Boon unveiled several new feeding products at the trade show, including baby bottles and a straw cup and a great-looking dish drainer that plays on artificial grass. Here's a close-up demo of the straw cup:


Born Free refused to let us film their prototype, but it's too late for that. Born Free and OXO each have identically-functioning cups that will be coming out around the same time - each of them featuring a twist ring that releases the straw, which is held against the inner rim when it is closed, rather than pinched midway between the center and edge, as the last two popular straw cup design saw similar widespread adoption a few years ago by Thermos, Nurture Pure, etc., and the flip-top (Munchkin, Playtex) did before that. Design comes in waves across this industry.

Here's a bowl I guess we missed - it's available now. Its lozenge shape echoes rounded corners we're seeing in new designs across the market. Such corners give babies and multitasking caregivers more scoopability when trying to get food out of a bowl - a feature pioneered by another company we'll write up soon. Anyway, Boon's bowl:



But Boon also has a bizarre web-like bowl holder in development that sort of turns the stay-put bowl idea on its head. "Wrap" actually encapsulates a bowl of your own in a thermoplastic elastomer webbing that has a suction base and wraps around the bowl lip too. The idea is that it helps keep the bowl affixed to a surface (these things are always great for high chairs, terrible for tables - porous surfaces don't take to suction cups well) but if it fails, the wrap protects the bowl if it is dropped, thrown, etc. We're looking forward to testing this one out when it comes into production.


We saw another clever reworking of the stay-put bowl concept from a new-to-America company that we've been waiting to reach our shores. We'll have a demo of that up soon.

And here's the Grass dish drainer, which is just plain clever. We'll test it too, to see how it works.


Boon also has some new bath stuff, also in prototype stage, that we'll show off soon. One strange item I haven't quite wrapped my head around yet, and one that looks very interesting.

We teased this feeding set a few weeks ago and revealed in our Holiday Gift Guide that the manufacturer is Thinkbaby, the startup we named one of the leading companies to watch in the third and final edition of our Z Report on BPA before we shifted to our directory-style ZRecs Guide format. We gathered from our intensive interviews across the industry that Thinkbaby would be up to interesting things in the months and years to come, although we didn't know quite what. I'm pleased to announce they're about to prove us right.

I'd like to give you a walk-through of this feeding set, which is the best new collection of tableware we've seen and tested in a long time. It's not only not available yet, but hasn't even been seen anywhere else online yet. It'll be available for sale in mid-December, but we're going to wow you with our industry pull at the end of this post. First, the reveal, in reverse order of interest.


Every feeding set needs utensils. These are nice ones, but nothing to blog home about. Contoured to help kids scoop, made of polypropylene with TPE (thermoplastic elastomer) handles for grip.


OK, getting intriguing. This cup has a polypropylene shell and a stainless steel interior, and the two parts separate for cleaning. This means that your child's drink never comes into contact with plastic, but the plastic insulates the drink. Stainless steel, like glass, is pretty much the gold standard for food contact items, and Thinkbaby's advanced thinking on this - pairing metal and plastic to draw out the strengths of each material - is clever and functional. The handle has a break in it, so it doubles as a carry clip for attaching it to a diaper bag or stroller handle. (The rough edges you might notice on the logo on our cup are due to the fact that we were using a prototype, which typically do not use the final logo application method but a cheaper and less durable ink.)




The feeding set's two bowls offer the same polypropylene cladding and stainless steel interior and also come apart for cleaning. You can use the stainless steel bowls on their own, if you like. Both bowls also come with well-fitting polypropylene lids, in orange so they're easy to find. One bowl is deeper than the other, but their diameter is the same, which means each lid fits both bowls. Perfect for storing leftovers or carrying a meal on the go.



Our favorite piece in the set, Thinkbaby's "bento box" closes with a tight seal on all four sides but releases easily. With a polypropylene exterior and a stainless steel interior, this container is the only one in the set that doesn't come apart.



The entire set is BPA-free (and phthalate-free, although that pretty much goes without saying for tableware these days). It's expected to be priced at around $40 for the set, and available in the next couple of weeks from Thinkbaby's website, after their first batch arrives at their warehouse.

In addition to having this exclusive first look at the set, however, Z Recommends has also been offered the chance to give away a set now - that's pre-release, baby! Company reps have set aside a full set from the small stash of finished samples they've had air freighted over in advance of the full shipment. For us, it's a small way of thanking you for your impassioned participation in discussions about the best, the safest, and the coolest in kids' tableware, sippy cups, and baby bottles in the year-plus we've been reporting on BPA and safer products for the care and feeding of your kids.

To enter, comment on this post and tell us who in your life would actually appreciate just how cool it would be for you to have this sweet set of kids' tableware before it was actually available for sale.

If you do know someone with whom you could fawn over your exclusive score like a couple of Harley dudes over the latest chopper, ask yourself, Do they know about Z Recommends? Because they totally should, don't you think?

If you don't, just give yourself a moment to reflect on how odd niche web communities can be.

Official rules: One entry per person. Entrants must be 18 or older and have a U.S. mailing address to ship the prize to. We'll accept entries until 10:59 p.m. CT on Dec. 1, 2008, and contact the winner via email shortly thereafter. If the winner fails to respond within five business days, we'll award the prize to an alternate. No purchase necessary.

We couldn't be more excited about a new tableware set we'll be reviewing next week, not yet on the market but slated for imminent release. Want to guess who makes it?

Combining plastic and stainless steel in two layers offers the heat shielding and comfort of polypropylene but the durability and maximal chemical safety of stainless steel. It is a true innovation in a market accustomed to incremental improvements and a lot of false starts.

The two bowls that will be available in this line - unlike the chunky, well-engineered, and thoroughly satisfying food storage container above - are both designed to have the plastic and stainless steel separated for washing or alternative use. Both also come with lids to allow them to double as simple food storage containers.



We have the first samples the company has released, and will publish a detailed review of the full set next week.

We had a lot of questions from readers about the Trebimbi Click kids' utensil set we reviewed on Sunday. Here are a few points we may have left out of the review:

The Click set is not for toddlers - it is ideal for children ages 4 and up. I should have mentioned this in the review, as the readers who wrote in were almost certainly thinking of toddler tableware.

That said, there is a stage of childhood in which smaller utensils are appreciated when offered, but well after children can handle tableware handily and would find "toddler" utensils frustrating (fork won't spear, knife won't cut). This set is designed for that age. The utensils' front ends are scaled a bit better to children's mouths, although the bowl of the spoon is larger than some. Also, some common utensil dimensions are a bit on the long side and/or a bit heavy for young children to handle comfortably. See the image below for a size comparison of the Click's fork with our "standard" forks, which are about 7" long. We take great pains to size things like umbrellas, scissors, brooms... for what? Does the same reasoning apply here? In the end, whether a child, or an adult, should have a set of utensils that better matches their size (whether this set or any other), or whether they should use a standard size they will "grow into," is a matter of family preference.

Z doesn't have any trouble with the Lego-like bit (not made by Lego, no affiliation with Lego, not compatible with Legos) on the handle. She holds them as pictured above.

The two best things about this utensil set are (a) the pieces stick firmly together, meaning you can take them somewhere as a set, and (b) they are cute.

The concept: Very cute. The execution: Top-quality. The impact: Real convenience. The perfect travel utensil set (checked luggage, please).




I was surprised to hear that anyone thought they could sell set of kids' utensils for $20 - even Trebimbi, known for quality that costs. Now that I've seen them, I'd buy them.


Available in red, yellow, green, or blue. Design like this in kids' tableware is like a cool breeze on a very hot day.

After readers alerted us to instances where we had listed Sassy products as containing BPA where other online retailers and informational sites listed them as BPA-free, we asked the company to dig deeper to provide us with a comprehensive list that could clear up the discrepancies. Three months later, we received a materials list from the company's R&D group that corrects information previously provided by customer service representatives and Sassy managers in more than a dozen cases. Sadly, ten of these cases are of products previously stated to be BPA-free, which the company now states do contain Bisphenol-A, many of them using it in conjunction with color-changing properties.

The following items were previously reported by Sassy as BPA-free, but are now reported to contain BPA:

Feeding products

• Snack Time Infa-Trainer Cup


• Color Change Fork and Spoon


• Color Change Infant Feeding Spoon


• Extra Gentle Soft Tip Spoon


• Flexi Grip Toddler Spoon and Fork


• Ideal Temp Feeding Spoon


• EZ Grip Feeding Bowls with utensils

Bath Toys

• Soft Ducky


• Squirting Sea Pals


• Boogie Board Buddy

The following additional items were previously reported to ZRecs as being free of PVC, but actually contain it (although they are still reported to be free of phthalates as well as BPA):

• Bathtime Kitchen Sink


• Car Wash


• Counting Bath Time Bucket


• Gator Boat


• Snap and Squirt Sea Creatures

Two items were not included in this materials list, and ZRecs is seeking confirmation of their status:

• Gummy Guppy Teether


• Al-i-Sorter

While we are disappointed by the inaccuracy of previously provided information and the need for the correction, we commend Sassy for their willingness to dig deeper and provide consumers with the best information possible. Openness on issues of concern to parents helps strengthen companies' relationships with consumers in the long term, and we appreciate their willingness to correct previous misstatements.

If you are aware of other informational sites or retailers selling the ten BPA-containing items above as BPA-free, we encourage you to provide them with this updated information.

The next edition of the Z Report, due out in a week, will bring with it major improvements in format and usability as well as the breadth of children's products and chemicals covered. Listings will include item-by-item confidence ratings reflecting ZRecs' level of confidence in the information provided about each product. This rating will replace our overall company ratings and take into consideration the specific source of the information at the company, the format in which information was provided, known properties of the materials used, and the company's previous accuracy record when reporting information to ZRecs.

There are other exciting developments in store as we continue to work to provide readers with the most comprehensive and accurate source of information about harmful chemicals in plastics, and we encourage you to provide us with feedback about how we're doing at any time. You can reach us directly at editors (at) zrecs (dot) com.