Never Before Revealed Feature!
Written: Nov 28 '00 (Updated Jan 18 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Nicely designed for young babies, plus an AMAZING new feature!
Cons: Manufacturer is trapped in a time warp.
The Bottom Line: Nice shallow bowls, gentle plastic coating and long handles. Well designed for young babies. But the manufacturer doesn't even know about its BEST feature!
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| theeye's Full Review: Gerber Infant Spoons |
Under normal circumstances, I'm not a frequent writer of spoon epinions. I'm the analytical sort, you see, and running down a list of a spoon's features, comparing and contrasting them to a Platonic ideal spoon tends to be a fairly fruitless enterprise. Handle? Yes, it's got a handle. Bowl? Yes, it's got a bowl. This sort of analysis has all the 'oomph' of a spoonful of baby rice cereal. Yuck.
So when I discovered that Epinions has a category for Gerber Infant Spoons, I was dubious as to whether I had much useful information to impart on the subject, despite my being a satisfied user of the product. (We own three of these spoons, which we picked up at our local drug store because they were cheap and looked remarkably like baby spoons.) A picture, as we know, is worth ten minimally-sized epinions and the picture featured on this category page clearly shows most of the spoon's main features:
1. It has a nice long handle, the better to handle it with.
2. It has a nice soft plastic coating on the bowl, the better to gum it with.
3. It has a very shallow bowl. If you've never fed a baby before, you'll probably think this is a big disadvantage. That's because you have no idea how little a baby eats. The "suggested serving" for baby's first cereal is one tablespoon. That one tablespoon will take the better part of an hour and many, many spoonfuls to get into baby's tummy. Longer if your better half, who's providing the live entertainment, wants to take an intermission break (the Fairy Godmother gave Little Bunny Foo Foo about 30 chances last night). Bottom line: the shallow, nearly flat, bowl is just perfectly shaped and proportioned for feeding a young baby.
4. It comes in lots of different colors. If you keep a kosher kitchen, like I do, this is actually a useful feature. In kosher kitchens, meat and dairy must be kept separate and color-coding is often used to keep track of what is what. We have a blue spoon (blue is the traditional color for "dairy"), a red spoon (red is the traditional color for "meat") and a yellow spoon (yellow is the traditional color for "the baby doesn't eat much meat, so we'll make this one dairy, too"). If you don't keep a kosher kitchen, like most of the world, you won't much care what colors the spoons are. Unless you're Martha Stewart, in which case I'm sure you'll find a compelling reason to select one color or another.
Now all of these features are fairly self-evident. But this spoon actually has one additional feature not at all evident from the picture or the manufacturer's web site information and it is this amazing feature that has prompted me to write my first ever spoon epinion.
The Amazing, New, Never-Before-Seen, Undocumented Feature
The manufacturer's web site, at first glance, is very open and clear about the sophisticated design process that resulted in Gerber's Infant Spoons: They are, says the manufacturer, "designed for a mom to feed baby." As detailed above, I can confirm that these spoons do, in fact, allow mom to feed baby.
After months of carefully controlled experiments, however, I am now prepared to reveal publicly for the first time, an astonishing undocumented feature of these spoons. (Note: these experiments, which were privately funded, took place without the official sanction of the manufacturer or of any government agency.) To wit: Gerber Infant Spoons also allow Dads to feed baby. Yes, it's true! My husband has used these spoons successfully at least as many times as I have!
I was absolutely flabbergasted when I read the manufacturer's site to find that this astonishing feature seems to have fallen serendipitously into Gerber's hands, without any design effort at all! And, as far as I know, I am the first person in the world to report these findings. It's almost like discovering that some common household item cures cancer! Who knew?!?
Summing up before the Dish Runs Away With The Spoon
* They've got nice long handles, nice shallow bowls and gentle plastic coating.
* They are equal opportunity spoons, working well with people of all genders (stay tuned for the results of on-going experiments on the effects of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation).
* They are cheap and easily available.
* They are marketed by a company that ought to wake up and realize that this is the 21st century and Dads can take care of baby, too.
Final score: 5 stars for the product, less 1 star for the stupid marketing = 4 stars
-- TheEye, who cannot believe that she has stooped to writing epinions on spoons. What will be next? Paperclips?
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
theeye
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Location: New York, NY (it's a hell of a town!)
Reviews written: 66
Trusted by: 164 members
About Me:
Company president, math geek, first time mom at 39, epinion addict. Sleep? Not lately.
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