Strollerderby : shoes

10 WORST. BABY. PRODUCTS. EVER! (Part 2)

Cole Gamble — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Baby Tattoos

At some point you might think I’m just being a crank, grousing about stuff that’s purely for novelty, a joke. But I argue that the jokes are dumb. Case in point, baby tattoos. However, if the idea behind the joke is to get your kid shanked in the prison yard, than it’s hilarious.

Man Boobs

Please lord save us from this product. That goes double for the men who feel they need them.

The Daddle

Well we just got done turn your kids into animals, now it’s dad’s turn. What dad hasn’t played horsey with his kids? Thanks to the Daddle, you can take an innocent game and turn it into the degrading exercise it was always meant to be. Once that kid gets the Daddle strapped to ya, you’ll never be anything more than a pack mule to her. And hey, what about the Maddle? Can’t mommy give dad a break?

Fortunately, the Daddle comes with a three-month supply of Vicodin for all your impending back pain.

Baby Perfume by Hello Kitty

The perfect way to say to your child, “You stink.” What exactly does Hello Kitty smell like, anyhow? I’m thinking it smells like unicorn barf.

Super Creepy My Little Pony

Ever since my daughter got one of these I haven’t had a night’s rest. I stay up all night staring at the ceiling and say to myself over and over, “Can’t sleep, baby pony will eat me. Can’t sleep, baby pony will eat me.”

Go to Worst Baby Products Part I

More by this author:

Horrifyingly Cute Animals

Cute Overload: White Tiger Kitten and Monkey are Friends (PICS!)

Men with Baby Heads

10 Things You May Not Know About Pregnancy (and might shock you)

The 26 Most Disturbing Kids Movies Ever

10 WORST. BABY. PRODUCTS. EVER! (Part 1)

Cole Gamble — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Baby Wipe Warmer

Okay, I love my kid, but making sure he has hot towels for his little ass seems overkill for me. Not only is the baby wipe warmer useless, it’s dangerous too. Wipe warmers carry the risk of causing a fire electric shock. Umm, my kids butt will just have to deal with the cold.

The Child Leash

Many boyfriends, husbands and would-be fathers have had the moment: you hear an alarm go off in your girlfriend’s/wife’s uterus. You can hear the words almost before she says them, “I want a baby.” As a time honored tradition, many spooked men have tried to redirect this mothering instinct by saying, “hey, why don’t we get a dog instead.” I do not believe this strategy has worked in the entire history of mankind. There are cave paintings of Neanderthal dudes getting their offer of adopting a wooly mammoth rejected by their women decorating a corner of the cave in pink.

That doesn’t mean you can’t treat your kid like dog. The Parent Leash takes all the fun of dominating a lesser species and applies to your spawn. Imagine the joy of your kid away when he gets too enamored with sniffing other kids’ butts.

Baby Keeper

What insane super billionaire is turning live infants into wall art? Oprah, I’m looking in your direction.

Baby High Heels

Might as well book your daughter on Jerry Springer now, ‘cause that’s where she’ll go when you get these tacky shoes for her.

Diaper Genie

Genie, eh? And what is so magical about the Diaper Genie? The people at Playtex purport that the Diaper Genie is an odor free diaper disposal system. You know what else works well for diaper disposal? The trashcan outside. My wife and I owned one of these and I can tell you there is no magic here. One problem, the liner refills are crazy hard to install and if you do it wrong, poop everywhere. Also the actual disposal of the diaper requires an inordinate amount of pressure, and pressure is not something a poop laden diaper like. As the poop oozes around your fist, you’ll wonder how you’ll ever get your hand “odor-free” again. Finally, the Diaper Genie seals away each individual diaper so there will be zero chance the thing will ever break down in the landfill. When you’re a grandparent you can take your grandkids to visit the magical poop snake your diaper genie created decades ago.

Go to Worst Baby Products Part II

More by this author:

Will Smith Remakes The Karate Kid, Casts His Son in Lead

Horrifyingly Cute Animals

10 Things You May Not Know About Pregnancy (and might shock you)

Cute Overload: White Tiger Kitten and Monkey are Friends (PICS!)

Men with Baby Heads

The 26 Most Disturbing Kids Movies Ever

Are Crocs and Kids A Dangerous Mix?

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:30:00 GMT

It was bound to happen eventually. All popular products must eventually meet their downfall in the form of consumer safety lawsuits. And so it is that the footwear company Crocs faces at least two suits for injuries involving their soft-soled slip-ons, children, and escalators.

Clark Meyer is suing the company for $2 million after his four-year-old son was injured on an Atlanta airport escalator while wearing Crocs. According to the suit, the boy’s foot was “severely and permanently” injured. And the parents of a three-year-old who broke three of her toes on an escalator while wearing Crocs are also suing the company.

The Crocs company has promised to insert safety labels into their shoes, but maintains that Crocs are no more likely to injure children on escalators than other types of footwear. Indeed, at least two children wearing flip flops were hurt on Atlanta Airport escalators this past summer, in addition to the Crocs injury.

It does seem to me that these injuries are not exclusively Crocs' fault. Given that there about 7,500 serious escalator-related injuries a year, that children under five are likely to be involved in these accidents, and that Crocs are very popular right now, it does seem that the Crocs company is simply a convenient, and potentially lucrative, scapegoat for a larger safety issue.

But having no personal experience with Crocs, I can't really judge the lawsuits. Do parents of Croc-toting kids find the shoes to be more dangerous than other kinds of footwear?

Photo: New York Times

Couples Sues After Failed Vasectomy

When playgrounds attack, the sequel

Brett Singer — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:29:00 GMT

Well, it's not really a sequel, but this time I have a photo to back up the story from yesterday. So, to anyone who called me "Liar Liar Pants on Fire" I very maturely say, "NYAH-NYAH! I WAS RIGHT!"

Anyway, here's the story: Anne Casson's son received second and third degree burns on his feet after running into the playground without shoes on. NY Metro quotes the mom as saying, "At first, the hospital thought he got electrocuted…When we said, no, he was on the playground, they immediately went, 'Oh, the mats.'" While three other parents are suing New York City for millions of dollars, Casson went the advocacy route, trying to arrange meetings with Parks Department officials to make them aware of the problem. According to the story, they didn't seem terribly interested.

I've dealt with people from the Parks Department a couple of times working on events, and I have to say that they are some of the oddest human beings around. I'm not sure why, and obviously this is an extremely limited sampling. But they aren't elected officials, and with no voters to worry about, they don’t have the selfish motivation to listen to their constituents. I'm not excusing them, just saying that I'm not surprised.

It's worth mentioning that running around on any outdoor surface in Manhattan without shoes seems like a phenomenally bad idea. Then again, if the hospital staff – "oh, the mats" – knew right away what the problem was, how come nobody else did? So it's insane that nobody at the Parks Department gives a crap about the fact that the temperature of the mats used in children's playgrounds are going as high as a cooked chicken. I mean, look at that photo. Horrible. Even if the kids keep their shoes on, what happens if they fall down and slap their hands onto the mat? So I'm on Casson's side here, but I'm not letting my kids take their shoes off anywhere near those mats.

According to the commenters on yesterday's post, this is either a serious problem or another case of parental whining. What would you do if this happened to your kid?

image/source: MetroNY

Five things my son taught me about living green

14 Lies Parents Need to Stop Telling Their Kids (Part 2) ("Hey! The Playground is fun!")

20 Disturbing Baby Products

Angelina’s Not the Only One Having Hot Pregnancy Sex

A Cheap Step Toward Healthier Living

Adrienne Martini — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:00:00 GMT

I am about to save you a small fortune in vitamins, herbs, antibacterial products and cleaning supplies. You can thank me later.

Want to reduce the amount of germs that your kids, spouse and/or pets come into contact with? Take your shoes off when you walk in the door.

According to a new study, shoes can be home to more than 420,000 bacteria, 27 percent of which were a deadly form of E. coli. If you leave your shoes on and walk around your house, all of that bacteria is easily transferred to carpet and hard tile, where small people can get it all over their hands, knees and faces. Yum.

So get those shoes off! Let your tootsies go!

Playground Sexism: Back in the Kitchen, Girls

Mike Adamick (Cry It Out!) — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:28:00 GMT

Every time I go clothes shopping for my daughter, I want to grab a sales clerk by the neck and squeeze. It's not their fault, I realize, but I still want some answers. Why, I want to ask. Why do you insist on stocking your shelves with tight-legged jeans and open-toes shoes for girls while boys get to select from huge, roomy dungarees meant for climbing and swinging and playing?

It's not the embroidered mockeries that really get me -- the rainbows and butterflies and lollipops or whatever. It's the actual design -- fabric stitched together so tight that it makes playing almost impossible.

It's a quiet, playground sexism, one that starts at an ungodly early age. Even as toddlers -- a time when all kids should be falling off the jungle gym or learning the thrill of jumping off a swing -- boys are meant to do; to climb, to jump, to leap, to get dirty and rip the hell out of their clothes. Girls are meant to stand there, twirl their hair and watch.

It is driving me mad.

But look at the design of these clothes. Sandals for girls are almost invariably open-toed (and some even have mini high heels -- wtf Target ?), and I've seen my daughter scrape the tops of her feet at the playground. It's not a huge injury, sure, but if she were wearing boys sandals, it wouldn't have happened. (She does now, thank you very much, because boys sandals are close-toed and meant for, you know, playing.)

Now as for the decorative appearance of clothes ... it's irksome. It's annoying. But I can live with it. Boys get jungle creatures and fire trucks. Girls get butterflies and hearts. Sure. Although it does make me wonder: Do toddler girls not appreciate the zoo? Would they not like to wear a fucking hippo from time to time? Or would that just make them look fat?

But that's not what gets me. Jeans. Jeans piss me off. At Old Navy recently, I found nothing by tight-legged, "slim" jeans for girls. Rack after rack of tight, slimming jeans. For girls as young as 6 months. Fine. Let an infant wear them. They don't do much anyway, and if you want to dress your baby as a club slut or one of those ridiculous urban yetis who goes around with tight jeans tucked into Uggs, more power to you. But toddlers -- yes, even toddler girls -- they need room to move. I actually bought a pair just to try one out and sure enough, my daughter had an impossible time climbing a ladder to the monkey bars. If she had roomier boy jeans, this wouldn't have happened. So as it was, I told her just to stand there and watch the boys. Like a good girl.

Seriously, screw that.

My kid is a playground menace. If it goes up, she's going to climb it. If it resembles a slide, she'll sail down it. If it swings, you can bet she'll swing with it. If she grows up and wants to be a debutante, fan-freaking-tastic. I'll buy her a gown and learn to waltz. I don't have a problem with pink and can't wait until she can help me sew her dresses. But for now, the kid just likes to play, and play hard. And these Carrie Bradshaw-in-a-romper get-ups don't let her. Worse, they could injure her. When are we going to realize that young girls like to play just as much as young boys? When is this early, quiet sexism going to end?

Some Moms Maybe Need High Heels

Kelly Mills — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 15:28:00 GMT

No, you don't need to wear six-inch heels because you are a yummy mummy or anything annoying like that. But according to one researcher, those cute pumps (assuming they fit your feet post-partum) might have an advantage for those of us who went through the whole vaginal birth thing. The headlines are selling this thing by saying heel-wearers have a better sex life, but that's only part of it.

See, Dr. Maria Cerruto, of the University of Verona, Italy found that women who wore moderately high heels toned their legs (yeah yeah) but also strengthened the pelvic muscles. As someone who has tried to remember to do Kegels so I don't have the whole peeing-while-running problem and so on, I guess I could occasionally trade in my Adidas for a pair of open-toe slingbacks with a modest bit of lift, especially if they were still relatively comfortable. Of course, heels hurt some people's backs, and I do know a few folks who developed shin splints they attribute to tottering around on sexy shoes. Eh, it's all a trade-off.

More Payless "Croc-Offs" Being Recalled

Kelly Mills — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 14:26:00 GMT

Yes, fake crocs are still choking kids. Payless has expanded the recall of the shoes designed to look like the shoes that many people love to hate. This time it's the character-themed croc-offs: "Dora the Explorer, Spongebob Squarepants, Hello Kitty, Coasters® Lighted Car Compel, and Cambridge Mary-Jane." Hey, I'd recall Dora anything just for making me sing, "I'm a map, I'm a map..." all damn day.

The rivet on these shoes is a choking hazard, so take 'em back or toss 'em. By the way, I'm still bitter at the real crocs folks for messing up my kid's order for shoes three times and having completely unresponsive customer service. But maybe they've fixed that by now. I dunno: my kid had moved on to flip-flops.

Cute! Shoes! I Must Have Them!

Karen Murphy — Fri, 18 May 2007 13:51:00 GMT

Oh, if only these came in my size... Have you seen the shoe lineup at Vincent? Billed as fun, fashionable, and functional, these adorable kid's shoes hit the Golden Shoe Trifecta right on the head. There are styles for the littlest pre-walker up to a child's 3.5 (conveniently my daughter Serena's size) and in everything from smiling rain boots to colorful sequined and embroidered mary janes complete with matching purse and little clogs with smiling faces that will look up your dress.

There's actually a real Vincent, and he's 9 years old. His uncle and partner decided that shoes would make a great baby gift when Vincent was born, and voila! a shoe store was born. Nice gift, huh?

Crocs Shoes a Hazard on Escalators

Stefania Pomponi Butler (CityMama) — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 11:31:00 GMT

Colorful Crocs—those pliable, plastic gardening clogs that are all the rage with kids and adults these days—may be hazardous to your health.

Recently, there have been so many reports of kids' feet getting caught in escalators while wearing Crocs that the manufacturer is starting to put escalator warnings tags on each pair. Kids' shoes are getting stuck between the steps and along the sides of escalators, sometimes taking their little toes with them. But, any floppy shoe can get caught in escalators, not just Crocs.

I'm thinking about my own childhood growing up in Hawaii where everyone pretty much only wears flip-flops (slippers). Getting a slipper yanked off while on an escalator seemed to be a rite of passage, but I can't remember anyone ever getting seriously hurt. Back then no parents ever raised alarms about it. A pointed, "See what happens when you don't pay attention?" probably went a long way to prevent serious injuries.

Parents are advised to use caution on escalators with their Croc-adorned children. Or, take the stairs.

The Seductive Power of Kiddie Chuck Taylor All Stars

Rachael Brownell (Redsy) — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 13:11:00 GMT

Is there anything more adorable than a darling little toddler in pink Chuck Taylors? Not for my money, brother. In my family, we fancy ourselves rather ''above all that" when it comes to mindless purchase of consumer goods, but perhaps this is just misplaced hubris? Perhaps it was only a matter of time until we were punished for our karmic bravura.

So it happened that an innocent Sunday outing to the market, brought us home one pair of pink converse shoes, size mini-6, richer. With my older kids, I often withstood the darling girl clothes aisle, wisely knowing I wouldn't want it if I could avoid looking at it. Nothing says "aaaahhh" like pink and ruffles. And yes, I know I'm going to kicked out of NOW for saying that.

As much as I grew up a tomboy and as much as my daughters are (as of yet) relatively unconcerned with what they wear and how they dress, I have to confess a certain fascination with clothing them in silly, impractical, but pretty things. At least these shoes aren't toddler high heels. That's what I say to assuage the consumer guilt.