Gadget Inspector: The Mother of Invention Fairs
We process the ABC Kids Expo in Vegas.
by Sam Apple
February 27, 2007
I am not the Vegas type. I don't drink much. I have never had a lap dance. My idea of gambling is taking my seven-month-old out on the town with only one burp cloth.
Still, I was excited about my trip to the Las Vegas Convention Center for the ABC Kids Expo. The tradeshow's website promised "the premier juvenile products specialty show in the nation " with 460,000 square feet of exhibition space and nearly 700 registered vendors — not to mention an all-attendee reception featuring the music of the Desperate Dads.
My cab pulled up to the convention center on a Monday morning. I was prepared for a chaotic scene, but found myself even more surprised and confused than I had anticipated. Almost everyone was male and there was not a single baby product in sight. I took my notebook out to jot down this surprising first impression. Then I spotted a passing name tag and discovered that I was at a True Value Hardware convention.
It took me about 20 minutes to make it to the other end of the 3.2 million-square-foot convention center, and when I arrived, I felt more intimidated than excited. As I stood atop the stairs that descended into the showroom, I could see the nearly 700 exhibits spread out over an ocean of dark blue carpeting. 
I ran my finger along the spokes of $3,000 Silver Cross carriages, and sipped wine with a designer whose exhibit included a naked mannequin wearing a faux-suede infant carrier.
It was a job for an army of gadget inspectors, but there was only me. I grabbed a complimentary tote bag and took a deep breath.
Over the next six hours, I ran my finger along the spokes of $3,000 Silver Cross carriages, and sipped wine with a designer whose exhibit included a naked mannequin wearing a faux-suede infant carrier. I had an intense discussion about the war in Lebanon with an Israeli inventor holding his portable toddler toilet. (As far as I could tell, the toilet was nothing more than a cardboard box with a hole in it.) I argued with a man who insisted that he had come up with the first innovation in the spoon since 4782 B.C. ("But what about the spork?" "The spork is not a spoon. It's a combination of fork and spoon." "It's still a spoon!"). I met an ultra-Orthodox Jewish owner of a stroller company who was much more interested in wrapping traditional Jewish leather cords around my arm than in talking about his strollers.
I met a Mormon from Utah who had invented a wrist watch with a toilet-shaped face to assist children with potty training and then smiled politely as he sang "Look at me, it's potty time, potty time," to the tune of London Bridges. I met a pediatric urologist, a.k.a. The Potty MD, who had invented a toy monkey that calls out to be taken to the bathroom every half hour. (If you fail to take Potty Monkey to his toilet, he calmly announces that he's had an accident.) I ate fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies from a woman selling cloisonné "It's a Boy" and "It's a Girl" lapel pins and washed them down with a sample of a nutritional shake for pregnant and nursing mothers. I gawked at a stuffed human arm designed to comfort babies when human flesh is unavailable. I twice tried to look at Fisher Price's products, which had been barricaded behind moving walls, and was twice told that I could not see them without the Fisher Price press liaison — who had already left town. I admired painted plaster casts of pregnant bellies and sucked on anti-nausea Preggie Pops. I began to count the companies that claimed Angelina Jolie used their products, then lost track when the number got too high. I listened to and enjoyed birthing music. The ABC Kids Expo is about more than strange products, scatological humor and free food. It is also about death.
Despite my failure to penetrate fortress Fisher Price and the pang of regret I felt upon learning I had missed the Desperate Dads, I was enjoying myself. But the ABC Kids Expo is about more than strange products, scatological humor and free food. It is also about death.
The Earth Mama Angel Baby display included the company's "Healing Hearts Baby Loss Comfort Kit," which comes complete with tea, aromatherapy mists, and "Seeds of Hope - a packet of organic herb blossom seeds that comes with a "special blessing." A woman pitching a monitoring device that attaches to a car seat reminded everyone who passed by her exhibit that every 9.5 days an American child dies after being forgotten in a car. The inventor of CPR Teddy, a teddy bear that doubles as an unconscious infant, handed out literature on choking hospitalization rates. At the Pure Plushy exhibit, I learned that plush toys can have "up to 50 times more serious germs" than a toilet seat in the same home. Even the products that weren't explicitly about sickness and death were often so decorated in the morbid graffiti of warnings and hazards that I found it hard to look at them without envisioning a tragic accident.
©2007 Sam Apple and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Sam Apple's work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, ESPN The Magazine, and Slate.com, among many other publications. His first
book, Schlepping Through the Alps, was named a finalist for the PEN America award for a first work of nonfiction. In 2005 he received the
annual Faux Faulkner award. Apple's next book, American Parent, will be published in 2008. |
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