little to no nutrient value." 

For what it's worth, most of these ingredients that we found issues with weren't at the top of the list of ingredients, so there is probably not too much of them in each treat.

Unfortunately, we're not going to be able to do a taste test of these treats. We probably could have eaten a few and been fine. However, we decided we're better off not putting this stuff in our bodies when there are so many better treats out there. 

We're going to give National Geographic Power Snaps 1.5/5 stars; there are worse treats out there, but you can definitely do much better than these treats.

Product Review: Piggies Paradise Guinea Pig Subscription Box

Subscription boxes like Birchbox have really taken off. You can find a lot more than makeup and beauty products in them now. For example, there's one called Sock Panda where you can get socks mailed to you every month. There's also one called Bark Box that's full of treats and gifts for dogs. Now, there's even one for us called Piggies Paradise!

We heard of Piggies Paradise recently when the creator offered to let us try it out and review it. (We feel we should mention this in the interest of full disclosure, even though as long-time readers know, we've taken freebies and still given 1-star reviews before.)

Let's see what we got in here...

There were four different products inside the box. Buffy and I then debated what the best way to review this is since we usually just review one product at a time. We decided that we'll briefly review each item here (leaving open the possibility of a more in-depth review in a later post if we have more to say on them), and then finally give an overall review to Piggies Paradise.

Oxbow Vitamin C Supplement Tablets

Wow, these things smelled good! We knew we wanted them even before the humans took them out of the package.

Open it! Open it! Open it!

Once the humans opened it up and gave us each one, it turned out they tasted as good as they smelled. We think these things will be a great substitute for liquid vitamin C that needs to be fed through a syringe for when we have a pet-sitter. 5/5 stars!

All Living Things Bumble Bee Halloween Costume

I volunteered Buffy to try this one on:

You look great!

This bee look a bit annoyed with her costume on; it's a good thing that stinger wasn't real! Even though Buffy isn't crazy about wearing costumes, she looks so good that you've got to give this costume 5 stars!

National Geographic Small Animal Wood Wreath

We reviewed a somewhat similar product to this one in the past: the Busy Bunny's Chew Ring. There are some significant differences between that product and this one, however. This one has a wooden hook so it can hang down. This one has a thing ring of tiny logs, rather than a skinny strings of wood weaved together. This one also has a pine cone in the middle of it. (Pine cones are fine for guinea pigs as long as they have been sterilized.)

Yes, I see it.

This seemed like a fine product, but it just never captured our interest beyond a couple courtesy nibbles. 2/5 stars.

National Geographic Power Snap Small Animal Treats

Last up, we have some treats from National Geographic:

Is that granola?

On the plus side, this treat claims that "your purchase supports the conservation of animals and their habitats." However, there is a long list of ingredients on these treats, and a few of them gave us pause. Therefore, we'd like to hold off on reviewing these until we have enough time to do the research on these ingredients, and we'll do a separate post about it. For now, we'd just like to point out that the ingredients include sugar and corn syrup, and guinea pigs should not have too much sugar.

The Verdict on Piggies Paradise

Rating a subscription box like Piggies Paradise is tricky, because the "product" we're reviewing is actually a bundle of other products. Not only that, but it's also the concept of getting a bundle of products of a certain type (guinea pig products, in this case) on a regular basis. Not every product on this box was a home run; we weren't too excited by the wood wreath, for example. However, those Oxbow Vitamin C Supplement Tablets were amazing! We wanted to chew through the lid to get at those things! Based on what we've seen so far, we'll give Piggies Paradise 4.5 out of 5 stars for having a great concept and some products we liked, but also at least one product with at least one or two ingredients that weren't good.

We've been reviewing guinea pig products for a while now, and one thing we've learned is that you can't trust companies to only use safe, healthy ingredients/materials in their. We generally trust Oxbow to put out good products, but we've seen some real junk coming out of other companies, such as sickly-colored lollipop treats full of stuff we shouldn't eat, willow balls with random peanuts inside of them, and a grass tunnel with burlap unnecessarily added, which can cause digestive blockages. So Piggies Paradise has their work cut out for them, trying to find enough new things to put in the box without including unhealthy or dangerous products. Other than the treats with the added sugar, we think they're doing a great job so far, and hope they can keep it up! We'll keep reviewing Piggies Paradise boxes as we receive them and let you know our thoughts.

If you want to give Piggies Paradise a try, they've been nice enough to give a special coupon code for Cavy Savvy readers. The code is: CAVYSAVVY10 (in all caps). Their website is:

https://piggiesparadise.cratejoy.com/