Daddy Types: January 2009 Archives

January 2009 Archives

January 30, 2009

Creative Playthings And, Uh, Other Playthings

Andy found a 1970 New York magazine review of the Creative Playthings store on 53rd Street which, unfortunately, replaced their awesome original store in Rockefeller Center. Here's my favorite line: "I do wonder about the value--educational or play--of live fish...
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DT Friday Chillout: CPSIA, Eats Dirt Edition

Is this how it's gonna be now in the Obama Era? All our Freakouts are turned to Chillouts, and our weekends are our own? We used to feed David Patterson--he lived across the street--David Patterson's baby brother dirt sandwiches all...
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UPDATE: Dwell Studio For Target Cribs NOT Part Of Stork Craft's Massive Recall After All

A reassuring piece of news to the folks who bought Dwell Studio cribs at Target: despite what Target may have told you, the Dwell cribs are not included in the massive recall of Stork Craft cribs. Here's an email I...
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Plybrary Goodness: Borup & Becker's Puzzle Table & Chairs

Birgitte Borup and Carsten Nikolaj Becker designed the Puzzle table and chair set in 1997 for the Danish library outfitter BCI. The simple, curved birch ply design allows for multiple tables to be pushed together, and the stools nest...
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January 29, 2009

Survey Says....Moms Are Pretty Pissed

Yow. Parenting.com has the results of a survey of 10,000 MomConnection moms, and they are pissed. And it's not about the impending demise of Wondertime, either. It's the self-centered bums who knocked them up and then don't remember when...
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Aqua Netto: Royal Blue Lacquer Nursery Furniture At Barney's

Remember when, after so many years of white MacBooks, Apple introduced the black model? And how it cost as much as a more powerful, but typical aluminum MacBook Pro? And how, for a while, certain Apple fanbois scoffed at...
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Unidentified Local Menudan Just Happened To Be Sitting There

Alternate title: Some Guy From My Gym Drives A Peg Perego Duette [cbb via (other) andy] Peg Perego Duettes run from $745 to 970, so shop around [amazon]...
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January 28, 2009

Keep Thinking Pink, CBC

I just finished listening to Sue Palmer, the author of Toxic Childhood, which was the hook for that bafflingly ridiculous BBC article about how girls' brainwashed obsession with the color pink is bad--even if it doesn't alter their DNA. Palmer...
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Swing Low, Sweet Bassinet

In case you're like me, and you assumed that the Leander was the coolest bassinet ever to come out of Denmark, we can look together at Søren Ulrik Petersen's Swing Low Cradle and resolve to become more well-versed in...
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DT WTF Wednesday: Studies Find Mercury In High Fructose Corn Syrup

Don't you hate coming up with the perfect comeback in an argument, just too late, like after it's already over and you got spanked? The French call it l'esprit d'escalier, the wit of the staircase. And the poor chumps in...
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January 27, 2009

Sweet, Cheap & Available: amnh By Joseph O. Holmes

I don't check out the usually awesome, always affordable art at Jen Bekman's online gallery 20x200.com enough. And it seems I'm not alone, because even though it was released a couple of months ago, there are still 39 of...
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It's Just A Rock: Study Shows Crack Babies Are Fine

A long-term federally funded study of over 4,400 kids whose mothers used cocaine while pregnant finds that there are few effects on the kids' development, achievement and behavior. And what effects there are are not that big a deal....
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January 26, 2009

How About That Obama?? DT Comments Are/May Be Back

Our long international nightmare may finally be over. You may now be able to tell the world how wack a $1,000 table that basically dares kids to draw on it is. After a week-plus of broken comments and tags to...
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Wow, Hella Jongerius' Porcupine Desk Is In Production, A Disaster Waiting To Happen

Hella Jongerius's Porcupine Desk which Vitra debuted at Milan in 2007 actually went into production. With a pricetag of EUR486, it's probably the most expensive marker holder your kid will have until he becomes the chairman of Merrill Lynch....
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Eiermann Table For Kids

In 1953, architect Egon Eiermann designed some tables for his office out of angled, cross-braced, tubular steel and whatever the German equivalent of Formica was. A knock-down version followed in 1965. For about ten years Richard Lampert has been...
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January 24, 2009

Wondertime's Up

AdAge reports that Disney has smothered its adorable 3-year-old parenting magazine Wondertime in its crib. Ad revenues grew 20% in 2008, and circulation was around 400,000--very advanced for its age. But apparently, the company doesn't believe in happy endings anymore--or...
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Pudding Khaaaaann!

Suh-weet. What started last fall as a dad putting an offhand doodle on his kids' lunch bags [above] has become true art. Lunch Bag Artist Dad has already broken major new ground in the medium of lunch bag, and...
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3-D Printing Of 4-D Ultrasounds

It's the kind of thing I'd expect to see first in Make Magazine, not the Daily Mail: a London ultrasound imaging center centre is supposedly offering to make 3-D prints of stills from 4-D ultrasound scans. I say supposedly,...
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January 23, 2009

Full Stop? Right Start To Close, Taking BabyStyle & Tiny Ride With It

I have to give babystyle credit, they were a trendsetter, even when it came to going out of business. The blog StrollerInfo.com has posted a suspiciously detailed "anonymous tip" reporting that this morning the baby gear retailer Right Start--which bought...
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DT Freakout Friday: Belgium Edition

Sorry, there's nothing to freak out about here this weekend. Unless you're the one having to deal with my blog server. Or unless you drop the kid off at Belgian daycare. YYYYOOOOWWWW....
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Did Rahm Emanuel Just Suspend The CPSIA Or The Fix?

Alright, I just got an official "no comment" from the CPSC spokesperson, but from the text of Rahm Emanuel's memo, it sounds clear to me that the rulemaking and details of the CPSIA's new lead testing and certification standards are...
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January 22, 2009

Why Does Consumer Reports Want To Kill The Used Bugaboo Market??

The March issue of ShopSmart, the no-ads shopping guide published by the Consumer Reports folks, includes some tips for figuring out which used baby gear is still considered safe to use. [Get the pdf of the article here.] Though the...
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Hmm, Does The Stork Craft Crib Mega-Recall Include The Dwell For Target Cribs?

1/30 UPDATE: The short answer is NO. Totally different design and parts. Target's notification to Dwell buyers was a mistake. Details below Last week, the CPSC issued the first giant crib recall of the year [um, yeah?] covering over...
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So What Are Congress And The JPMA Saying About CPSIA?

We're just three weeks away from the CPSIA-induced small business apocalypse. Will Obama save us? Will Congress? Will the JPMA? The short answer to each of those questions is easy: nobody knows! The longer answers: On Tuesday, within hours of...
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On The Baby In Contemporary Art

Art blogger Paddy Johnson put out the call for examples of contemporary art with babies in it. She has posted a fine selection that is led--as it should be--by photographer Catherine Opie's glorious Self-Portrait, Nursing, from 2004, which was recently...
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And Neo-Nazi Parents In New Jersey Starting To Pick It Up

Anne Geddes Starting To Lose It [theo nion, c. 2001 via afc]...
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January 21, 2009

Netto Collection & Cub Kids Sample Sale, 1/22 - 24

I guess it's sale season all over the place. Netto Collection and Cub Kids are having a sample sale this week, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, with 10% off everything, 20% off sleepers and changers, and 60 whopping percent off...
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Can't You Hear Me Yell-a? There's A Clearance At Estella!

One of our favorite NYC stores is Estella, on 6th Avenue & 12th St. It's where we got the kid's first Album di Famiglia stuff, and a bunch of other stuff. Estella is starting their winter clearance sale tomorrow, Thursday...
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"Don't Let Him Hit You!": Manhattan Playground Cultures, Circa 1972

There were once hitting playgrounds? If we've become a nation of helicopter parents raising a nation of wimps, maybe this 1972 survey of the entrenched-but-unwritten ground rules at various [uptown] Manhattan playgrounds will help identify the point where we went...
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Morgen Kinderbeds @ IMM Cologne

IMM, Die internationale Möbelmesse, is on this week in Cologne, and the Frankfurt furniture studio Morgen took the occasion to launch a kids line designed by the company's co-founder Sabine Mühlbauer. International economic downturn or no, I have a...
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Tchotchkes We Can Believe In? Toy Obama Air Force One

Maybe the problem is that crunchy liberals have been out of power for several breeding cycles? But it's not like the neo-con's Torture Me Elmo was a big hit, either. Maybe making toys that are simultaneously propagandistic and fun...
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Elsie Marley And Her Patchwork Steam Shovel

It was always said that Elsie could craft in a day what a 100 other etsy.com sellers could craft in a week. I hope it's not too Henry B. Swap of me to point out there are enough buttons...
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January 20, 2009

HeyDon't Mean To Be A Bother, You Guys

Yes, according, I guess, to the NY Times' Gen X correspondent, the new version of The Electric Company is as boring and educational as you feared. Back From the '70s, Without the Zaniness [nyt]...
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Ferrari Bikes 70-80% Too Expensive

The catalogue copy for the Ferrari children's bicycles is maybe more revealing than intended about exactly who they're for:This licensed Ferrari bike is simply beautiful in every detail. The perfect first bike when your child has to have the...
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1930 Miniature Bugatti 52, One Owner

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Miniature Bugatti "52"- 294A - one owner since 1930., originally uploaded by grahamlittle10. Graham Little...
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By The Time We Got To Obamastock

The kid and I went to the inauguration this morning. We had no stroller ourselves, but decided to avoid the stroller-hating mob on the Mall and head straight for the Lincoln Memorial. I thought that'd be a good place...
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January 19, 2009

Betty Thomson's Multiplications Got Spanked By The Yoshimoto Cube

90% of dadblogging is just what shows up. Just a few hours after I stumbled across Multiplications, I stumbled across the Yoshitomo Cube. Here's the deal: In 1969, The Museum of Modern Art commissioned artists and designers to create some...
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Don't Let Your Child Choke On Those Plush Ovaries

As soon as Los Angeles plush artist Wendy Bryan found out that the plush ovaries and Fallopian tubes on her I Heart Guts plush uterus posed a choke hazard, she immediately announced a recall. Even though the plush uteri...
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January 18, 2009

Mazel Tov, It's A Guinea Pig!

Great opening from the NY Times:At a birthing class, Dr. [Pawan] Sinha, a neuroscience professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, stunned everyone, including his wife, by saying he was excited about the baby's birth "because I really want to...
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January 16, 2009

So I Finished The Juddy Crib

Long-time readers of Daddy Types might remember my grand plan to make a sweet, minimalist toddler bed for the kid out of thick slabs of plywood. The design was an adaptation of a Donald Judd daybed [which is visible...
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January 15, 2009

Leander Cradle, Denmark's Most Popular Hanging Cradle, Now Rocking On US eBay

What's that, you say you'd love to let your kid rock to sleep in Denmark's favorite cradle, the egg-shaped, minimalist masterpiece that is the Leander Bassinet, but you don't want to hassle of schlepping or shipping the thing all...
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Family Services Assures Us There Are Worse Things Than Naming Your Kid Adolf Hitler

And I'm pretty sure they don't mean giving your kid an unpersonalized birthday cake. Still, New Jersey's Youth and Family Services agency is not giving the reasons for removing recently discriminated-against birthday boy Adolf Hitler Campbell and his two slightly...
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Dude Made A Coffee Table From A Stroller!

And by dude, I mean Dutch artist Tina Pireira Filipe. And by stroller, I mean the chassis of a big old pram. And by coffee table, I mean glass-topped coffee table of death for any kid that gets near...
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Mr Private Equity And Little Miss Licensing

I guess I didn't grow up in an Anglophilic enough house, because I didn't know about Roger Hargreaves' Mr. Men and Little Miss series until the kid was born. [The wife, on the other hand, had them at school....
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January 14, 2009

Then & Now: Baby Daddies In Music Videos

Eurythmics - "Wide-Eyed Girl" (1987) [youtube via sal mineo's ghost] Man Like Me - "Single Dad" (2009) [youtube via dt reader rolf] From absent antagonist to lead singer in one generation? You've come a long way, baby daddy!...
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Chevy Traverse The SUV Of Choice For Annoying Little Girls

Oops, sorry. Big girls. Howie Long becomes an arrogant ass in new Chevy campaign brandfreak, see all the ads here, via gawker]...
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Alright People. We Have A Serious Creative Playthings Situation In New Jersey

If you thought the recent eBay appearance of some unusual--and unusually well-preserved--Creative Playthings toys being sold from Hamilton Square, New Jersey--a town within easy commuting distance of CP's vintage headquarters in Princeton--was a fluke, think again. The same eBay seller...
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January 13, 2009

Two Down, Thirteen To Go! Unidentified Local Family Drives Extremely Identifiable Bugaboo

Does the sender of the first photo of a Little Marc Jacobs X Bugaboo in the wild still win a 'daddy type' t-shirt if she's also a Bugaboo publicist? Yes she does, but I'll keep the offer open for...
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OTO Transportation Rugs By The Nought Collective

It's like I was telling you, nursery trendwatchers, grey is the new orange. And graphite-colored hand-knotted Nepalese wool rugs with awesome line drawings of various modes of transportation like diggers and choppers and school buses are the new graphite-colored,...
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Première Heure by Thierry Bouët

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Samaritaine Paris. Photo's by Thierry Bouët., originally uploaded by fotorené. The giant babies that have...
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A Book Of Snails [Photographed By Martin Iger]

I'm a sucker for a good photographic picture book. And Three Potato Four has one. It's A Book of Snails, by Sally Moffet Kellin, with photographs by Martin Iger, published in 1968. Following the not-slimy trail backward, I see...
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Park Slope Parent: Is It OK To Take A 2yo To MoMA?

Because this one time, someone's bubbie complained about the parents chatting up their toddler at every painting, a Park Slope parent is a bit worried about taking her 22-month old kid to the Museum of Modern Art:A childless friend with...
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January 12, 2009

The New Yorker: An Unhelpful History Of Elitist Breastfeeding Hangups

In modern history, breastfeeding has been fetishized and demonized, considered a woman's ultimate patriotic duty, and a savage, animalistic practice unworthy of mothers of the civilized, fair races. In 18th century Paris, an estimated 90% of women used wet...
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CES WTF V2.0: Lok8u Nu•M8 GPS Child Locator

I've largely ignored CES this year; I find that my interest in baby-related gadgets and my tolerance of trade show hype shrink in direct inverse proportion to my accumulated experience as a parent. Frankly, it's an alarming position to...
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Mama Mia! That Is An Awesome Throwback Nursery

Just when you think you've seen all the awesome, old school nurseries the LIFE Magazine photo archive has to offer, Andy finds another one. How did he do it? I have no idea. There's no caption, no date, no...
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January 11, 2009

Placenta Jars? Somebody Korean's Got Some 'Splainin' To Do!

So the eyebrow-raising Korean birth customs didn't start with gold-plating umbilical cords or turning them into personal seals. Korean royalty used to [still does? I don't know] place a prince or princess's placenta in a placenta jar, then bury...
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January 10, 2009

Beards Over Babies T-Shirt: Cute But A Tough Sell

The beauty of Yo Gabba Gabba is it's unassailable merchandising logic. They're not just cranking out random dolls to capitalize on the show's popularity; the characters themselves are the dolls. Totally different! By weaving the product into the story,...
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January 9, 2009

DTGIFriday Freakout

What alarming, preliminary research are we supposed to use to revamp our failed parenting this week, you ask? Your kid doesn't have a peanut allergy. No one does. They just have over-sensitive yuppie parents. That's the result of a study...
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DIY Pre-School & Playground, Topaz Internment Camp, Delta, Utah

The Central Utah Relocation Center near Delta was later renamed Topaz Camp, after Topaz Mountain, which loomed over it to the west. When it opened on Sept. 11, 1942, several rows of tarpaper barracks had been finished and outfitted...
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Awesome OG Illustrator: Taniuchi Rokuro

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Rokuro Taniuchi 11, originally uploaded by A Journey Round My Skull. For nearly 26 years...
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January 8, 2009

CPSC Tells Junksellers: CPSIA Is Not The Big One, We're Not Coming For You

The CPSC says the "clarification" issued today about the new CPSIA lead-testing regulations which go into effect Feb. 10. is "Intended for Resellers of Children's Products, Thrift and Consignment Stores." But it's also great news for thrifters, eBay sellers, craigslisters,...
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BBC Reports That Pink Princess Thing Does Not Change Girls' DNA

So apparently, girls only like pink, and so that's all the "marketeers" give them. How did this come about? No one knows, but the BBC says it has something to do with Hitler and the gays. There's nothing to be...
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SkipHop Adds TrikeBike

Interesting. Skip*Hop keeps expanding its product line beyond the low-profile diaper and stroller bags which gave the company its start. And now they've picked up what I believe is their first distribution deal; they're now the US distributor for New...
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January 7, 2009

Study: Elective C-Sections Increase Risk Of Complications

A new study of over 24,000 full-term births found that the risk of complications increased 20-100% with scheduled [repeat] C-sections, depending on how early they were scheduled [i.e., 37-39 weeks]. The research was conducted by doctors at the University of...
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Once You Have Black, You Best Take It Back: Muniré Black Cribs Recalled For Lead Paint

From the Muniré nursery furniture company website: You can have peace of mind that all Muniré products are coated with finishes that are in compliance with Federal Regulation 16CFR1303 for lead content and have been certified as such by Intertek,...
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One More Reason To Learn Photoshop

manbabies.com Considering I found it via some wacky artist's Best of the Web list, I was worried it'd be about creepy old dudes wearing diapers. But it's not....
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Research: Numbers Are Hardwired

It's interesting, but if you don't have time to read this entire Economist article, here is a quick summary: Newborn babies can tell the difference between 2 and 3. Apparently, numbers and counting are built into our brains. Even Aboriginal...
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Venza: The Toyota R-Class

The NY Times has a quick review of the Toyota's not-a-station-wagon, the Venza, which adds a telling layer of genealogy to the car's [sic] design. Yes, it was derived from the 2005 FT-SX [bottom] but did you know that...
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January 6, 2009

There's A Sale At Vinnie's!

Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop shopping! Because of the mailing list thing, the previous customer thing, and/or the DT advertiser thing, I get these heads up [heads ups?] about sales from companies that I keep meaning...
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And There You Have It! The Nutcracker, Diagrammed

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } marianne thalmann 7, originally uploaded by A Journey Round My Skull. Turns out the Maurice...
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Ausgezeichnet! Die Drei Soldaten, Bertolt Brecht's Children's Book

Johnny Cash's one-armed man who can't cry and his laughing whore might have to move to the back of the Depressing Children's Book Bus. Because here comes Bertolt Brecht's The Three Soldiers who can't laugh--until they're lined up against a...
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She's A Children's Product! Burn Her!

I want to fix the CPSIA, the CPSC's new lead testing law, and save all the various children's product industries from regulation-induced bankruptcy and collapse on February 10th as much as the next guy. But I would like to do...
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January 5, 2009

Cash-Inspired: The Man Who Couldn't Cry By Scott Reifsnyder

It may have given up on the Feel-Good Die-Cut Children's Book Of The Year Award before it even went to press, but Scott Reifsnyder's The Man Who Couldn't Cry is still a contender for the Look-Good competition. Scott's beautiful,...
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Allied Troops Did Not Pull Out Of Rouen In Time

Nearly two months after D-Day, Allied troops entered Rouen, France on August 30th, 1944 to little German resistance and, apparently, to the jubilant embraces of the grateful crowds. At least it was apparent to Ralph Morse who, in the...
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January 4, 2009

Pain, In The Butt

I'd never heard of acetaminophen infant suppositories before I saw them at the drugstore tonight. But they have joined rectal thermometers and those snot sucker bulbs on my list of Things That Will One Day Be Linked To All...
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Marcel Breuer, The Postwar Man And The Bi-Nuclear House

The original title of Marcel Breuer's December 1943 article for California Arts & Architecture was "Design for Postwar Living." But he changed it to "On a Design of a Bi-Nuclear House." [Actually, on the typescript, he wrote "By Nuclear," which...
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January 2, 2009

Turns Out Babies Are Born Inflight All The Time

It's only on slow news days that they get worldwide media attention. Here is a roundup of news, background, and data about babies born on airplanes: In 2007, a British woman gave birth at 25 weeks on a flight from...
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Waitaminnit, That Baby Born On The Northwest Flight Is NOT Canadian

OK, so on New Years Eve, an 8.5 mos pregnant Ugandan woman--and US resident--was on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Boston. By the time flight attendants called for any doctors traveling onboard to help with a medical emergency,...
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Oddly, Plummeting Milk Prices Doesn't Result In Plummeting Formula Prices

There's apparently a milk glut on, thanks to the depression, and growing stockpiles of powdered milk:The price of powdered skim milk, used in infant formula, dairy products and processed foods, has fallen to roughly 80 cents a pound today from...
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The Greatest Generation's Nurseries, Cont'd

I suppose I could write about how, now that K2 realizes we pick the food up from the floor and put it back on her tray, she's started refusing to eat in her chair, and would rather get down and...
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January 1, 2009

Russian Auto Factory Nursery, By Margaret Bourke-White

For all the enlightening fun the archive is providing, I haven't found many images from LIFE Magazine I'd actually want to buy. But Margaret Bourke-White's incredible 1931 photograph of the nursery [sic] in a Moscow auto plant makes the...
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Bambino, Nulla

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Gianni Franzoni, Child, Nothing, originally uploaded by A Journey Round My Skull. Add me to...
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Playing For Kepes

So far, I haven't been able to get the LIFE Magazine photo archive on Google to return more than 200 images at a time. So who knows how many photos Ralph Morse actually took of the awesome nursery Juliet...
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