Daddy Types: October 2009 Archives

October 2009 Archives

October 31, 2009

DT Friday Freakout: Halloween Edition

Because you can only worry about razor blades in apples for a few more hours, here are some headlines from the worlds of science and parenting to freakout over the rest of the weekend: 610,000 cheap-ass Halloween flashlights sold at...
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Vintage BRIO Rox: Molded Ply Ox

You know what might turn BRIO's fortunes around? Bringing back this molded plywood rocking ox with the red horns and foot rests and the blue felt seat that they introduced in 1967. Seriously, stack those things like Pringles and...
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BRIO? Indies? Toy Casualties Mount In CPSIA Trainwreck

It's been a while since the CPSIA has been in the news, or at least since anyone's sent me anything about it. The CPSC's new lead and phthalates restrictions and testing requirements for childrens' products kicked in earlier this year,...
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UK Combats Paedophile Plague By Banning Parents From Playgrounds

As everyone knows, the United Kingdom was founded as a prison island for criminals exiled from Camelot. Given the population's well-established propensity for child abuse, a national paedophile database is being set up, and everyone who gets within 100 rods...
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October 30, 2009

Japanese Rainbow Elmo's Super, Thanks For Asking!

Sanrio introduced these rainbow Elmo cell phone straps last year in Japan, as if the only problem with Elmo is that he's red. Elmo Dreams in Rainbow Colors cell phone straps [muppet wiki via Mr Brian Design]...
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Chubby Blue Steel Meets Toddler Hollister Hair

JJ Daddy-o Mama just sent this example of what she calls "toddler Hollister hair," and I'm like, they're all the same face!"...
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October 29, 2009

Have You Seen Me? Vintage Mystery See-Saw At Grain Edit

There's probably a long German word for the kind of suffering that comes from not knowing where a cool vintage toy ad came from. And another one for the annoyance of scanning something and forgetting to make any reference...
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Ex Thinkgeek, Star Trek Baby Nerdia

Stardate 63293.1 We have come across Star Trek Onesies at Thinkgeek, which show signs that the Gerber Childrenswear Company has apparently abandoned its claim on the Onesie copyright on this M-Class planet. The Starfleet Academy cadet Onesie shows the...
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Vintage Playground Indy 500 Simulator

It looks kind of unwieldy, but this sweet piece of OG playground equipment is only 4' long and 2' high, small enough for toddlers--and small enough to ship via Greyhound. Even better--for me, anyway, I'm sure it means jack...
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Ouch. Kristian Vedel See-Saw

If you were wondering why it's so hard to find vintage Kristian Vedel's molded ply kids desk-chair-cradles in good condition, now you know: see-sawing Swiss urchins. Kristian Vedel children's chair wins Silver Medal at Triennale di Milano, Form 028,...
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October 28, 2009

Socialist Canadian Hospital Bassinet Impresses Some

DT reader and comrade to the North Cameron and his wife just welcomed their second kid--mazeltov/omedetou!--and all are doing well. Or as well as can be expected for people trapped in the socialized medical hell of Canada, where Cam...
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Devil breaks out ice skates as Honda announces Euro-Accord Wagon is US-bound

I couldn't post the details from the road, but I didn't think it could wait. Autoblog actually reports that Honda has actually announced the Euro-spec Accord Tourer will actually be coming to the US as a 2011 Acura TSX...
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But The Spider Didn't Answer

Glad to see NPR funnyman Peter Sagal wasn't too busy not painting his house to put up his Halloween decorations. [via @petersagal via boingboing]...
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October 27, 2009

What Was The Vienna Kindergarten At Expo67?

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Vienna Kindergarten, Expo 67, Montreal, originally uploaded by Iqbal Aalam. I'll take Impossibly Idyllic Children's...
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Talmudic Toy Teasers

Here I was, reading about all these awesome Torah and Talmud Toys and wondering where I can get some--Toy Eglah Arufah Everything you need to act out the matter of the Eglah Arufah (literally, the decapitated calf). Toy Eglah Arufah...
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There's More'n One Way To Make A Plywood Crib

Steve is an excited dad-to-be who wanted to design a crib or changing table that fixed "the one tangible thing about motherhood you [ladies] wish could be changed?" The answer he got back seemed clear enough: "I hate lifting...
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October 26, 2009

If You Go Out In The Woods Today, You Better Not Go In A Minivan

Obviously, this can't wait until the Friday Freakout: Bearologists from the US Department of Agriculture found that black bears in Yosemite National Park are more than four times as likely to break into a minivan to steal food. Of 908...
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I Am The Errol Morris Of Jenny Lind Cribs

We got a Jenny Lind crib. At the time, it was the only simple crib we could find that wasn't Ikea or David Netto. We got it from Schneider's when they were still in Alphabet City. He said that it...
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October 23, 2009

DT Friday Freakout: Nuclear Edition

Here are some stories from the science, safety, and parenting worlds designed to help give your confidence a little extra push--over the cliff. Have a great weekend! Actually, these first two are just funny-sad: Do you remember going outside to...
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Sesame Street Fight! SW Calls BS On AA T's PR

Haha, you know how a couple of weeks ago, everyone was scratching their heads and going, "Really?? Sesame Workshop approached American Apparel for a Sesame Street throwback T-shirt licensing deal?? Can you guess which one just doesn't belong here?" I...
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Busty Meccano Nanny & Pram By Andreas Konkoly

This won't be news to the readers of Pram Watch, the official blog of the Pram Museum, but to the few stragglers and delinquents among us, I say take note: "All nannies have a motherly bosom, and if you...
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Hair Gel Not Just For Babies Anymore

Just in case you're wondering which side of the "work a little product in, give it some texture" kid's hair trend you're on, I just got this announcement from Plush, a silly new collection of cool, handmade kids clothes...
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October 22, 2009

Parental Yelling Experts Declare Parental Yelling Crisis

I know this should be in the Friday Freakout, but hey. The New York Times reports that this generation of parents is yelling at their kids in unprecedented numbers. This, according to authors of books on parental yelling, actresses starring...
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Where The Weird Things Are: The Little Prince Movie

We are not big The Little Prince people. I'm sure we have a copy of the book around somewhere, in French, but we haven't read it to the kid. And I guess I read it myself at some point,...
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Splash Flash Not Included: Bernie Madoff's E320 Wagon Gets Auctioned Tomorrow!

Sick kids, White House stargazing, work, family, I know that I've been letting a lot get past me the last couple of weeks, and for the most part, I don't mind. But finding out that I have less than...
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October 21, 2009

K2: 'Listen A Ziggy. Listen A Ziggy, Pleeease.'

In anticipation of the FTC's assinine blog payola disclosure regulations which are scheduled to take effect at some point I can't be bothered to look up, and which really can kiss my blogging and occasional old-media-writing ass, because I came...
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Bugaboo's Not Just A Mountain Range In Canada, You Know

Bronson Pinchot's Random Roles interview with the AV Club, where all the questions are pretty much just stepping through his IMDb profile really is the best thing you'll read all day. And not just because he uses the word "bugaboo"...
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October 20, 2009

What's That, You Say? DT Comments Should Be Back

Over the weekend, the commenting system at DT crashed after several hundred people tried to weigh in simultaneously on the two-year-old subject of babies duct-taped to walls. I have no idea, either. Comments should be working again now, so...
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The Golden Girls

After her bath K2 came running down the hall, followed by my laughing, apologetic wife who said, "She picked it all out herself." "It" in this case was her big sister's flannel pajama top, way too big, with the collar...
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Show Me Your Monday Mommy Mailbags!

Monday Mommy Marketing Mailbag? Ha, I've still got tabs open for the Friday Freakout I missed. But it's not every day I get an email about an absolutely "New 'must-have' product for moms!" so I had to spring into action:...
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Moose And Zee, Can I Talk To You Outside For A Minute?

OK, I'm still trying to grapple with the fact that Noggin is now officially nick jr. So I'm not ready for the kid--who's home sick again with a fever, but who is NOT watching TV--to wander up and ask to...
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October 19, 2009

HAHAHA, NO. Babies Do Not Need Hair Gel

I've seen it, usually at church in the hinterlands, or at non-urban weddings. So I know what I'm talking about. Hair gel for babies. "Giving kids some cool style." Needing some "quick maintenance." No. Nada. Nunca. Niente: Great at...
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Where The Moody Emos Are

The kid and I just got back from Where The Wild Things Are. I'd spent the weekend shuttling her around to birthday parties, pinging her to see if she was, in fact, equipped to handle the film. [I knew she'd...
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LIFE Magazine Not Just For Photos Anymore

Sweet digitized Xanadu, Google has released the entire archive of LIFE Magazine--through 1972, anyway--online. It begins in 1936, and the fifth issue, Dec. 21, has this awesome pram photo with the surprisingly creepy caption, "Lord Beaverbrook's granddaughter and friend."...
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FTC Investigating Babies R Us For Widespread Baby Gear Pricefixing

From a report in the Baby Industrial Complex section of the Wall Street Journal--yes, it has its own section now, thanks, Rupert!--we learn that the Federal Trade Commission has opened an anti-trust investigation into price-fixing at Babies R Us. The...
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The Upper West Side School For Gifted And Talented TMBG Fans

So the NY Times has a writeup on the Speyer Legacy School, a new independent elementary school on the Upper West Side founded by "a group of high-powered mothers" who apparently wanted to take the whole Hollingworth Preschool@Columbia experience with...
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Yes, Please, Thanks: Lego Kitchen By Simon Pillard & Philippe Rosetti

Damn, but I love/hate the Internet. How a simple idea, beautifully executed, can race around the world in serendipitous hops and jumps, shedding facts and context along the way. I don't know who Philippe Simon and Pillard Rosetti or...
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October 18, 2009

The Man Who Changes Diapers In The Ladies Room Changes The World

With his invention of this revolutionary, printable warning sign, Andy from NonToxicReviews has written a glorious new chapter in the history of the involved dad rallying cry, "The man who changes diapers changes the world." Until he figures out...
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October 16, 2009

Was That Kid Riding In A Love'N'Care Pram When He Got Run Over By That Train?

So you've probably already seen this video from a CCTV camera in Melbourne, Australia of a stroller with a 6-month-old kid in it, heading right over the edge of the platform just as the train comes. So you know...
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Let The Studio-Sponsored Rumpus Start

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Wild Rumpus: Yahoo! Canada Photo Booth, originally uploaded by BunchFamily. If you're a movie publicist...
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It's Just A Planet

He drives my actual astrophysicist wife crazy, and rightly so, but I still can't help but feel a little thrill that this Carl Sagan video, with special guest star Stephen Hawking, composed by John Boswell, is K2's very first...
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And A Sky Tumbled By, With A Private Balloon For Falcon

Now I missed the Balloon Boy family's appearance on Larry King to explain how the whole thing--was just because the parents are freaking insane narcissists. Fortunately, a commenter on The Awl basically liveblogged the hilari-sad tale of how Falcon couldn't...
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October 15, 2009

Pay By The Stroller

One more reason to break out the sling. Or stay home, whichever. Tea Lounge to Breeders: Put your money where your Bugaboo Is [f***** in park slope, via curbed]...
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The Spike Jonze Maurice Sendak Movie I DEFINITELY Want To See

Wow, but the documentary Spike Jonze and Lance Bangs about Maurice Sendak sounds absolutely fantastic. Sounds like their hang-back style captures this cantankerous, complicated, sad, angry, sensitive old genius almost perfectly. As one commenter on the LA Times piece says,...
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Dads Across America Tonight Are Hugging Their Kids, Checking The Moorings On Their Experimental Helium Balloon Projects

I don't know about your cockamamie, gigantic, mylar balloon project, but mine is not in our backyard; it'll be in the Pantheon or the Grand Palais. Or outer space. Still, I made the kid promise me she wouldn't climb...
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MKT Rsch

Dadblogger/car guy Dave Thomas is reviewing the new Lincoln MKT for Cars.com and is looking for the dad's eye view of the thing. The MKT is a three-row, SUV-sized not-a-van/not-a-wagon that shares a platform--and a second-row fridge option--with the...
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What Is A Puppenhaus, Alek?

That one SoCal roadtrip when I tried out for Jeopardy!, I got dinged in the final round. And yet nearly twenty years later, here I am, filing the most random bits of information away in my head for no...
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October 14, 2009

No Dads Were Harmed In The Making Of These Babble Thinkpieces

I've had these nice Babble essays in my browser tabs now for over a week, and I've been looking for an excuse to mention them, even though they're so chicky. [Disclosure: I wrote a couple of things for Babble when...
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Conran Nursery At Heathrow Is New To Me, Anyway

When we were flying to Japan with the kid, we'd sometimes stop into the nursery in the Kansai airport. It was the sole pinprick of enjoyment in that desolate, soulless disaster of an airport. [Seriously, Renzo, W. T. F.?] It's...
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October 13, 2009

Don't Throw Rama From The Train

A 30-year old woman suddenly gave birth in the toilet on a train in northeast India, and the baby fell down the chute, out the trapdoor, and onto the tracks. So the mother raced out of the bathroom and jumped...
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From The Mixed Up Archives Of Mrs British D. Sign Council: Play Rocker Prototype By John Millns

No sooner is one vintage kids design mystery solved than another takes its place. The British Design Council has published its slide collection online, including this rather awesome-looking "child's rocking play fixture," which uses the same special, NASA-designed bend-into-shape...
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Holy Smokes, It's The Tyng Toy!

The Tyng Toy was created by the brilliant young architect Anne Tyng in the late 1940's. It's probably the least well known of toy from the Golden Age of postwar modernist kid's design, an era which also saw toys...
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Shanghai Tang Little Lantern Collection Parties Like It's 1997

Ah, thank you, publicists. The merest mention of Shanghai Tang takes me back to those grand old days of 1997. And I don't mean when the end of British rule over Hong Kong and the receding into the fashion...
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Random 1940s See-Saw Still Around, Mistaken For Antique

New Jersey auction house Rago Arts has a $1,000-2,000 estimate on this c. 1940s homemade ply & pine see-saw they're selling in a couple of weeks. Even if it does convert to "a stepping toy," when you flip it...
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October 12, 2009

Tibor Gergely X Lucy Sprague Mitchell Throwback Colabos

The awesomely named Tibor Gergely fled the Nazis for New York, where he illustrated one million Golden Books, plus the two Important Wartime Lesson stories the AFISA-Hollywood Animation Archive recently posted. They're just a taste of what's to come;...
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How Do Dinosaurs Market Their Industrial Products To Children?

What do GM Diesels do in 1955? When they thought selling just to Industry meant they'd always be alive? Did they make PR comic books in which they denigrate diesels in European cars? Whoops! Now it is too late! For...
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October 10, 2009

Ordering Off The Secret Menu: The Ikea Leopard High Chair

Double Double protein style, with well-done, animal style fries, please! The curator of the Pram Museum emailed the other day with news of a freaky high chair sighting at her local Ikea in Conshohocken, PA: curvy plastic base in...
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Let The Last Week Of PR Rumpus Start

From Newsweek's "exclusive" interview with Maurice Sendak, Spike Jonze, and Dave Eggers--who was on speaker: What do you say to parents who think the Wild Things film may be too scary? Sendak: I would tell them to go to hell....
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October 9, 2009

DT Friday Freakout

The moon is still here, and you didn't win the Nobel Peace Prize this year, but surely, there are still reports from the worlds of science and parenting to freak out about this weekend? Yes, and don't call me Shirley:...
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That'd Be The Wong-Baker FACES Pain Scale, Colbert

"His show is like the dramatization of a pain chart on a pediatrician's wall."- Stephen Colbert not giving Dr Donna Wong or Dr Carol Beck the credit they deserve while talking about Glenn Beck [who once advertised his special...
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HAHA, Gap Casting Call Turning Into Mall Mom Version Of Survivor

Given that they're all wearing all the same clothes from the same two stores, you'd think I'd have an easier time recognizing This Country Of Mine, America. A post about the Gap Casting Call on the popblog Bumpershine has become...
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October 8, 2009

Poo-ology Evolves Beyond 'More Bananas Or More Pears?'

In Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, the eunuchs study Pu Yi's poo every day to determine his diet. In The Madness of King George III, analysis of the king's stool was a key plot point. Speaking of, did you know...
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Inflatable Solar System Just Like The White House

So for the last few months, the wife has been working on a big astronomy event at the White House, which just went down tonight. [High five, baby, you pulled it off!] She had 150 middle school kids, a...
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October 7, 2009

Bend Over For The Camera, Prairie Dawn

Shameless hipster muppetwhoring: it's not just for Kermit anymore! From Hands In Orifices In The Workplace And Hey, Dov Charney! What's That Woman Doing Behind You? Journal comes this news: Sesame Street and American Apparel have teamed up to...
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Will Make Kid Work For Gift Card: Gap & Disney Launch Child Labor Contest

Gap Kids and Baby Gap have launched their 4th annual "casting call" in partnership with Disney Family.com to find the new faces for its February 2010 in-store ad campaign. What a perfect marketing campaign for the new depression: giant...
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October 6, 2009

My Grandfather's Clock, The Eerie Song On My Kid's Version Of My Fisher-Price Clock

Naturally, I had no idea as a kid, but as soon as one of those Fisher-Price Teaching Clocks crossed my grown-up path this weekend, I started wondering what that song was. I mean, if it's going to be my ringtone,...
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Hazawari

Hummus Pudding Whipped Cream Yogurt Mashed Potatoes A short list of the things K2 won't eat because, we're guessing, of their texture. Hazawari [ha=tooth, sawari=touch] was one of my first favorite Japanese words....
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October 5, 2009

Awesome In Theory: Fisher-Price Classic Toys

The Fisher-Price Teaching Clock I had as a kid is long gone, but the kid honed right in on Joel's yesterday at the flea market. She bought it for ten bucks. [I know, but I wasn't planning to teach...
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Fresco Fiamma Di Bloom: Un Seggiolone Rosso Molto Fantastico

I know that since the rather spectacular limited edition, red-enameled Fresco Fiamma high chair was introduced like three weeks ago at ABC Kids in Las Vegas, I'm a bit late to the Bloom game. To make up for it,...
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DT Monday Mommy Mailbag

Hey Ladies, I know you're all broken up over the loss of Cookie, but don't worry, there are still plenty of fabulous must-have blah blah blahs for you to buy!Hi Greg, Being pregnant doesn't have to mean putting your fitness...
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WHOA, That's The Way The Gourmet, Cookie Crumble

When you pay McKinsey to tell you to jump, you also pay to tell you how high. And by jump, I actually mean, push someone off the cliff. In the face of an advertising depression Conde Nast just announced they...
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October 4, 2009

Like-A-Segway: Gyrowheel By Gyrobike

The old way to teach a kid to ride a bike was training wheels, of course, and the new OG way was on a pedal-less walking bike like a Like-A-Bike or one of its many knockoff/competitors. Now there's a...
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DT Found It: 'Sculptures For Children,' By Frances Weiss

Last fall, I'd wondered aloud who the unidentified artist was in Life Magazine's 1951-52 photos of some surreal sculptural playground equipment. All I could figure out was that some of the Jan. 1952 pictures were taken at Tibor de...
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October 2, 2009

DT Friday Freakout: Unfit Mothers Edition

Sometimes it can be really hard to sit on some of these newly released studies all week and not freak out about them. But this way, it only ruins the weekend: The BBC's headline which took a new Institute of...
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Pet Shop Boys Babies Are Fackin' Fine, Thanks, And YouTubing

Welcome to another in Daddy Types' ongoing series of reports on how babies in music videos turned out: We have it from unassailably authoritative sources [*cough* YouTube comments] that at least three of the nine rent-a-babies the Pet Shop...
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Bugaboo(RED) Launc(HED) Orde(RED) Ship(PED)

I'm so confu(SED). All this time I thought it was Bugaboo(RED), but now that the whole thing's actually launched, and these limited edition strollers and diaper bags are for actual sale, I find out that it's (BUGABOO)RED, which is...
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October 1, 2009

Huge Private Dicks Offer 'Covert Pregnancy Testing'

TPM Muckraker has some wacked out story about a freaky private army run by an ex-con in the OC which got a 10-year contract to run an empty prison in some podunk Montana town. Among the company, American Police...
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Big Birther

Why don't the liberal communists at PBS want American children to see this footage? Are they too busy cutting licensing deals with diaper manufacturers? Don't want to rock the boatload of money they're making from forcing Tickle Me Abby Cadabby...
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Apparently, Jogging With A Stroller Is Different

I'm no jogger, so really, I have no idea, but the NY Times' collection of facts and tips for adjusting your technique, expectations, and strategy when you run with a stroller sure seems handy. Still, doesn't everyone just do whatever...
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'Good Work, Sycophants'

With this Mad Men segment where Muppets sit around a boardroom and discuss advertising, Sesame Street has finally come full circle: The Children's Television Workshop's original 1968 pitch reel included an ongoing gag with a bunch of Muppet admen sitting...
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Dutch Plywood Awesomeness By Gerrit Van Bakel

Whether it was the name of his collection or it's just Dutch for "plywood furniture," Gerrit van Bakel's "meubel multiplex" phase lasted from 1966 until the around 1981. During that time, the artist cranked out nearly 80 different rounded-edge...
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