One interesting set of new products to show up at JPMA was from the diaper bag folks at Skip*Hop, who introduced a line of baby-task-specific molded plastic gear by designer Scott Henderson that is meant to be cool and fun without being too cutesy or tacky.
The flashy showpiece of the line is a bottle rack/brush called Splash, which is shaped like a stop-action photo of a splash [duh]. There are prongs and shelves to hold everything off the counter, and the bottom comes off for easy draining and washing. I think it'll definitely give that [slightly too cute] carrot-themed brush and flower garden bottle rack a run for its money.
The Chow is a baby food rack that can hold either 8 or 12 jars/cups/whatevers of baby food.
And the Toolbox is a diaper caddy with some outside pockets and drawers and a central diaper storage bin that holds up to a dozen disposables at a time. [The display models had beautiful, all-white, character-free diapers in them. Your child should be so lucky.] I can totally see the benefits of this, since we use some random basket right now that I'd love to replace. Of course, ideally, I'd love to replace it with a black Toolbox, or maybe a Mac-colored silvery grey/white one. The colors remind me of those BuiltNY neoprene tote bags.
Overall, the line looks good, and could be the kind of get-into-Target stuff that all the independent manufacturers are looking for. To a guy raised on thick, rubbery Tupperware, the Skip-Hop plastic feels a little thin, but until I hear otherwise, I'll trust them that it's the right material at the right time for the right usage. For an MSRP of $28, 24, and $38 respectively, there's a bit of a design premium, but then, these are also the kind of gifty, style-and-substance things that'd go over well on a registry. Very smooth.
Skip-Hop's site's got nothin' about the gear line at the moment. [skiphop.com]
update: thanks to the Skip*Hop folks for the glamour shot. Apparently, after working on them for years, people are not so interested to have their new products represented solely by wobbly phonecam snapshots. Who knew?
