Welcome to Ask ZRecs! Today, we have answers to burning reader questions about safer nail polish for kids, cloth diapers that won't stay up, tagless rashes, curiously modest BPA-free claims, Munchkin straw cup cleaning, and bunnies on electric trains.

Safer nail polish for kids

Dear ZRecs,

I wonder if you have criteria for Z’s nail polish. There are so many chemicals in nail polish and L is still prone to keeping his fingers in his mouth. He would love to paint his nails, but I resisted because of the unknowns in the nail polish. Thoughts?

Carrie S

Carrie, Z has a variety of caregivers and compatriots who pay varying levels of attention and/or lip service to our product safety requests. I'm guessing that nail polish came from being treated at a nail place (nobody I know could do those polka dots) and that it was not a brand we'd consider to be "safer." As for a recommendation, we'd suggest Piggy Paint.

Droopy drawers

Dear ZRecs,

Can you give me any advice for keeping the diaper up on my extremely active 2 year old? It is really the first bump I've run into with cloth diapers that I can't seem to find an answer too. I'm using thirsty covers (I have v1 and v2) with prefolds. I do have some fitted diapers, but find they are more likely to wick on to her clothes if the diaper gets very full. I would argue that the velcro might be wearing out but it doesn't seem to matter. New and old fall down. Help!

Dana

To answer your question, Dana, we turned to Kim Rosas, who knows the ins and outs of cloth diapering and shares her expertise with readers of Dirty Diaper Laundry on a near-daily basis. (She's also doing a bunch of baby carrier reviews and giveaways all through the month of October.) Here's what Kim had to say:

I have a few ideas that will definitely help, but it depends on how much Dana wants to invest and also how much she wants to alter her routine.

One solution could be using a prefold belt. This is usually used for practicing Elimination Communication over just the prefold itself. It makes undoing the front flap easier for potty breaks. If you aren't willing to purchase anything new then maybe securing a belt around the cover and prefold will help keep the diaper from slipping off, especially if the Velcro is the culprit. You can find them from EC stores like this one.

Pull on covers that are a good tight fit will work well with an active toddler. Since a two year old can stand up on their own, sometimes it is even easier to use pull on covers for changes as well. Most pull-on covers are made of either fleece or wool. Either of these are great for heavy wetters and are especially good for nighttime. The drawback is that they are thicker than tradition PUL (polyurethane laminate) covers like Thirsties. They are even harder to fit clothing over.

For this reason, you can just buy pants that are fleece or wool. These function as clothing and diaper covers. Wool "longies" as they are called can either be hand-knit or sewn from wool interlock fabric, which is a weave just like T-shirt fabric, with lots of stretch. Interlock is much thinner than knit covers. Fleece is the least expensive option. In fact, some parents have had success with just buying fleece pants from places like Old Navy. The pants needs to fit snugly around the diaper. If you can't find any that would work or they don't work well for you, don't give up. Fleece longies are still relatively inexpensive. Wool longies out of interlock will cost between 30-70 dollars. Sustainable Babyish is a well known brand for Interlock Wool Longies. Fleece longies are around $15-30. You can also find lots of free patterns online if you can sew and would like to make your own. All of these will work well over prefolds.

The last option would be re-evaulating your current diapers and possibly switching brands. There are diapers that have gathered elastic around the back, and even some with gathered elastic at the front. These are going to have tighter waists. Some brands even boast that if you pre-set the size you can use them like "pull-ups." There is also a brand specifically made for that called Antsy Pants. Snap-EZ is a brand with both front and back elastic.

And of course, if you decide you like your old Thristies but they just need new Velcro, there are WAHM's who will replace the velcro for you. This service can cost $2-3.50 each plus shipping. The best way to find someone for this service is to hit up a diapering message board and search the WAHM forum. You might even have luck asking local moms.

Thanks, Kim! Hope it helps, Dana!

Tagless label irritation: Thinking beyond Carter's

Dear ZRecs,

My daughter, who has no other skin issues, is one of the unlucky children who gets a nasty rash from the tagless clothing. While I am so grateful that Carters is being called to the mat (I hope I used that phrase correctly), I am concerned about all the other companies who have gone tagless too. A few weeks ago I put a Circo/Target shirt on DD, which had a small stenciled tag. By the end of the day the tag-spot on her back looked like red sandpaper.

If tagless tags are the wave of the future, do I have to research each company’s tags to figure out if the inks are Oko-Tex certified? And can I be certain Oko-Tex certified shirts won’t cause a rash? I appreciate all the information that ZRecs has already gleaned and would be more than happy to support ZRecs tag-testing efforts.

Ava

Ava, you've just articulated one of the big reasons this issue continues to concern us. Ever since our first reporting on Carter's tagless onesies, we have heard a few reports of Gap, Old Navy, Circo, and other brands causing irritation in children. It seems that this was less widespread, but it is hard to know for sure how many parents might have had experiences with other brands but did not find the forum to share them in the same way that parents of children with Carter's brand clothing did.

We believe that the Carter's issue reflects a blind spot in consumer awareness about potentially harmful chemical exposure of their children. Our ultimate goal is not just to learn what might be in Carter's tagless labels - whether it be those from 2007 which appear to have caused the most widespread problems, or those from 2008 that appear to have caused some ongoing problems, or those in 2009 that are still not certified as being free of a wide range of harmful chemicals - but what might be in tagless labels in general that should concern us.

We have two posts planned on the Carter's tagless situation as we work on firm plans for testing; one of these posts will discuss how tagless inks are made and applied to clothing, and why certification standards are so important to protect not just highly sensitive children but all infants and toddlers from unnecessary exposure to sketchy chemicals we wouldn't dream of accepting in their toys, skin care products, or even the fabrics of their garments.

Help me take this thing apart

Dear ZRecs,

You mentioned in an earlier post that Munchkin straw cups were easy to take apart and clean, but I can't figure out how to disassemble it! Can you show us?

Stumped Mom

No problem, SM! The flip-top lid has a small nubbin on either side that fits into two indentations in the main lid. By putting a little pressure on the flip-top at the right angle, you can release it from these indentations, remove it, and get everywhere for cleaning. The trick is knowing which way to replace it - the cut-out for the straw should be oriented away from the hole the straw comes through from below. Here's a quick video demo:


OK, this next one is a reconstruction, because we lost the letter. You know who you are.

Rabbits on a train

Dear ZRecs,

I love the look of the Playmobil bunnies set, but my son or daughter will only be interested in it if the bunnies fit in Geotrax trains. They don't have to fit in the engines, but at least knowing that they fit in the open cars would be enough to make them a viable toy for my child. Can you tell me if they fit?

A Crazy Reader

Crazy Reader, you are in luck! They do fit in Geotrax train cars. They also can do something very fun in the Geotrax train station, which Z was very interested in showing you. Those photos are at the end of this slide show.

Telling it like it is* on BPA

Dear ZRecs,

Not new to zrecs BUT...had a question. Here's a new one...when buying Take N Toss cups with the Sesame Street characters on them, the packaging said "BPA Free*" with the asterisk. Looked a bit more closely and it says "*polycarbonate and epoxy free" so what exactly are they protecting themselves from with the "*"? Any ideas? I didn't buy them... just in case. This whole thing is so frustrating. You basically have to do enough research to support a senior thesis in order to buy cups! Thanks guys, as usual!

AJsMomma

Sharp eye, AJsMomma. Our suspicion is that The First Years has realized that there are potential lawsuits in making the statement that any product is "free" of any chemical. Given how long it takes products produced and packaged in a factory to actually make it onto store shelves, they were probably pretty prescient in taking the step they did; the asterisk covers the known sources of BPA used in production of plastics but also protects them from trace levels being found in, say, polypropylene.

You could look at this as a cynical ploy to sneak some BPA into our sippy cups, but we suspect this is probably a good faith effort on their part to make the claim they can reasonably make while protecting their brand from situations that are beyond the control of a company that wants to produce products at the volume, price point, and relative priority the company places on chemical savviness - in other words, high, cheap, and relatively low.

There are companies out there that have their finger more closely on the pulse of what exactly is happening chemically in their products - Thinkbaby, whose products were the only to test at non-detect levels in every study Health Canada did, are the most obvious example of this - so ultimately it becomes a question of what kind of a brand you want to be doing business with. I'd say if you need cheap products to have a bunch around, avoid brands you know are bad actors in this space first, and The First Years isn't the worst company to trust with your child's health. If you want to go further, get cozy with a BPA-free brand that knows their products' chemical makeup backwards and forwards and can vouch for it a little more aggressively.

Have a question you'd like us to answer? Email us at editors@zrecs.com with "Ask ZRecs" in the subject line, and we'll consider it for a future Q&A. Sign photo by Laura K. Gibbs, shared via Flickr.

Here are some items - a dollhouse, a play mat, an unusual building set, three feeding lines, and a plastic package - we noticed at the 2009 ABC Kids' Expo, the annual baby/kids' product exhibition we attended last week in Las Vegas. We'll be reviewing the feeding items below when they're available, but the other items here won't be reviewed on Z Recommends simply because of their price-to-testability ratio. Events like ABC can allow us the in-person viewing and limited hands-on use necessary to favorably promote some high-priced items we'd otherwise feel obligated to request a sample of before recommending.

Hape's Bamboo Sunshine Dollhouse got our attention with its novelty iPod Touch dock - look, a solar-powered video player so your kids' dolls can be couch potatoes! - but kept it with the bamboo construction and furniture design. This dollhouse has been available in a non-iPod version for almost a year and the solar panel typically powers lights throughout the house. Here's a slideshow that shows off some of this dollhouse's nice lines and thoughtful furniture:



The $500 price tag makes us sad, but in this case, it's hard to argue with.

We loved these shapeshifting, tesselated play mats made of EVA foam. One made of flowers can be used to make a table that can be inset into the mat, and another transforms from an animal-themed play mat into a rocking horse, with bonus chicken and turtle figures for head-scratching variety. Here's a slideshow of some photos we took:



The mats have been garnering blog mentions over the past year, but this show appears to mark their introduction to U.S. markets. Depending on how successful this importer was in getting orders at the show, you may see them showing up at your local brick-and-mortar toy retailer soon - or online - for about $130 a set.

Here's a short video we shot that shows how the pieces work:


We saw several new feeding items we will be reviewing soon. This slideshow shows just a sampling of them.



Items pictured in the slide show above are, in order of appearance:

• Dr. Brown's new sippy cup that is so different from its Big-Gulp-like Training Cup it retains the name only because the former model has been summarily retired. Look for it in the next few months. (The Dr. Brown's rep also told us they had now officially retired their polycarbonate bottles.)


• Kid Basix's new stainless steel bottles, which feature a silicone sleeve and a nice solution to the problem of an opaque feeding bottle: Formula-mixing measurements on the cap.


• A new-to-the-U.S. feeding line from Beaba (maker of the Babycook baby food maker) that includes utensils, plates, bowls, cups, and a feeding set we're especially interested in. We're looking forward to reviewing that stuff as soon as it comes in, for reasons we'll explain when we get a chance to use and evaluate it.


• Environmentally-friendlier packaging: The My Plate-Mate now sports PET bagging (rather than PVC) and minimal cardboard compared to the box-and-window style of most feeding gear. We saw a lot of greened-up packaging at this year's expo, and more companies than we could count making explicit note of it in their product pitches, which means consumer demands are being heard. We like how My Plate-Mate managed to improve their packaging footprint while still offering an eye-catching and attractive design to help sell their product.


• New stainless steel baby bottles from Klean Kanteen, as well as a very long awaited one-piece sippy lid (they've been using Avent lids for years now). Can't wait to try these out - although they won't be available for a few months.

Last but not least, Sprig Toys had several new items we'll be reviewing and talking soon, including this interesting building set that combines cardboard and Sprigwood (recycled plastic and sawdust) for a lean, lightweight building set.


The teasers above are just a fraction of the great products we discovered at the ABC Kids' Expo this year. There are far more we're saving as surprises for readers after we receive samples and test products in our home. If you like the service we're providing, please make sure to subscribe to our blog feed via email or RSS and consider doing some of your Amazon shopping through ZRecs links!

We were surprised to show up at the ABC Kids Expo booth of the container, kitchen, and housewares company OXO to find a wall of prototypes of children's feeding items they'll be launching in early 2010. OXO's line features some interesting plates and bowls, a straw cup that's hard to evaluate in the prototype stage, and a trainer cup that slows the flow of liquids while offering kids the responsiveness to tilt that "real drinking" from a cup entails. If that last part sounds a little confusing, just watch this video, which we shot to show off the full line (remember, these are prototypes, which explains the poorly-fitting straw):


OXO warned us several times that these products wouldn't be available for several months. We told them you didn't care. What we should have said was that seeing stuff in the prototype stage is, at least for some ZRecs readers, the ultimate experience we're all really after.

Props to OXO for developing a line of cups that uses entirely interchangeable parts. For startups this is a long-range design issue to plan for from the outset, and one that ensures their products have resonance for retailers looking to invest in a brand that can sell to parents at multiple developmental stages. For a company like OXO that cut its teeth on relatively unrelated product categories (we love their Candela night lights), among other things) it's a chance to come out of the gate with a product that makes sense for consumers at a time when putting their own stamp on reinterpretation might take precedence and create a lot of one-off designs. It's a sign of this company's discipline and practical design background that they chose to prioritize both.

It's unclear to us whether these products will have parts sold independently, to allow consumers to upgrade existing cup bodies with later-stage lids, but it's also unclear whether the price point will really make that necessary. The main point is, you can have a bin of cups with parts that work together so that you don't have to play a matching game to build a cup for your child's drink - if, of course, you invest heavily in OXO product. It's the same product line compatibility we've praised Playtex for in the past, and we're happy to see it gaining more traction.

Needless to say, we'll be putting most of this line through the paces when it's available in January or so.

We met with Rick Dias, Chief Operating Officer at Thermos, who walked us through new changes to the Foogo and Funtainer line. The focus of our conversation was on the changes they have made to the composition of the plastic base and lid in response to reporting by bloggers and feedback from consumers that some Foogo and Funtainer lids were cracking and bases were splitting or detaching from the bottom of the cup.

Thermos launched the Foogo line with one type of plastic, and later changed it to a plastic that had a higher heat tolerance but proved more brittle and prone to breakage when dropped. This meant broken lids for some users and bases that came detached from the stainless steel body for others, which posed an additional laceration hazard with sharp metal welds were exposed.

Adrienne Jones of Baby Toolkit did excellent reporting on this issue, and we picked up the story in February 2008.

Dias cited blogger commentary as the leading cause of their decision to change the plastic again, to a mixture that is a bit more pliable but is not quite as heat tolerant. Here's an interview we did with him yesterday at the ABC Kids' Expo, where he walked us through the changes as well as showing off Thermos' new Phases line of Tritan plastic sippy and straw cups.

Here's our discussion of the changes to the line, and the engineering decisions behind it:



Thermos' Funtainer was denied a ZRecs Top Pick rating in our 2009 BPA-Free Sippy and Straw Cup Showdown, largely based on this outstanding issue and the company's insistence that there was nothing wrong with the product line. Readers, however, awarded it Top Pick Status in our Reader Rescue Poll. The fact that many voters may have been evaluating different versions of the product - either the first version or the second one, and thus making their recommendation on products with a significant variation in long-term performance, makes the often unannounced product tweaking companies do a bit of a challenge for the reviewing process.

We're looking forward to reviewing the entire new product line, and have some features we're particularly optimistic about. More on that - and on how to make sure you get the new version when you purchase a Foogo or Funtainer - when we get the products shipped from Thermos after the show.

We called Disney last week at a reader's request, seeking BPA information about their kids' stainless steel water bottles. The customer service rep was very friendly and her manner made me actually think we might get a straight answer. After all, these are stainless steel water bottles, with just a few small plastic parts.

We were also eager to add some Disney products to the ZRecs Guide, where every listing is based on detailed information provided by the manufacturer, as well as offering our impression of the quality of the data they provided.

This came in today from the Disney Store's Guest Services department.

Thank you for calling DisneyStore.com! I appreciate the opportunity to bring some magic to your day.

I am pleased to tell you that we have spoken with the maker of the stainless steel water bottle you purchased. There is no statement
regarding BPA related to this item, and while we do not have any testing results for this particular item regarding BPA, our items meet all
federal requirements and guidelines.

I hope you will find this information helpful. Please let me know if you have additional questions!

Sincerely,
Heather
Have a MAGICAL day!
The DisneyStore.com Team

And just like that - poof! - your interest in this matter disappears! Right? Come on, would Mickey do you wrong?

No. Mickey would walk across giant sticky traps to bring you a cool, refreshing drink in your Earth Day Mickey Mouse Water Bottle.

But please do not ask what you are drinking.

So we've told you what we thought were the best, pretty good, not so hot, and worst sippy and straw cups for kids from toddlerdom through the pre-K years. We think there were actually some pretty good cups in the Middle Tier this round, and even some decent ones in our Bottom Tier - the competition was tighter, for sure! So we're particularly curious to find out what cup readers - that's you! - will vote to rescue from this division's middle and bottom tier and strongarm into ZRecs Top Pick status!

Photos of all the contenders are below, as well as those already awarded Top Pick status, for comparison. The poll is in the Z Recommends sidebar. If you'd like to reread our reviews and scoring to remind you of which of our reviews had us most vigorously shaking your head in protest, here they are:

• Middle Tier


• Bottom Tier


• World's Worst

Don't miss your chance to vote up your favorite from among our unchosen - we'll keep this poll open through July 7. Use your vote to promote the cup you think is most deserving of "Top Pick" status!













Existing Top Picks in this division are: