January 15, 2009
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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Posted by greg at
10:05 AM
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Comments (7)
December 18, 2008
Dr. Moz began helping out the new dads with a humorous-yet-informative [? informative-yet-humorous?] DVD, The Goodfather. Now the cinematic allusions and dad-affirmation have made the jump to hyperspace as it were, with the Stork Tools collection of diaper bags....
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Posted by greg at
11:48 AM
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Comments (1)
December 10, 2008
These are Norwegian Lice Body Sweaters from Ugly Children's Clothing, an Oslo company started by three guys who, when the kids arrived, discovered that "Even though approximately one half of the babies in the world are boys, it seems...
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Posted by greg at
6:50 AM
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Comments (3)
December 1, 2008
Two Blue Cars is a Brooklyn outfit that makes awesome t-shirts for boys, like this Onesie-style [1] bodysuit with an Aibo-style [2] robot dog on it. Too bad there's nothing for girls, but gender coding runs deep, even in...
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Posted by greg at
8:35 AM
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Comments (5)
September 28, 2008
So the kid and I went to Crafty Bastards after church today. We were overdressed and underinked. Still, we got to meet Spooky Daddy in person, which was awesome. He was working the puppetmaster thing pretty spectacularly, and it...
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Posted by greg at
9:18 PM
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Comments (0)
September 22, 2008
You know, I was just wondering to myself the last few weeks, "Where are those Kid O toys I was promised would be hitting the market soon?" And here they are. Wow. Educational clarity and simplicity of design that...
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Posted by greg at
11:29 PM
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Comments (1)
August 15, 2008
Darren Andes' Baby Tracker: Nursing is a tap-friendly iPhone app that allows moms to log their breastfeeding activity, whether it's to keep track of how much and how long the kid's eating, or just to remember which side the...
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Posted by greg at
5:44 PM
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Comments (5)
August 14, 2008
Having successfully branched out beyond diaper bags into the baby-related countertop accessory and playroom floormat markets, Skip*Hop has launched a soft, fuzzy toy collection. There are 14 pieces, optimally sized for the floor, the babyhand, and the stroller bracket....
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Posted by greg at
3:59 PM
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Comments (1)
August 13, 2008
See? Not everyone riffing on Sanjay Patel's awesome little Little India Hindu deities is knocking them off. Plush artist Leeanna Butcher went to art school with Patel, and he recently asked her to create this plush incarnation of Kali,...
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Posted by greg at
5:21 PM
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Comments (2)
July 21, 2008
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Brahma, Kali, Ganesha, originally uploaded by daddytypes. So we were driving around Salt Lake City...
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Posted by greg at
11:43 PM
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Comments (4)
July 15, 2008
The nursery in a fastidiously restored, mid-century modernist California tract home. It's the space that launched a thousand trips to Ikea. CA Modern magazine has a story about how kids are not actually incompatible with your Eichler house's modernist lifestyle....
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Posted by greg at
8:44 AM
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Comments (3)
July 14, 2008
When I first saw this plywood play kitchen at Mary-Branche, a Japanese online kids&moms boutique, I thought it was nice and simple. If a little chunky, what'd they do, double up the plywood? Wow, check out the smooth finish,...
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Posted by greg at
8:14 AM
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Comments (1)
July 2, 2008
It's a familiar story by now, actually like five familiar stories: Parents objecting to the Wal-Martification of American culture: clothing's either racy and inappropriate or loaded down with characters owned by giant corporations. Plus, it's all made in giant factories...
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Posted by greg at
6:25 AM
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Comments (8)
July 1, 2008
You know, it seems not enough to just say, "There can be downsides to blogging about your kid." The WSJ's parentblogger Cybele was specifically worried about what happens when they post pictures of their kid on flickr [though apparently not...
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Posted by greg at
11:31 PM
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Comments (10)
June 10, 2008
Through some unexplained miracle of strap technology, the ingenious Baby Butler enables you to free up a hand while you're giving the kid a bottle. With that free hand, you can do anything you like, say, read a children's...
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Posted by greg at
10:27 AM
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Comments (6)
June 5, 2008
Do we need to lay it out on a timeline for you? Because I haven't seen so many people inventing the exact same unique toy since, since--well, I guess those plush people do it all the time. BUT STILL!...
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Posted by greg at
11:55 PM
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Comments (5)
May 15, 2008
Even though the company was only founded a couple of years ago, I've been a fan of Via Toy Box's modular plywood storage cubes since the 1940's. They make a great version of a classic, flexible, and modern solution for...
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Posted by greg at
11:19 AM
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Comments (1)
May 13, 2008
Tough call. The Tummy Shield was designed by an Australian dad, who spent years coming up with a way to prevent injuries to a fetus in the event a pregnant woman is in a car crash. An injury like the...
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Posted by greg at
11:26 PM
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Comments (6)
May 8, 2008
DT reader Jason spotted this article in the LA Times today. Apparently, there's a mom in town who taught herself woodworking so she could make her own modernist-style furniture for her kids' rooms. So she built some prototypes for family...
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Posted by greg at
2:52 PM
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Comments (5)
May 2, 2008
I.D. Magazine just published a little Q&A with Kid O founder Lisa Mahar, who talks about the ideas, design, and production of the new Kid O Toys collection. Mahar sounds like they're doing things very right, and not just...
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Posted by greg at
12:07 AM
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Comments (0)
May 1, 2008
At the end of the day, none of us has that much control over when we become famous; Jim's awesome photos of the Detroit Public Schools Book Depository were like the 4,711th thing in his flickr stream when they...
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Posted by greg at
10:47 AM
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Comments (0)
April 26, 2008
Wow, how in the world did a dad ever come up with the idea of peeing in a bottle when you're on the road? If only the My Pee Pee Bottle weren't made of BPA-laden polycarbonate, it'd be damn...
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Posted by greg at
4:19 PM
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Comments (7)
April 23, 2008
Here's a nice report from a dad and satisfied Boon customer:We've had a Boon Flair high chair for a few months now, which we really like. A couple weeks ago one of the male clips on the harness broke. I...
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Posted by greg at
10:09 AM
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Comments (0)
March 6, 2008
Wal-Mart's got another set of modern-style nursery furniture. The first Modern Nursery collection they stocked from BabyMod wasn't really modern; the manufacturer, Million Dollar Baby [which also makes Da Vinci furniture], just went for a a Netto-in-a-fog look by...
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Posted by greg at
10:11 AM
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Comments (8)
February 22, 2008
I know it looks like just a cardboard box with a jacked up Homeland Security Threat Level sticker on the side, but the Operation Checkpoint Scan-It toy security X-ray machine is much more. It has some little beeping thing...
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Posted by greg at
11:45 PM
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Comments (3)
Gosh, how much I love Kidscreen, the trade magazine of the children's television industry [tagline: "About reaching children through entertainment"]? I'd love it even if my boys from Yo Gabba Gabba! weren't on the cover [:)] of the big, fat...
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Posted by greg at
10:30 AM
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Comments (1)
February 21, 2008
Well, there's one thing I regret about not going to the Toy Fair: I missed the public debut of Kid O's new toy collection. Since first catching wind of it last summer, I've been stoked, waiting to see these...
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Posted by greg at
2:38 PM
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Comments (1)
February 7, 2008
The boardbook comes down from the Hushamok tribe, In the big game I call, "Pitch it to me." The PRs, it's said, try to get in my head, And since I find the press kits quite gloomy... I was gonna...
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Posted by greg at
3:01 PM
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Comments (2)
January 31, 2008
[via] Seriously, it's freaking me out right now how awesome Spooky Daddy's plush toys and creatures and whatevers are. Actually, thanks to his awesome Flickr photostream, it's been gnawing at me for months now, like a plush Prometheus getting...
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Posted by greg at
12:53 AM
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Comments (3)
December 31, 2007
During a regular check of the website for Danish auction house Bruun-Rasmussen, I came across this old hyper-convertible bed called the Juno Bed [ends 8 Jan., est EUR405]. Ever heard of it? I hadn't, though the creators of Denmark's...
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Posted by greg at
4:20 PM
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Comments (3)
December 19, 2007
Mike Schneider, a self-proclaimed dadblogging media whore [he writes for Variety] and huge Yo Gabba Gabba! fan, reports that the show has been picked up for a second, full season. The 20 new episodes are already in pre-production.For season two,...
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Posted by greg at
1:18 PM
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Comments (4)
December 7, 2007
Not content to just watch the kid's design world and report as it goes by, the folks at Kidsmodern have begun designing products. First up: the Napfnapf, a set of double-sided silicone suction cups you can carry in your...
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Posted by greg at
8:26 AM
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Comments (4)
December 6, 2007
I've been a fan of animation artist Sanjay Patel's take on Hindu's greatest deities and heroes since he first published his book, Little India, in 2005. [The book was greatly expanded last year and published by Penguin as The...
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Posted by greg at
4:13 PM
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Comments (2)
November 18, 2007
Just as they once ruled the seas, the British once led the world in the development of the cardboard playspace race. The date was 1969, and while the US was fiddling around with some moon landing or another, the...
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Posted by greg at
12:20 PM
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Comments (1)
November 16, 2007
Dear SkateLab Furniture publicists, Thanks for your email. But if this is another one of those "world's leading designer of copper-and-slate fountains sells his company to raise his daughter Ava, but can't get the design bug out of his...
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Posted by greg at
9:32 AM
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Comments (3)
October 19, 2007
This is so great. Joel created it for his daughter Isabella. Though I could get nitpicky about why G is for Gehry when K is for Konstantin, the truth is, I don't know how to pronounce Grcic, either. And...
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Posted by greg at
2:44 PM
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Comments (4)
See, was that so hard? Kiersten at Mod Mom Furniture is making kid furniture in her garage again, furniture that's even based on her own designs. And it's not bad at all. As before, you can buy with confidence,...
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Posted by greg at
11:10 AM
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Comments (11)
October 18, 2007
In that Petaluma post this morning, DT reader Cookie [who, AFAIK, is not the pudgy-baby-hating Cookie] suggested that sweet hardwood castle set might come from a German company called Holzkram. It didn't, but just get a load of Holzkram's...
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Posted by greg at
5:55 PM
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Comments (2)
October 11, 2007
The BabyDeck is a changing station built into a stroller seat. It folds out like a La-Z-Boy footrest [actually, it folds out like the footrest on a Delta Business Elite seat, which is the opposite direction from a La-Z-Boy.]...
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Posted by greg at
9:28 AM
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Comments (3)
October 8, 2007
See-through Predator from robertogreco on Vimeo. Bwahaha, medical ethics and bodily integrity implications aside, this is awesome. See-Through Predator is a wolf whose teeth were removed so he wouldn't bite his prey, and whose stomach was replaced with a...
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Posted by greg at
9:07 AM
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Comments (2)
October 3, 2007
Swiss awesome-maker Momoll has introduced a set of doll house furniture. You could use it with a Momoll slot-together doll house or their plexiglass tower of cool [shown here], or you could just use it to mod up whatever...
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Posted by greg at
7:40 AM
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Comments (0)
October 1, 2007
Seems like we missed the Crafty Bastards Craft Fair down in DC yesterday. For a second, I thought I should be bummed, but then I realized there are about 10,000 edgy craft fairs popping up all over the country...
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Posted by greg at
1:27 PM
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Comments (1)
September 22, 2007
Another nice example of artist dads making stuff for their kids: John Setzen created "The Alphabet for Jack" for his and his wife Mindy's son-on-the-way. Setzen's innocently styled drawings are familiar to his fellow Brooklynians from the band posters...
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Posted by greg at
12:47 PM
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Comments (0)
September 20, 2007
Yo Gabba Gabba! definitely wants to be invited to the Christmas party in your wallet. Kid Robot, the vinyl toy subsidiary of YGG! production company WildBrain just announced to retailers that Yo Gabba Gabba vinyl and plush dolls will...
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Posted by greg at
4:54 PM
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Comments (12)
September 13, 2007
I've been watching Westwood Design's new Pacific nursery collection for a long time now, and so I'm bummed to have missed its debut at this year's ABC Kids Expo. The Pacific is quite a bold design move for Westwood,...
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Posted by greg at
11:24 PM
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Comments (7)
September 11, 2007
DT reader Tania was stoked to find some Nature Babycare diapers from Sweden at her local Target recently. Why? Because they're "100% Biodegradable!" Finally!Nature Baby Care claims their disposable diapers are biodegradable as well as their wipes and entire line...
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Posted by greg at
8:52 AM
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Comments (23)
August 16, 2007
The NY Times has a big feature today on "the new breed of involved dads" whose unique childraising perspective drives them to invent new and exciting products. And whose very existence still seems to require a lot of incredulous data...
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Posted by greg at
8:27 AM
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Comments (3)
July 16, 2007
According to Bobux's own history, which started in 1991, Robeez copied them. [Robeez' history, which begins in 1994, is silent on the subject.] And according to like half a dozen other companies, including scrappy little underdogs like Target, the...
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Posted by greg at
4:41 PM
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Comments (1)
July 11, 2007
Time was when, if you wanted to make a me-too version of whatever TV show is popular right now, you needed a massive studio infrastructure staffed with hundreds of people, including a suiteful of development execs who'd pay their...
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Posted by greg at
11:11 AM
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Comments (18)
July 8, 2007
Wow, a recall at one of the mini majors of the indie baby gear market. A recent batch of Oeuf Hang-Out Baby Loungers have been recalled by the company and CPSC after six reports of the tubular steel frame failing....
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Posted by greg at
11:33 PM
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Comments (10)
May 20, 2007
The online galleries are starting to fill up with design eye candy from the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in NYC this weekend. There are a few baby- and kid-related snaps in NotCot's first upload: At first I was distracted by...
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Posted by greg at
6:02 PM
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Comments (2)
May 1, 2007
OK, last things first: Ugly Dolls is now being moved to the Parent Company category with the news that David Horvath and Sun Min Kim are expecting a baby girl, apparently just in time to muck up their schedule for...
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Posted by greg at
11:11 AM
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Comments (1)
April 25, 2007
Are you looking for a cradle which "will return stylish shine to motherhood"? An "outraged piece of equipment in a market that is ruled by lack of imagination"? A "gift for women that are so choosy about picking the...
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Posted by greg at
11:22 PM
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Comments (1)
April 18, 2007
So when the Chinese make images of pandas and spaceships, it's propaganda, but what is it when Americans do it? That's easy: it's so cuuute I could just gobble them all up. The kid's aunt just sent her this...
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Posted by greg at
8:35 AM
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Comments (5)
April 17, 2007
Mr. McGroovy is dad and an art teacher-turned-entrepreneur, the success of who's main product, Mr. McGroovy's Box Rivets, is almost entirely dependent on getting more parents to make more play-related structures for their kids out of large cardboard boxes. On...
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Posted by greg at
2:06 PM
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Comments (4)
April 16, 2007
bObles is Danish children's gear company founded by two sisters with an interest in spurring children's motor skills development and, judging by the picture below, at least, in teasing US product liability lawyers with their model's demonstrations of actual...
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Posted by greg at
9:13 AM
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Comments (0)
April 9, 2007
Cool Hunting just posted a video visit to the studio of Salvor designer Ross Menuez. Turns out the company's named after his daughter and muse [well, her middle name, anyway. It's Icelandic.] When it came out a couple of...
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Posted by greg at
5:06 PM
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Comments (1)
April 6, 2007
I'll search for very specific things, but I don't have the patience to wade through the tacky schlock that clutters the baby clothes listings on etsy. Most of it's either the ruffly, ric-racked stuff of school gym craft fairs...
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Posted by greg at
12:11 PM
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Comments (2)
March 29, 2007
Yow, it's like the sweet bamboo crib market is growing by a foot a day. Kalon Studios is Michaele Simmering and Johannes Pauwen, a mom-dad team based in Los Angeles and Berlin [and I thought our NY-DC commute was...
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Posted by greg at
10:58 AM
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Comments (0)
Time was when all a man could do was lament the shortage of sweet, modernist bamboo crib options. Then when his years-long wish is finally fulfilled, what's he do? I feel like that guy in the Shawshank Redemption, the...
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Posted by greg at
7:35 AM
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Comments (0)
March 1, 2007
Matthew Cruickshank cited the Boston-based character design firm Studio Espinosa as one of the inspirations for his Neo-Mickey animation. Espinosa is run by a husband-wife team who are just beginning to see their wealth of ideas realized. They have a...
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Posted by greg at
7:38 AM
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Comments (0)
February 13, 2007
There are a couple of solutions for making electrical outlets safer for mobile kids. Especially when bite-sized outlet covers can be nearly as hazardous as the sockets themselves. In DC, the real electrical outlet threat is in the living room,...
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Posted by greg at
6:52 PM
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Comments (12)
February 2, 2007
Who knew we were living in the midst of an at-home-dad-driven renaissance in baby tracking technology? While the Baby Industrial Complex was introducing such literally archaic devices as the Mom Abacus as recently as 2004, dadovators like Ben MacNeil and...
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Posted by greg at
12:46 PM
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Comments (12)
February 1, 2007
We all know that when graphic designers have a kid, they start cute little Onesie companies. And guys who didn't like their pre-kid jobs start My Big Invention product companies. But what kind of parent company do dancer/DJ's start? Baby...
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Posted by greg at
8:22 AM
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Comments (1)
January 31, 2007
Two's a trend. How long are we going to shuffle along, distracted by their cute organicity, as little robot-decorated one-pieces infiltrate our society, our nurseries, our diaper bags, where they just lie in wait? Waiting to hit the switch--click--and...
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Posted by greg at
8:20 AM
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Comments (1)
January 6, 2007
Andy emailed this a few days ago, and it is absolutely the most insanely awesome toy/furniture I have seen all year. Momoll is the creation of Nico Schweizer, a dad who was previously design director for I.D. [not i.D.]...
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Posted by greg at
1:39 PM
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Comments (2)
November 21, 2006
All I can figure is that someone from the crib bumper industrial complex must have deleted my email announcement from someone in the sleepsack industrial complex. Anyway, kid sleeps, rests, and hangs on his back. No loose or puffy bedding....
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Posted by greg at
11:56 AM
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Comments (2)
November 9, 2006
It's a classic story: new parents with a design sense can't find clothes they'd actually like to put on their kid, so they start designing stuff themselves. Fadiddle is a line of kid- and baby-clothes that somehow manage to...
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Posted by greg at
6:12 PM
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Comments (1)
October 17, 2006
Harry's got Ooba co-founder and designer Scott Wilson on the line, and Wilson waxes eloquent about his process and his inspiration [for Ooba, unsurprisingly, it's his own daughter. One money quote: "My goal was to create objects that bring the...
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Posted by greg at
9:59 AM
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Comments (0)
September 28, 2006
Lilli Bule is a really cool-looking [and judging from their press clippings, very plugged in] children's clothing store in BFParis [the 11th] that specializes in independent designers and limited-run and unique clothes. It's also a blog, a blog with the...
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Posted by greg at
10:29 AM
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Comments (1)
Balouga is a new, sweet-looking gallery of children's design, from the small to the major, which just got added to my shortlist for our next visit to Paris. I mean, just look at that wall of chairs hanging there,...
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Posted by greg at
12:08 AM
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Comments (3)
September 26, 2006
I naively went to ABC Kids Expo execting to stumble across row after row of baby gear innovations. But when I got there, all anyone could talk about was The Zaky. These plush toys that attach to your kid's...
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Posted by greg at
1:57 PM
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Comments (2)
September 24, 2006
I hear from the hemp folks that cotton is an extremely resource-intensive crop to grow. Organic cotton's better, I'm sure, but I really have no idea. It's all angels on the head of a pin to me, the guy who...
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Posted by greg at
11:01 PM
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Comments (10)
September 19, 2006
No secret, actually, it makes sense as soon as you see it. The Burp Catcher is a burping cloth with a folded pocket on the bottom, which catches burps. Now you can get all Beavis & Butthead about it...
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Posted by greg at
10:00 AM
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Comments (3)
September 1, 2006
You know Little India, that cute little book of Hindu mythology book that dad/animator Sanjay Patel published last year, that I mentioned again yesterday? DT reader JJ Daddy-o clicked through, only to find that it's no longer available. [The...
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Posted by greg at
5:29 PM
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Comments (2)
August 31, 2006
In case you can't tell, I'm really digging on parents who are making stuff for their kids. There's been a spate of flashcards recently, but it goes way back, like to that awesome Hindu gods primer, too, by the...
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Posted by greg at
3:14 PM
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Comments (2)
August 30, 2006
In the remarkable new film Half Nelson, Ryan Gosling stars as Dan Dunne, an idealistic history teacher in Brooklyn who might have more luck finishing that children's book on Hegelian dialectics if he wasn't spending all his free time passed...
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Posted by greg at
10:15 AM
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Comments (2)
August 23, 2006
Alphabet flashcards are the new American Apparel t-shirts, the medium of choice for indie-designed baby stuff. Check out artist Tiffany Ard's nerd baby alphabet cards, for example. Ard has a lyrical, watercolor-y style that no doubt keeps her busy...
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Posted by greg at
9:17 AM
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Comments (1)
August 21, 2006
Gregg Chinn made these sweet modernist alphabet cards for his daughter, who's three. Now that he's proved their effectiveness at instilling alphabetical and modernistical knowledge ["B is for Bauhaus," "J is for Jet Age," "M is for (duh) Modern,"...
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Posted by greg at
6:11 PM
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Comments (3)
August 17, 2006
In an earlier phase of my fatherhood experience, I might have taken issue with Mommysential's decision to market the Babykeeper solely to moms [or more specifically, to "mom(s) on the go... (WHO HAVE) GOTTA GO!"]. Dads' gotta go, too, don't...
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Posted by greg at
5:07 PM
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Comments (4)
August 14, 2006
In a welcome break from the purse and messenger bag paradigms, the O Yikes! slingback diaper bag is cross-strapped backpack, just like the one you bought when you were launching your DJ career back in your Williamsburg days. Now...
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Posted by greg at
4:04 PM
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Comments (0)
August 11, 2006
The Bubble New York show popped a couple of days ago, but I still have some spotlights left to shine on some of the standout exhibitors. One definitely goes on Zid Zid, a two-year-old or so label based in the...
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Posted by greg at
5:13 PM
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Comments (0)
Sugar, Peanuts, Television, Dairy, even Mercury I can totally see. But I can think of an easy dozen t-shirt slogans I would've released before "X-Box Free Kid." Any suggestions? Also, shouldn't these be in Spanish? Update: best quote from...
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Posted by greg at
2:57 PM
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Comments (2)
August 8, 2006
More news from the Bubble. Actually, tuss stands for 'the ultimate simple solution,' an English acronym for a Swedish company. Call it what you want, it works. Tuss was started [say it with me] two years ago in Stockholm...
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Posted by greg at
9:05 AM
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Comments (1)
August 2, 2006
The NY Times has discovered fresh and fresh-frozen organic baby food, and it turns out there are now East Coast-West Coast rivalries a-brewing that could dwarf the LA Bo-Baby/Ho-Baby tussle. Brooklyn-based Happy Baby makes fresh-frozen quinoa [it's KIN-wah, I learned...
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Posted by greg at
11:58 PM
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Comments (4)
July 15, 2006
Even though Dutch designer/mom Maartje Steenkamp created a high chair I love--which is now on sale in the US, btw, who knew?--I kind of boycotted writing anything about her other cool children's furniture design just because the name bugged:...
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Posted by greg at
9:23 PM
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Comments (2)
July 13, 2006
When some Miami-raised Cubanos met up in Nashville--que paso with that?--and realized there was a serious shortage of cool, latin-inflected baby clothing, they decided to do something about it. The result: Los Pollitos Dicen, named after the first line of...
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Posted by greg at
8:42 PM
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Comments (2)
July 6, 2006
On Mister Rogers yesterday, the kid and I watched McFeeley make a visit to a children's shoe factory. I quickly picked up on the narration, "Shoes of made out of a material," and "Here, she cuts that material..." Of course,...
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Posted by greg at
10:34 AM
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Comments (1)
July 5, 2006
They grow up so fast. Ismodern was one of the first parent companies I came across after starting daddytypes, and back in the day, their only product was minimalist silk baby blankets. Since then, they've added a whole range...
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Posted by greg at
2:21 PM
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Comments (0)
July 2, 2006
in today's NY Times Magazine, Rob Walker cites Heidi Kinney's homebrewed toy business and the emerging craft/DIY movement--My Paper Crane, home of such plush toys as toilet paper rolls, used tissues, and tampons--as an historic attempt to build "an alternative...
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Posted by greg at
4:00 PM
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Comments (0)
June 26, 2006
Will and Laura Wear wanted to create design for kids that was both modern and whimsical, cool and environmentally sustainable, and that can be easily recycled [although they'd just as soon you keep the stuff through college.] For their...
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Posted by greg at
5:24 PM
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Comments (1)
You remember how, first they had a king, and then we had to have a king? And how they obsess over David Beckham, and then we obsess over David Beckham? And how they think Bean is funny, and so we--OK,...
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Posted by greg at
2:50 PM
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Comments (1)
ex-Disney CEO Michael Eisner's investment company just announced it has acquired Team Baby Entertainment, which makes college sports-themed educational [sic] DVD's for infants and toddlers. Among the officially licensed videos in the series so far:Baby Irish (Notre Dame), Baby...
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Posted by greg at
11:37 AM
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Comments (7)
May 22, 2006
In fair Brentwood where we lay our scene... &c. &c. As I predicted last fall, this West Side of LA Story about duelling organic baby food delivery services founded by two sets of parents is only intensifying. The two companies--Bohemian...
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Posted by greg at
9:57 PM
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Comments (1)
May 17, 2006
Three's a trend, folks, so watch for this story to show up soon on the evening news. While the more industrial parts of the Baby Industrial Complex are busy fatcatting around a golf course somewhere, stuffing stock options into their...
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Posted by greg at
7:20 AM
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Comments (2)
May 11, 2006
The little frog has grown into a great big prince of a baby gear company. the parent-company Boon showed up at JPMA last year with a single product, the Frog Pod, which scooped up the Innovation Award. This year,...
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Posted by greg at
3:58 PM
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Comments (7)
April 3, 2006
"For little humans." Actually, the parent company's website says it's "for moms, babies and kids," so I guess I shouldn't even be discussing it because all that organic, pesticide-free, sustainable, low-impact save the earth for future generations crap is for...
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Posted by greg at
10:31 PM
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Comments (0)
April 1, 2006
You may know him best from his work with such bands as Cattle Decapitation and Vegitation, and with the now-legendary 2002 Oops! The Tour, sort of a return to the days when Lollapalooza was real, before they totally sold it...
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Posted by greg at
11:01 AM
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Comments (1)
March 13, 2006
So a skater dad of three in Portland, Jared, wants to help his shorties--and yours--represent, and he launches Pimpfants, a collection of righteous-looking streetwear that doesn't have ducks or bears on it, and the big Corporate Types at AOL/Blogging Baby...
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Posted by greg at
3:34 PM
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Comments (8)
March 11, 2006
Ben Macneill's geek-heavenly Trixie Update was a formative introduction to impending fatherhood for me. Not only did Ben transform the daunting, inscrutable cycles of a newborn's food, sleep, and poo into funny, startle-your-friends! charts and graphs, but he actually teased...
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Posted by greg at
12:00 PM
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Comments (0)
March 10, 2006
Michael and Sophie are really doing a great job with Oeuf, I think; it was right after the kid was born that they showed up in quick succession with a sweet-looking bouncy chair, some cool duds, and then the Oeuf...
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Posted by greg at
5:43 PM
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Comments (1)
February 17, 2006
I'm sure you know the boilerplate deal by now: for the first nine months, the man is off the hook while the woman hauls the baby around. In exchange for this--and for pushing the kid out or having her bikini...
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Posted by greg at
4:57 PM
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Comments (3)
January 27, 2006
Here's a report from MSNBC: Marc Anthony "was at Fred Segal [on Melrose Ave. in Los Angeles] last week and bought a Guys Infant Gear diaper bag for $120. He said something that made it pretty clear that it wasn’Äôt...
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Posted by greg at
3:50 PM
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Comments (0)
January 7, 2006
When I first saw the ooba bassinet in the newest issue of Dwell [where it's one of the few surprises in their modernist kids furniture roundup], the website was still just one big "coming soon!" page. Well, a few...
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Posted by greg at
9:17 PM
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Comments (6)
January 6, 2006
For the first year or so, when a pacifier gets dirty, you boil pacifiers or throw them in the dishwasher. Then at some point, you will find yourself out and about with only one pacifier between you and a melted...
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Posted by greg at
3:28 PM
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Comments (1)
January 2, 2006
Looks like the cutey cute charm, wash-n-wipeable convenience, and ironlike durability of Mally Bibs, Canada's leading brand of leather bibs, has won over at least some of the crew at Blogging Baby. Today some may look askance at babies who...
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Posted by greg at
8:25 PM
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Comments (3)
December 6, 2005
Not content merely with domination of the world market for cartoon-cute elastic booties, Canada's Baby Leather Industrial Complex is now expanding into bibs. Mally Bibs are made by a multinational leather bib megacorporation which goes by the name Nicole Garza...
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Posted by greg at
3:13 PM
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Comments (9)
November 30, 2005
RIP Stan Berenstain, although with a reported 260 million books in print, your throwback gender-stereotyped, put-upon, begrudgingly disinterested papa bear will live on for quite a while. Stan Berenstain Dies; Co-Creator of Books On Berenstain Bears [washpost]...
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Posted by greg at
2:54 PM
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Comments (5)
November 27, 2005
Mention the vast Australian outback to an American, and two things come immediately to mind: "Bloomin' Onion," and "helluva place to toss a lot of disposable diapers." Oddly enough, Australians themselves don't see it that way, because there's been honest-to-goodness...
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Posted by greg at
11:37 PM
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Comments (32)
October 10, 2005
The Walk-O-Long was invented by a dad whose daughter started to walk right after he had back surgery. Seems her arms were shorter than the average gibbon (aka human-length), and holding her hands meant bending over in a way that...
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Posted by greg at
6:02 PM
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Comments (3)
September 26, 2005
In the whirlwind logistics of getting out of the house in the morning, disaster strikes: Duckies, Bobo, and Pillow don't make the trip. But is it Jason's fault? [hint: if you find yourself quoting George Bush in your explanation...
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Posted by greg at
7:54 AM
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Comments (4)
August 31, 2005
DT readers should recognize this kind of article. Knight Ridder reported last month that a lot of the modernist designs appearing in the kid's furniture market these days are being driven by designer/parents who are fed up with the same...
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Posted by greg at
9:09 PM
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Comments (2)
August 30, 2005
Use some of the fortune you saved on the Donald Judd changing table to outfit the rest of your kid's nursery--and your whole house, actually--at ModernTots, a new Brooklyn-based online store and design studio that features some familiar Argington and...
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Posted by greg at
10:39 PM
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Comments (10)
August 24, 2005
While the DOC Band of plagiocephalic fame looks awesome [AND serves a legitimate, even crucial purpose AND is decorateable] the ThudGuard helmet is none of these things, far from it. Invented by a Scottish mom "to help absorb and reduce...
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Posted by greg at
4:54 AM
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Comments (20)
May 19, 2005
Every once in a while, I wonder if I shouldn't subscribe to Daily Candy--purely for research purposes, you understand. What if I missed something really good? I should relax. Because when something good like, say, chenille-rimmed sungoggles built into a...
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Posted by greg at
10:07 AM
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Comments (4)
April 6, 2005
We were just talking last week about all the crap and gear you have to take with you when you go out with a kid. [Actually, I was kind of ragging on people I saw on the street who'd stuffed...
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Posted by greg at
8:09 PM
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Comments (9)
April 3, 2005
He calls it Citizen Manufacturing. Patrick, a stay-at-home dad has dreamed about making a Pez MP3 player for so long, he finally headed down to his basement workshop to figure it out. Now he's got a licensing deal with Pez,...
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Posted by greg at
10:36 PM
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Comments (0)
March 31, 2005
The New York Times reports on how the baby market's best design and innovation is coming from parent companies. There are a few brands--Oeuf and Argington, for example--that have been on DT already. One surprise (to me, anyway): Baby Gear...
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Posted by greg at
11:24 AM
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Comments (2)
March 30, 2005
There's a lot here I plan to write about soon, plus some stuff I've been meaning to write about for a while. Thought I'd get the links out there in the mean time: cool kid design Modern Child [that's www.modernchild.net,...
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Posted by greg at
10:18 AM
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Comments (2)
March 14, 2005
According to the t-shirt, Generation Z is defined as "n. 1. Offspring of Generation X and Y. 2. A group of individuals born after 2000 to 2025. 3. The most adapted and connected generation to recognize, reinvent and rule." OK......
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Posted by greg at
9:11 PM
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Comments (6)
March 8, 2005
Peep is a collection of solidly made modernist kids furniture "for hip toddlers and their cool parents" from Kapow Design, an Oregon-based fine woodworking concern. Although it looks like it could pack flat and knock together pretty easily, Kapow...
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Posted by greg at
9:58 AM
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Comments (6)
March 6, 2005
Right before we went to Holland, a couple of people sent in the Babylon High Chair, which is a very nice find. It's got a solid, very spare design which allows the kid to eat at the table, not in...
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Posted by greg at
10:39 AM
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Comments (2)
February 28, 2005
I was taking notes at a pretty quick pace in Amsterdam, figuring I'd just look stuff up online later. Except I couldn't find the Happy Pee Kiddy Boy Urinal anywhere. We saw it in Teuntje, a very cool kids store...
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Posted by greg at
1:05 PM
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Comments (1)
February 17, 2005
I have no category for this except Parent Company. Kidville has opened on the Upper East Side. The NY Times' verdict: finally, a place to park your stroller! The real story: finally, a place to park your wife and child....
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Posted by greg at
1:28 AM
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Comments (3)
December 14, 2004
We'd almost given up ever finding any black baby clothes, then yesterday, we found a whole whole world of them. The kid's godmother had recommended Estella, on 6th Ave at 12th St, to us for months. I have to say,...
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Posted by greg at
7:34 AM
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Comments (6)
November 24, 2004
I bought the kid's first pair of shoes a few weeks ago; what a fiasco. They were slippers, really, alpaca crocheted red mary jane-looking things that seemed cool enough. Well, he Peruvian children chained to their knitting machines need to...
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Posted by greg at
1:27 PM
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Comments (10)
October 21, 2004
As if New Yorkers needed any more reason to stay curled up in bed today, the first reported delivery of Stokke Xplory strollers arrived...in Boston. Magic Beans, a baby gear and toy shop in Brookline, just got their first shipment...
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Posted by greg at
2:57 PM
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Comments (2)
September 27, 2004
Or so I was led to believe by just about every commenter on every music -related post I've done. Dan Zanes is a rock & roll musician who's out and proud about his folk music interests. He was in the...
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Posted by greg at
11:06 AM
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Comments (3)
September 21, 2004
In New Orleans a couple of weeks ago, when we took the kid to her first dive bar (We were told it was a restaurant and... long story. But it was lunchtime...), the bartender's t-shirt told me he probably knew...
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Posted by greg at
9:29 AM
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Comments (0)
September 4, 2004
Any name's fine, as long as it's Jadzia. Also popular: B'elanna, and Seven (of Nine). i.e., all the alien hottie characters. Let me go on record here: any Star Trek name is going to be several circles deeper in taunting...
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Posted by greg at
10:32 AM
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Comments (3)
August 31, 2004
Gee, good thing I added the "parent company" category; it'll give me a place to post the birth announcement of every stylist/graphic designer/publicist/musician/freelancer in Southern California. Apparently, it's the law that when you have a kid in LA, you start...
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Posted by greg at
10:56 PM
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Comments (0)
August 30, 2004
Patemm, Elizabeth Mitchell, and a post I'm working on right now... It's been staring me in the face for months: a lot of parents are so dissatisfied with the pregnancy/baby/kid industry, they feel compelled to do something about it. You...
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Posted by greg at
1:01 PM
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Comments (3)
With her two kids, Grace Welch found out what we've been finding out lately: it's damn hard to keep a wiggly kid on a rectangular changing pad. Unlike me, though, Grace did something about it. She designed a circular changing...
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Posted by greg at
10:44 AM
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Comments (3)
August 25, 2004
While Italians are poppin' out futuristic stroller/trikes instead of babies, designers in Europe's other rapidly aging country, Germany, are waxing mod-nostalgic. One result: LikeABike, a sleek, pared down reinterpretation of one of the earliest bicycles, the 1817 Draisienne (named after...
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Posted by greg at
11:15 AM
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Comments (2)
August 19, 2004
Translated from Baby Pro News. Baby Pro bills itself as a "Baby Item Laboratory," and I humbly bow my head in the presence of a supreme master of baby gear-related websitery:Although strollers have quickly become compact and light, there...
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Posted by greg at
1:02 PM
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Comments (0)
July 28, 2004
OK, I gave them grief for the aromatherapy, but maybe hippychick's onto something. The Hipseat is basically a fannypack your kid can perch on. By extending this little shelf from your waist, you're able to hold a kid without thrusting...
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Posted by greg at
11:44 AM
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Comments (3)
July 27, 2004
OK, I realize I'm not going to build a daddy gear empire with half a dozen t-shirts. But if I had any delusions of grandeur, or any misplaced sense of accomplishment for coming up with a design (that's basically the...
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Posted by greg at
11:17 AM
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Comments (0)
July 22, 2004
Thomas Heaton, 44, a single United Methodist pastor in Nashville, Ind., has been making rice and beans for Sunday supper since adopting his son Manuel, 9, in Guatemala five years ago. (Because Guatemala is one of the few countries that...
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Posted by greg at
7:35 PM
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Comments (0)
July 13, 2004
John and Helen During, parents of Alastair (8 years) and Andrew (5 years), [and founders of the AromaKids brand of aromatherapy and massage oils for children] feel strongly that the touch of a parent's hand and the sound of their...
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Posted by greg at
9:41 AM
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Comments (4)
July 7, 2004
Now this is one I see all over, especially in New York. Mountain Buggy is another New Zealand-based all-terrain stroller company (Is all that Lord of The Rings landscape really so irresistible to hike through?) that's been making a...
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Posted by greg at
9:06 PM
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Comments (0)
July 6, 2004
I found out about Phil & Teds on a research trip to Right Start, where I was tracking down a decent-looking double stroller we'd seen in the park. The saleswoman said, "Have you seen Phil & Teds? We sell out...
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Posted by greg at
1:54 PM
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Comments (2)
June 21, 2004
To regular Daddy Types readers, this architect couple's dilemma hits home: "My husband and I were constantly looking for furniture, clothing, and toys that would complement our modern style. Unfortunately, it was much more difficult than we imagined." Not one...
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Posted by greg at
2:19 PM
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Comments (3)
June 17, 2004
LA-based designer Pazit Kagel introduced a line of cleanly designed modular furniture for toddlers and children at this year's International Contemporary Furniture Fair. The ply and laminate units can be used for storage and as a platform bed that grows...
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Posted by greg at
1:17 PM
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Comments (0)
June 11, 2004
I'll come clean. I was a Boy Scout. Growing up, our parents drilled it into my and my brothers' heads that we wouldn't get our driver's license until we finished our Eagle Project. [Needless to say, I got my...
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Posted by greg at
2:49 PM
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Comments (3)
June 2, 2004
Last Tuesday, in the early evening, the playroom at Big City Bar & Grill held 10 children who were supervised by two baby sitters. One mother, Chris P. [no sense taking over her Google results], hung over the railing and...
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Posted by greg at
8:03 AM
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Comments (0)
May 31, 2004
You may have noticed how rare cleanly designed baby furniture is. Architect and craftman Christopher Ross noticed, and did something about it. His firm, Hiccup, makes great-looking cribs, dresser/changing tables, and more for the Tall Grass Collection. The Tall...
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Posted by greg at
8:45 AM
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Comments (0)
May 27, 2004
Double dad Bill Brown writes in, "I just bought two baby blankets that my girls adore. They're called Taggies, and they're nice fleece blankets with tags of all sorts sewn around the edges...I can't emphasize enough how much my daughters...
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Posted by greg at
8:09 PM
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Comments (4)
May 17, 2004
They grow up so fast. It was only two months ago that a couple of San Francisco rockers started a kiddy clothing line called Infantile, and now they're in the Washington Post. If the baby industry's going to be saved...
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Posted by greg at
12:32 AM
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Comments (0)
May 10, 2004
Also from the International Juvenile Products Show: Mom Inventors ("Moms helping moms!") announced their latest product, TP Saver, designed to "baby proof your toilet paper!" TP Saver prevents your adventurous little kid from unfurling the whole roll of toilet...
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Posted by greg at
8:02 AM
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Comments (1)
April 16, 2004
My mother-in-law brought this back from the grocery store in France last summer. It's called a Bib'Evian, and it's an adapter so you can put a regular nipple on a bottle of Evian. It works on other water bottles,...
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Posted by greg at
10:20 AM
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Comments (1)
March 19, 2004
Usually when you buy a diaper bag, you have to choose between cool, hip, and funky; you could never get all three. Until now. At Brooklyn's Urban Monster, you can get the Diaper Dude, "A cool hip funky diaper bag...
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Posted by greg at
10:35 PM
March 16, 2004
I saw the The Baby Owner's Manual: Operating Instructions, Trouble-Shooting Tips, and Advice on First-Year Maintenance at some hippy gift shop near our house in DC, but it turns out to be pretty good. Well designed, informative, and written...
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Posted by greg at
10:05 PM
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Comments (1)
