Daddy Types: February 2009 Archives

February 2009 Archives

February 28, 2009

The Sound Of One-Hand Scolding

A media cluckstorm erupted in the UK this week after the BBC reported with that "some parents," including "a minority of parents" on the broadcasters' online forums, "complained" or "expressed concern" that Cerrie Burnell, a new presenter on CBeebies, the...
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February 27, 2009

Jenny From The Docket: J.Lo Sues Silver Cross For Unauthorized Promo

God bless Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony. The couple and their company, Nuyorican Productions, Inc. have filed a $30 million copyright infringement suit against fusty prammaker Silver Cross for using a photograph of them pushing some prams to, well, push...
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DT Friday Meta-Freakout: Intuitive Toxicology And The White Male Effect Edition

The regular DT Friday Freakout will return next week, so that we can present you with this special DT Friday Meta-Freakout. A couple of weeks ago, this NY Times reader's interest was understandably piqued by the lede for Peggy Orenstein's...
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Uppababy RumbleSeat Reaches Press Release Stage

Unless there's a hands-on editors' preview involving muffins and gift bags which I didn't get invited to, the Five Stages of Web 2.0 Product Launch are as follows: I. Purloined phonecam shots II. Trade show attendee's flickr stream III....
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February 26, 2009

The Skeeving Of Lot 1069: Little Kid Stuff From The Michael Jackson Auction

Apr 15 UPDATE: The NY Times reports that the auction, which Jackson had originally authorized, then recently opposed, has been canceled. Also, instead of "the large turnout" that had been expected, "only a few dozen fans and passers-by were...
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God Save The Queen! The Peanut Regime! Four English Kids Can Now Eat Peanuts

Trail mix for everybody! Our long peanut-allergic nightmare may be over. Allergists at Cambridge Hospitals have published the results of an experimental treatment course for peanut allergies that successfully lifted the sensitivity thresholds for all the kids involved. Dr Andy...
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February 25, 2009

Breaking News From The BBC: Sometimes People Have Punny Names

That's the "finding" of a "study" of the phone book by a publicity-seeking baby website. An exclusive follow-up survey by Daddy Types of the comments left on the BBC's site finds that sometimes it works out fine, and sometimes...
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DTQ: When's The Best Time To Install Safety Latches Under The Kitchen Sink?

It's funny, I get this question all the time, and I never would have said "G." Is the answer: A. As soon as you find out you're going to have a kid, so you can get used to opening the...
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Father And Child And BRIO. And Afro.

Suffice it to say if BRIO were still running ads like this, they would be in the precarious financial situation they find themselves in today. 1974 Ad fathers [brioflickr's flickr via dt reader sharon] there's a mom one, too...
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February 24, 2009

Has Huibert van Muilwijk Got A Shelving Idea For You

If you're like me, you're wondering what Dutch wunderkind designer Huibert van Muilwijk has working on since launching the M/V Crib in 2007. Well now we know: sweet wood modular shelving. HvM sent along photos of a prototype of...
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Recession Is Over! (If You Want It) Netto Collection's Having A 40% Off Sale

After seeing retail performance the last quarter or two, my guess is that supplies are lasting longer and quantities are not as limited as many manufacturers would like. Thus, the "Fight the Recession! sale at Netto Collection The designer's...
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Ramayana Jazz X Anime Mashup

When Nina Paley's marriage to an Indian animator fell apart a few years ago, she did what any woman in that situation would do: she taught herself filmmaking by creating a stylized, animated musical version of the Ramayana based...
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February 23, 2009

Can Your Mother In-Law Make A Crawligator This Awesome?

A couple of weeks ago, when we started huntin' Crawligators in the Internet swamps of eBay and craigslist, DT commenter John suggested this blog post, where a little kid in the Bay Area named Sibyl was cruising around on...
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Piet Hein Eek Tree Trunk Kids Furniture

"It's important for children to realize that wood comes from trees," said the Dutch designer Piet Hein Eek to the New York Times in 2007. And the Piet Hein Eekiest way to do that? Kids furniture made from tree...
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If Built, Beijing's Giant Baby Would Have Kicked Paris's Giant Baby's Ass

Alright, this is the last giant baby post of the day. Probably. I've been sitting on this for a couple of weeks, but now that Paris has upped the giant baby ante, I think it's it's time. This is...
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Buddha Gas Station Baby Welcomes You To Paris

Paris's love affair with giant babies in the windows of shops which aren't really selling anything continues. This one was spotted in the Marais, crammed into the studio of substance, a design firm founded by a former staffer of...
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February 22, 2009

America's Stupidest Home Videos

Funny home video, until you realize it's as staged as all that crap that Bob Saget used to try to get America to laugh at back in the day. At which point, you're left with the realization that it's...
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February 21, 2009

Well Done, Except For The Obvious: The Staypuff Crib-on-Wheels

Check out this spectacular crib, headsmacking for both its "why didn't I think of that?" practical ingenuity, and "what were they thinking?" name. The Staypuff Crib is a managed forest pine crib built on top of a utility wagon....
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February 20, 2009

The Right Start, The Sudden Finish

Sounds like the Right Start is not going to make it to the finish line. DT reader Jay files this report from California:Just wanted to give you a heads up that Right Start retail stores are selling off their entire...
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Here With A Live Synthesizer Performance, Is A Midget Not Wearing A Bikini

A 9 months baby play synthesizer. [vimeo via boingboing]...
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DT Friday Freakout: K2 Edition

You know, because K2 chose this week to basically challenge Death at every turn, I've had a hard time freaking out over anything the hyperbolic science reporting industry can come up with, but I'll try: The NY Times reports that...
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Ska At Home Dad

Ho. Ly. Smokes. Talk about burying the lede. The Guardian has a story about The Specials reuniting, that just casually mentions, Lynval Golding, the guitarist "had stopped playing guitar altogether and was living quietly in Seattle as a stay-at-home father...
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February 19, 2009

Unidentified Local Moms Selling Their Stuff Online

Turns out celebrities really are just like the rest of us! Like you and me, they get so much free baby gear and clothing from publicists, it piles up around their houses, too, and then they, too, have to...
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Daddy Types Love Roller Bears

When you have a website called Daddy Types, you're pretty aware of how often you talk about how fun it is to play with bears. These little carved wood bears from Germany, which roll back onto their feet on...
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Clifford Richards For Our Childrens Gorilla: Finally, Some Good News From Sweden

What with the Brio bankruptcy, the crazy changing tables, and the realization that I've been teaching the kid the wrong pronunciation of basically every name in Ikea--including Ikea--Sweden has been a source of serious buzzkill this week. Well that...
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February 18, 2009

Can You Think Of Two Worse Things To Buy If You Have A Kid?

Seriously, worse than a ceramic remote control, and an indoor fire table? I dare you. [via dt reader eric]...
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The Theory Of Everything I Need To Know I Learned From Watching Philip Glass On Sesame Street

Some day you'll say "Sure, three. Protons, neutrons, and electrons, why?" and your kid will look at you and laugh right in your old-timey, went to school in the 20th century face. Because she'll be all, "But dad, Garrett Lisi's...
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Mammut: The Ikea Plastic Crib For Closers

It's not on the website, and there's no NEW! tag, but I spotted this gigantic plastic crib, from Ikea's gigantic, plastic Mammut collection, yesterday. $219. I want to like the Mammut stuff. We have a few of the stools...
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February 17, 2009

Fold The Rod And Spoling The Child

We made a ginger wafer run to Ikea this afternoon, and while the kid was playing in the ball pit, K2 and I went to check out... the newest additions to the children's furniture collection, which turns out to...
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Brio Bork Bork Bork Bork! What's Swedish For "Bankruptcy"?

Actually, the word that matters most to the venerable Swedish wooden train maker right now is likviditeten. Liquidity. As in, cash. As in, after disappointing sales, extended operating losses, and extraordinary expenses, Brio is facing what its board of...
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In Your Face, England! We Have A Mom Of 14!

Haha, England's all excited now because they have a guy who's a dad of only 13. Wait, what?? [thesun.co.uk] six other baby daddies update: wait, what what?? [dailymail.co.uk]...
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Friendly Frontier: Climb Every DIY, Inflatable Slide-Equipped Mountain

Friendly Frontier is the second is the artists Zoe Walker & Neil Bromwich's Dummy Landscape series. It's an inflatable mountain range, "of the kind so commonly used by nature to divide countries," which is equipped with inflatable evacuation slides....
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February 16, 2009

Francoise, Je Vous Aime. Vous et Votre Sweet Illustrations

K2 was still not asleep, so the kid and I had to scavenge a bedtime storybook from the random pile of eBay and library sale finds in our bedroom corner. The result: a thrashed copy of Bruno Munari's Zoo...
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Elephant Chair with Lamp, 1928, by Alexander Calder

Though it's not clear to me whether he made it in Peekskill or Paris, the date [1928], size [about 8-in. high], and materials [scraps of steel, burlap, and paper] place Elephant Chair with Lamp squarely in Alexander Calder's early...
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Birth Announcement Kangaroo, 1959, by Alexander Calder

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } When Cleve and Francine du Plessix Gray sent out birth announcements for their son, their...
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February 15, 2009

Scrubbed, Sterilized And Disinfected

At some point, you'll surprise yourself because not only will it be no big deal, but you'll actually count yourself lucky that you only needed a slotted spoon when someone dropped a Baby Ruth in your pool or tub....
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Mad Mod Ply Dollhouse Prototype On eBay

This sweet, birch ply modernist dollhouse just turned up on eBay, where it's described as "one of just a few modern dollhouse prototypes designed and built by an architect-cabinet maker team. Designs were based on modern houses by Le...
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The ATCO Junior Safety-First Trainer Was Not A Toy

Growing up, I never felt life's brutal unfairness more acutely than when my mom would tell me about getting to drive the tractor when she was ten. Times were different back then, she'd say, by way of apology for...
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M-I-C See This Awesome Vintage Mickey Mural

K-E-Y Why? Because as Joey Ellis says, "I love Mickey Mouse and I force my family to like him too." M-O-U-S-E. And what did we learn this week about the arrival of a baby, boys and girls? That you...
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February 14, 2009

They Might Be Monsters: Here Come The A, B, C's by Joey Ellis

While other kids are merely learning the alphabet, graphic designers' kids "study letter forms." And their dads make awesome Letter Monsters to help them. And then their dads go like five extra miles and put their Letter Monsters online...
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February 13, 2009

What, Not Cable Guy? Adorable Electric Man Really Not Helping

Power cables and power strips are the #1 and #2 most popular toys around our house, to the point where I almost want to just give K2 my cell phone and video camera just to keep her away from...
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DT Freakout Friday: Valentine's Edition

Hmm, doesn't it feel like we were just freaking out about a pile of overinterpreted or under-reported science stories last week? I'll be adding more later in the afternoon. This week's lead story [uh, heh?] is the same as last...
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February 12, 2009

Brother, Can You Spare A Crawligator?

The Creative Playthings Crawligator is one of those awesome, fun-looking, no-brainer toys that looks like it should be on the market forever. Like a Hula Hoop or Rock'em Sock'em Robots. Unfortunately, the little baby belly skateboard didn't survive the...
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Hey Car & Driver, Where's The Boss Wagon VI?

Maybe I shouldn't expect anything different, considering that in 35 years, Car & Driver has only managed to soup up five Boss Wagons. But when the magazine's editors announced last summer that Boss Wagon VI, the latest installment in their...
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Experimental Filmmaker Baby Naming Trends

From Artforum's report of the big closing show at the artist-run Guild & Greyshkul Gallery in SoHo:Aesthetics alone, however, will not raise twenty-five thousand dollars every month (nine thousand dollars for rent). Such concerns are of course appearing all around....
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February 11, 2009

DTQ: Forget The Must-Haves. What Are The Won't-Misses?

Some friends are expecting their first kid in a couple of months, and when we had them over for dinner, the wives took the nursery tour while the men adjourned to the library to talk about important stuff, like US...
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February 10, 2009

The Bugaboo Cameleon As A Work Of Art, And Vice Versa

In late 2007, Thomas Brauer curated a group exhibition titled, "A Muzzle of Bees" at 33 Bond Gallery in NoHo. Brauer focused on work that "depicts the black moment after a great loss and the suits of armor we...
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Granta: The Fathers Issue

The February issue of Granta, the first to be edited by Alex Clark, is a collection of writing on the subject of fathers:One of childhood's most furtively treasured games is to imagine how life would be if other circumstances had...
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Hello, It's February 10th. Is The Phthalate Baby Product Industry Still With Us?

Any shuttered stores? Stopped assembly lines? Quarantined shipping containers? Empty shelves in the teething ring aisle? Tumbleweeds on etsy.com? Wire service photos of despairing phthalate futures traders clapping their foreheads? Though they're not being enforced officially, today is the...
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Gitmo Playground By Christopher Sims

Artist Christopher Sims spent three years gaining approval to visit the US military base at Guantanamo Bay. His photographs documenting the sites of daily life--the video games, the barbecues, the McDonald's, the playground--will be exhibited at Civilian Art Projects...
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February 9, 2009

Z-Stream: One Slide-Lookin' Zaha Hadid Sculpture Actually Is Slide

Whether it's a modular sofa or a kitchen island or a whole Ideal House of Tomorrow, since every objet that tumbles out of architect Zaha Hadid's studio looks like a piece of retro-futuristic playground equipment, you might be surprised...
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Righter Than I Knew: Rolly Crump's Tower Of The Four Winds

A couple of years ago, when I posted about the Solar Do-Nothing Machine, created in 1957 for Alcoa by Ray and Charles Eames, I mentioned that though the single prototype didn't survive, its spirit lived on in the facade...
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Black Panther Coloring Book: Color The Police! Color, Color, Color The Police!

Depending on which Internet you're on, the Black Panther Coloring Book was either: a forgery by the FBI, mass-mailed to whites in the summer of 1969 to undermine support or the Black Panther Party's political complaints a crazy-unhelpful idea...
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DT Monday Madness: Dude Made Up His Vaccine Causes Autism Data

Not sure why they're doing this now, but the Times of London reports that it investigated the original medical records behind Dr Andrew Wakefield's 1998 paper in The Lancet which found a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Their...
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Ronin Playtown Fire Truck By Creative Playthings On eBay

In the mid-1960's, Julian Winston designed the Playtown series for Creative Playthings, which included playsets for an airfield, a marina, a garage, and a fire station. With no fire station to serve, this masterless wooden fire truck, sweet and...
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February 8, 2009

Flame By Tom Dixon, Heavy Machine For Sitting Baby

This is how Kenny Schacter described Tom Dixon's Flame Cut Series of steel furniture when he showed it at Design Basel Miami last December:An installation of unfeasibly heavyweight furniture where Dixon challenges our ideas of acceptable materials, processes and...
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February 7, 2009

Dude Makes Indy Pedal Racer Out Of Pots & Pans

Suh-weet. Hoosier native and kitchen raider Joseph Inhat made a sweet, 1930's Indy-inspired pedal car for a 4-year-old he knows [kid? grandkid?] out of pots, pans, and a maraschino cherry lid. Pictures of the build are at Hemmings' blog....
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Running Out: DT Runs The Numbers On The End Of Right Start

OK, this is almost literally kicking a dead horse, but I did a little digging into the bankruptcy filing for Right Start and babystyle. At first, I was trying to figure out if I needed to correct the suggestions made...
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February 6, 2009

K2 Loves The Korean Seaweed

Alright, Korean people. Tell me what you're dusting the little sheets of roasted seaweed with. Because until I see proof otherwise, I'll assume it's baby crack. We get big sheets of sushi-style Japanese nori all the time for the...
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It's A Small World Full Of Disney Characters After All That Rebranding

Last year, Disney decided to renovate the designer Mary Blair's masterpiece, the It's A Small World ride and replace some of Blair's animatronic children with Disney movie characters. The ride is set to reopen to the public this weekend,...
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Modern Tots Gone Tots Up?

Ouch, it had to happen sometime, and it sucks when it does. But it appears that ModernTots has closed down. Back in 2005 when there were just a handful of modern kids' design shops, ModernTots opened online selling the new...
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DT Friday Freakout: "I Was Devastated." Edition

OK, Science may actually have some preliminary research findings for you to freak out over this weekend: Actually, we've been quietly freaking out over this one for nearly five years, since we first got our place in DC, where the...
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Hans Beck, Father Of Playmobil, 79

Hans Beck, who became the chief of development for the Brandstätter Group toy company after he created Playmobil in 1974, died last week at the age of 79. Playmobil's German inventor Hans Beck dies aged 79 [guardian.co.uk] image: detail...
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February 5, 2009

Wait, Is Right Start Not Honoring Gift Cards And Store Credit?

With the news that Right Start and babystyle have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy [yet again], I made the slightly offhand, slightly serious suggestion that anyone with a gift card should hustle over to a store and use it up...
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Everything Must Not Go! Court Spanks CPSC, Upholds CPSIA Phthalate Ban

Short story: If you make or sell plastic or vinyl children's products, you can forget whatever plans you made for the weekend. Slightly longer story: The Natural Resources Defense Council and Public Citizen sued the CPSC over exceptions the Commission...
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Can You Say Hydrophilic?

Stephen McNeil is a chemistry professor, a dad, and a smartass. Or at least a Canadian. It took me a couple of days of reloading, but I finally got to read his miraculous story of reaching the end of his...
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February 4, 2009

8 Is Enough For The Pilot, Anyway

You know, I prefer not to discuss octuplets unless they're named Nahasapeemapetilon. So I've kept the whole, single, baby-obsessed mom living at home with her 14 IVF kids story off Daddy Types. Because seriously, what Then someone forwarded me an...
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Girard In The House!

House Industries pioneered the Alexander Girard objet revival in 2006 with their awesome wood blocks set, which they adapted from the sun-covered matchbooks Girard designed for the Casa del Sol restaurant in NYC. That's the House approach: adapt some...
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A C'est Pour Antipathie: Grand Alphabet Amusant

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Grand Alphabet Amusant (Morel) ABCDE, originally uploaded by peacay. Nice. How Peacay keeps finding these...
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February 3, 2009

Use Up Your Gift Cards Right Quick: Right Start Files For Chapter 11

Well, it seems to be official: the blog Strollerinfo is reporting that Right Start, the baby retailer who bought babystyle out of its own bankruptcy last Spring, has filed for chapter 11 protection itself. Sure enough, I just saw the...
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Suima: The Japanese Robocrib Of The Future/Past

The Suima robot crib by Maruki Development, a subsidiary of Tanigawa Kensetsu, a homebuilder in Nagasaki, is scientifically designed to detect a crying baby and rock him back to sleep. It is the product of four years of research...
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This Is My Son On Drugs. Any Questions?

Kid on way home from dentist, totally high: "Is this going to be forever?" Dad: "No, [at least not until I put it on YouTube.]" David After Dentist [youtube via boingboing] Novocaine sold separately: Buy a Flip Mino video...
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Christoph Niemann's Lego New York

Around our house, everything over three blocks high is the Empire State Building. The NY Times' resident illustrator/dad Christoph Niemann and his sons re-created, not just the Empire State Building, but the very essence of New York City life...
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Speeeck Of Doost Doost Doost

After listening to it on my wife's office colleague's iPod a couple of weeks ago, They Might Be Giants' song "Violin" from their No! album has become the kid's official anthem. It is just a bizarre song. And since we...
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February 2, 2009

WTFBait: Economists Publish Study Of Juvenile Delinquent Naming Trends

Good gravy, are you telling me that economists could literally find nothing more important to do with their time the last year than perform regression analysis on a database of juvenile delinquents' first names in order "to test the hypothesis...
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David & John Updike's Helpful Alphabet Of Friendly Objects

The week after a great writer dies and his thoughtful, poeto-photographic, out-of-print, abcedarian collaboration with his son and grandchildren gets namechecked in the New York Times is probably not the best time to pop online to buy a copy....
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Naef Bau Bau: Swiss Building Toys NOT For Tinkering

Who's ever even heard of this Naef Bau Bau birch building set designed in the 50's by Gert Muller? As far as I can tell, the thing's only been published in two tiny pictures in the Kurt Naef biography....
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Big Gay Alphabet Is Frankly Not That Super, Since You're Asking

Maybe it was the angry, yet nervous, anonymous, and ass-covering disclaimer ["Right wing groups and the church blah blah blah"... "/ This is an independent project not affiliated with any agency /"]. Or maybe I was just caught off...
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1001 Rules For Some Tumblrer's Unborn Son

Considering that it feels like "1001 rules for my unborn son" seems to emanate from Brooklyn [I mean, come on, it's a tumblr], there's a strange animus towards facial hair. But there's a healthy animus toward Julian Schnabel, too, so...
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February 1, 2009

November Was Nakaban Month At Chigo

Chigo is one of our absolute favorite baby stores in the world, which is too bad because it's in Tokyo, and we haven't been for a while. Which means we missed the veritable Nakabanpalooza they held last November. I...
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The Schoolhouse Rock They Don't Want You To See

Sure, "they" claim this "Conspiracy Rock" expose' on the JFK assassination is just a parody created by some comedy troupe at Emerson College in 1991, and animated--by hand, no less!--by Jason Scott of textfiles.com. But I can't believe it;...
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Yeah, Right. You're Not Gonna Fool Me With That "Naugahyde Comes From Naugas" Crap Again

You know how when you were like seven, your dad told you that the bar stools in the rec room were not vinyl, but a special kind of leather that only came from these mysterious creatures called Naugas? And...
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