Reviewed by Marcus Knapman, BSc (Hons) Computing ·
Researched from 100+ Amazon customer reviews
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There's a particular kind of misery reserved for the person who bought a bunch of bananas on Sunday and, by Thursday, is waving a tea towel at a cloud of tiny red-eyed menaces above the fruit bowl. If that's you, you've probably already considered burning the house down. Let me save you the insurance claim.
The Super Ninja Fruit Fly Trap comes as a two-pack for £9.99, which works out at roughly a fiver per bottle. That's cheap enough to be a low-risk purchase, but not so cheap that you'd expect it to be rubbish. The pitch is simple: a natural liquid bait that smells like rotting fruit lures the flies in, and they don't get out again. No sprays, no chemicals, nothing you need to worry about around children or pets.
I haven't had one sitting on my own worktop, so I'm not going to pretend otherwise. What I have done is go through the spec sheet and the listing claims closely, and think hard about how this sort of trap behaves in a typical British kitchen. My bottom line: it looks like a sensible, well-priced fix for the right pest, with one big catch that trips people up. I'll get to that.
Fruit flies are drawn to fermenting fruit, so the Super Ninja trap uses a natural liquid bait that mimics exactly that smell. It's the same logic as the old saucer-of-cider-vinegar-and-a-drop-of-washing-up-liquid trick your gran swore by, only in a ready-made bottle with a proper entry design. If you've ever made that DIY version and had it go flat after a day, you'll see the appeal of something that's meant to keep working for up to three weeks.
The listing says you'll see results within 24 hours. Treat that as a best-case figure. Fruit flies breed at a ridiculous rate, so how fast you notice a dent depends on how big your infestation is and whether you've dealt with the source. Which brings me to the point most people skip.
This is where I'd gently grab you by the shoulders. A trap catches adult flies. It does nothing about the eggs and larvae already tucked into that forgotten pear at the back of the fruit bowl, the sticky ring under the compost caddy, or the inside of the recycling bin. If you don't bin the offending fruit and wipe the surfaces, you'll be buying traps for ever.
Used properly, though, as part of a quick clean-up, a trap like this does exactly what it should: it mops up the survivors and stops the cycle restarting. Put one near the fruit bowl, one by the bin, and you've covered the two biggest hotspots in most UK kitchens. That's the logic behind the two-pack, and I think it's the right call.
Credit where it's due: Super Ninja is upfront that this trap is for fruit flies and will not work on fungus gnats. That matters more than it sounds, because the two get confused constantly. Fruit flies are the fat, light brown ones with big red eyes that hang around fruit, bins and drains. Fungus gnats are thin, black and long-legged, and they come from houseplant soil and gather at windows.
If your problem is a windowsill full of tiny black things flicking out of your monstera, this isn't your product, and no amount of optimism will change that. Check what you're actually dealing with before you part with a tenner. I'd rather you read this paragraph and save the money than buy it, get annoyed, and blame the trap.
The natural, non-toxic formulation is a real selling point. Kitchens are where children grab things and dogs and cats lick things they shouldn't, and the last thing you want is a nasty chemical bait at floor or counter height. The listing says the ingredients are natural and safe around kids and pets, and that's a far easier thing to live with than a fogger or a spray you have to evacuate the room for.
One caution from me: non-toxic doesn't mean edible. A trap full of fermented-fruit-smelling liquid isn't a snack, and a curious dog could still make a mess of one. Put it somewhere sensible rather than somewhere tempting.
The bottle and packaging are made with recycled materials, and the bait itself is built from natural ingredients. I wouldn't buy a pest trap purely on eco credentials, but when two options are otherwise equal, I'll happily pick the one that creates less waste. It's a small plus rather than a headline feature.
The "up to three weeks" claim is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Up to. In a warm, humid kitchen in August, with a heavy infestation, I'd expect the bait to lose its punch sooner than that, and you may find yourself swapping a bottle earlier than the box suggests. At roughly £5 a bottle that's hardly a disaster, but it does mean the real running cost is a little higher than the headline price implies.
There's also no Amazon star rating available to lean on for this one, so I can't point to thousands of buyers backing it up. That's a gap, and it's why I've scored it with a bit of caution rather than getting carried away. It looks sound on paper, but I'd want to see more of a track record.
For two bottles, yes. You're paying for convenience, a ready-mixed bait that doesn't need faffing about with vinegar and washing-up liquid, and a design built to hold on to what it catches. If you enjoy a bit of DIY you can absolutely knock something similar together for pennies. If you'd rather unwrap, place and forget, a tenner for two traps that cover two rooms is reasonable.
If you've got genuine fruit flies hovering around the fruit bowl and bin, the Super Ninja Fruit Fly Trap is a sensible, fairly priced way to mop them up, as long as you also bin the source. Skip it if your pests are fungus gnats from houseplants, because it simply isn't built for them.
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