Review: Larva

Since the kids were tiny, we’ve kept them entertained, like all responsible parents do, by plonking them down in front of YouTube from time to time. One of the solid staples of their viewing back then was a cute, funny and ridiculously gross cartoon called Larva. Back then YouTube was the only place you could see Larva, at least in the UK. Nevertheless they (with us supervising of course) watched literally every episode of that sewer-based animated classic hundreds of times.

Larva is the story of two nondescript bug creatures, similar to caterpillars, that live in a sewer drain. Curiously named ‘Yellow’ and ‘Red’ they get up to all kinds of antics usually associated with things that fell down into the drain from above, finding morsels of food or encountering other bugs that lived in the sewer. There were plenty of harmless gross-out moments including a lot of farting but it was all age appropriate stuff.

Eventually we were blessed with a second series, where we see our bug friends finally escape the sewer drain and fly majestically to a new location in what appears to be someone’s house. There they have a whole new set of antics and meet a bunch of new friends and foes. I believe it is around this time that we also noticed the series migrate to Netflix, which helped us watch it alongside other kids shows.

Eventually the kids interest in Larva waned as they flitted to one or other of the other shows that hooked them for a moment. Probably a lot of Peppa Pig and Disney movies if I remember correctly.

Until one day we were flicking through Netflix and saw something called Larva Island. New Larva! Immediately the kids saw their faithful old friends from the drain and were hooked again. This time ‘Red’ and ‘Yellow’ had made their way to a tropical island and, thanks to Netflix, the production value and episode length had increased significantly.

So when we popped by the Re:Creation Toys stand at Toy Fair 2019 we were excited to see that a range of Larva toys were being produced! Previously we had only managed to find one toy for the series and that was a rather expensive ‘Yellow’ plushy that we had to have shipped from Singapore. But here was a whole range of Larva goodies!

I’d put it to the back of my mind until recently when a huge box of Larva plushies arrived! We wasted no time getting them open. Check out our video to see how we got on!

The plushies are all of fantastic quality and feel super-soft to touch. The biggest one we received, a big ‘Yellow’, was HUGE (about 3ft tall) and was easily the softest cuddly toy I’ve seen in a while. The majority of the body is squishy but the bottom has a quantity of a beanie-like material, much like a big beanie-baby. It also has a range of sounds that are activated when the tummy is squished!

We also got a slightly smaller ‘Red’ which was about 10-12 inches tall and also had the tummy-activated sounds. These range from gurgles, chuckles and voice samples to some rather rude noises!

There were also two ‘backpack danglers’, small plushies of about 6-8 inches that came with hooks to attach them to bags.

These were all great plushy toys and the kids insisted on taking them to sit down and watch some Larva Island. We’d definitely recommend them for anyone who wants to expand their child’s interest of Larva or Larva Island.

If you’d like to get your own, they are available from The Entertainer! You can also find more from The Entertainer over on Facebook.

Check out more from Larva over on their YouTube channel!

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Disclosure: We were sent these toys free of charge in return for an unbiased review. No financial agreements were entered into and our opinions are 100% our own. This post contains affiliate links.