A MEGA vape designed in the style of a sippy cup to appeal to children was seized along with a haul of illegal products in Covent Garden.

The Taki 99 Tiger Cup with pop-up straw, was seized along with a haul of 3,000 items by trading standards teams.

Its box is labelled as containing 30mg/ml of nicotine. The legal limit is 20mg/ml.

The £15 a-pop product also contained 12ml of nicotine, above the legal limit of 2ml.

It has been unlawful to sell “single use” vapes since June.

Legislation created an alternative system where the same style vapes could be bought as long as they could be refilled and be recharged.

This aimed to reduce the environmental cost, but the changes made little difference in terms of stopping young people using the highly addictive devices.

They are packaged in the same way with bright colours, with an array of sugary flavours clearly appealing to teenagers and younger children, and can be brought in deals like two-for-a-tenner.

More of the haul from the shop raid

Shopkeepers have told Extra how many of them still hold old-style disposable vapes in the back of shops that they have been unable to sell since the ban came in.

“I understand why they tried to do something because so many young people were vaping,” one store manager said. “But the new rules haven’t made any difference at all to that.

“The number of young people coming in for them is the same, if not more. People would rather buy a new vape than mess about with buying a refill cartridge. So really vapes have remained just as ‘single-use’ as they were before.”

University College London has been researching the impact of the ban.

Dr Sarah Jackson, from UCL’s institute of epidemiology and health care, said: “Ones that are now legally available do have a charging point, they are possible to replace or to refill. But they’re in almost identical packaging, sold for almost identical prices.”

Cute packaging for the ‘Tiger Cup’ device

Westminster City Council said its officers found 3,000 of the unlawful products in the shop it raided.

It would take weeks to “go through” the items, the council said.

Also found at the shop were vape refills and pod salts with an excessive volume and suspected illegal nicotine content.

The city council said a number of them were clearly not intended for the United Kingdom market.

Vape kits and electrical devices were seized as they were not correctly labelled for the UK and may be unsafe.

Some illicit tobacco and shisha was recovered along with containers of nicotine pouches with foreign labels not meant for the home market.

City council leader Adam Hug said: “It appears some shop owners are determined to flout the change in UK law and sell illegal and unsafe single-use vapes to people in Westminster.

“Particularly cynical is the use of devices shaped like a child’s toy cup which could run the risk of luring children into vaping.

“Thanks to targeted intelligence work by police and the council, thousands of items are now off the streets.

“If dodgy businesses try to peddle such products, we will ensure their illicit vaping profits go up in smoke.”