It’s cute, it’s candy-colored, it costs $10. How COVID anxiety helped make hand sanitizer the ‘it’ accessory for kids.

Hannah Picinich of Leonardtown, Md., estimates her family has “probably 20” hand sanitizers. “I have four kids” — ages 10, 8 and 4-year-old twins — so between them, Picinich and her husband, the sanitizers are “everywhere,” she tells Yahoo.

One for each kid. Two for each car. Multiple bottles scattered around the house for guests. “It’s in my purse and my work bag,” Picinich adds. “Every store we go to, every time we leave,” the kids know to use and bring sanitizer along. And recently, Picinich’s children — all girls — have been asking for one brand in particular: Touchland.

After an exponential surge in 2020 — sales for Purell, for example, grew by 600% that year — the market for hand sanitizers has grown steadily. Touchland, a personal care company founded in Spain that made its U.S. debut in 2018, has emerged as a trendy frontrunner in the sanitizer wars: “The Latest Teen Status Symbol Is $10 Hand Sanitizer,” reported the Wall Street Journal in February. “Touchland is the only hand sanitizer worth using,” NBC Select proclaimed a month later. The brand, which also sells body mists, has more than a million combined followers across TikTok and Instagram. Searches for “Touchland” on social media turn up tens of thousands of results — many of them product shots highlighting the brand’s bright, colorful packaging and fragrances (Frosted Mint, Vanilla Blossom, etc.). In Picinich’s experience, the branding is effective: Even her younger children request Touchland as a treat when they are given money to spend on something fun at the store.

And it is fun, says Angie Meltsner, ​​founder of the consumer and cultural insights agency Tomato Baby. Brands like Touchland (and Bath & Body Works, which sells its own array of covetable hand sanitizers) deploy alluring colors and fragrances to help consumers build identity. Collectible versions — in Touchland’s case, collaborations with kid-friendly brands, including Disney, Hello Kitty and Crocs (which is already sold out) — add to the hype. Meltsner also points to Touchland’s “playful” logo — a hand wearing a smile with the suggestion that the experience of touch is one to be embraced. “Hand sanitizer is very hygienic and medicinal,” she tells Yahoo — consider the clinical simplicity of Purell’s design — but Touchland’s use of cheerful aesthetics and smell is an intentional way to engage consumer senses. It allows shoppers to participate in different moods and occasions, and facilitates opportunities “for collecting and trading and aligning with your friends,” Meltsner says.

Of course, children and teens are desperate for alignment. A 2021 study found that kids as young as 3 prioritize opportunities to “fit in” with their peers over their own preferences. And while Touchland’s successful climb to the top as an “it” accessory was initially fueled by luck and design, it’s retained its foothold in the marketplace by continuing to be the cool kid’s sanitizer of choice. While Picinich might grumble about the price compared to drugstore brands — a 1 fl. oz. Power Mist starts at $10 — she knows she’s paying for more than just sanitizer as far as her daughters are concerned. “I buy it for them, because I want them to feel included,” the mom of four says.

The pandemic simply turned up the volume. Though practicing good hand hygiene has always been part of life for parents — especially those with kids under 7, an age group both notoriously filthy and frequently ill — many clearly identify COVID as a turning point in their habits. A small Canadian survey conducted in 2021, for instance, found that children were applying hand sanitizer up to 25 times per day.

It was around that time that Picinich’s twins were delivered prematurely at just under 30 weeks. “When I had my oldest, I always was cleaning things,” she remembers, “but then when I had Olive and Lucia, and they were born early, I was a freak about making sure everything was clean. Hand sanitizer was how I did that, mostly.”

Heather Boneparth, a writer and mom of two from New Jersey, remembers feeling similarly desperate for control. Trapped at home in 2020 with two children — the youngest of whom was growing more mobile by the day — she found herself in “full-blown, high-touch parenting,” Boneparth tells Yahoo. Using hand sanitizer made her feel like she was doing something — anything — to keep her family healthy and protect those around her. “It wasn’t just the fear of me or my child getting sick … it was the threat of disruption to our daily life,” she says. In the Northeast, states like Boneparth’s continued COVID mitigation measures (and a bit of hygiene theater) long after the initial first year of the pandemic, especially with regard to day care centers and schools. Not keeping germs at bay meant risking a sick (even if just a run-of-the-mill cold) child who would have to stay home for days, throwing parents’ work schedules into chaos.

Boneparth’s sanitizing habits have persisted even as COVID has waned. Recently, her oldest daughter, who is now 9, started requesting to specifically carry Touchland’s sanitizer. Boneparth is thrilled. “It’s giving Bath & Body Works,” she gushes, “and to me, it’s a win, because she gets to start exploring this world of beauty and wellness — and there’s some health benefit to it.”

Dr. Jalan Burton, the lead physician and CEO of Healthy Home Pediatrics in Washington, D.C., loves the shift toward improved hand hygiene overall. She worries, though, about the replacement of handwashing with sanitizing and the reduced efficacy of that practice. If you “don’t have access to a sink,” she says, or “you’ve been playing at the park,” the convenience of a travel-size hand sanitizer is great. But this isn’t as effective as handwashing in many contexts, and some of the benefit of soap and water is in the act of physically scrubbing and rinsing the particles away.

Burton is also concerned about the families most likely to be swayed by persuasive packaging and strategic messaging — namely, those who had traumatic experiences during the height of the COVID pandemic.

For her part, Touchland’s founder and CEO, Andrea Lisbona, acknowledged to Glossy in 2023 that “personal care usually sells through fear.” But she added that her company’s “goal is to do the opposite and empower people to live to the fullest and create solutions that people are excited to carry with them.” (Representatives for Touchland declined to comment for this story.)

Is Touchland selling something that’s cute and brings a sense of comfort but is perhaps overhyped and overpriced too? “Yeah,” says Boneparth, but she’s happy her daughter wants to carry it in her bag. Even if post-COVID anxiety is fueling the craze, “the benefit outweighs any concern that they’re preying on a young demographic,” she adds. “It feels like a good compromise that checks a lot of boxes.”