5 Kids' Products I Wish Didn't Exist

And speaking of stuff, today I'm talking about the stuff I wish didn't exist or, to be clear, the baby products I wish didn't exist.

As we go into this topic, I wanna be clear, I won't be naming any brands by name, but the goal is to bring in critical thinking as always to lead to informed purchases with a few things in mind: safety, efficacy, sustainability, and practicality.

I've realized there's two kinds of people: people who walk into a baby store and buy diapers and then walk out, but there's also people who walk into a baby store, somehow leave with a wipe warmer, matching outfit, a sensory toy [laughs] uh, you know, a rubber seat long enough to basically be a legal document.

And I was absolutely the second person as a first-time parent.

I thought I needed everything.

I registered for everything because when you're pregnant or newly postpartum, every product is marketed like it's the missing piece of your parenting puzzle.

So like, "This is gonna help your baby sleep, develop, learn, get into Harvard." You know, I...

And suddenly you're standing in an aisle, like, just looking at everything, being like, "You know what? Maybe I do need the $70 baby activity mat that tracks my baby's moon sign." I...

The older I get, the more [laughs] convinced I am that baby products exist on a spectrum.

And so on one end, there's the products that genuinely solve problems, and in the middle, there's some products that are, you know, harmless but heavily marketed, and they'll hit the spot on the mark for some.

And then there's the products that make me wonder if the, the group of executives in the room were running out of ideas.

So today's episode is about those products, the products across the spectrum.

And more specifically, today we're talking about five children's products I wish didn't exist.

Now, every product on today's list exists because it solves a problem, or at least it promises to.

Uh, parents are busy, tired, uh, trying to do the best with the information they have.

So for each product, we're going to ask very simple questions.

What problem is it trying to solve? What are the benefits? What are the drawbacks? What does the research say? And if we're making the decision for our own family, what, what would I do? Like, what...

Because my goal isn't to tell you what to buy.

It's not to tell you what to throw away.

My goal is to give you the information, and you need to make the most informed decision for your family.

So yeah, I still kinda reserve the right to roast some of these products a little bit, but some of them are absolutely wild, and I don't know why they're still on the market purely from a safety perspective.

And then some of them are more just things that kinda grind my gears.