Low expectations can warp our perception of value, which for us means that stuff that looks gimmicky has to work that much better to win us over. Boon's Squirt infant feeding spoon, which allows parents the heretofore unrequested option of storing food physically within a spoon and squirting it in individual bites onto the spoon for a baby to eat, walks and talks like just such a duck, looking more at home as a stage of this device -



- than poking out of your best friend's diaper bag.

But I cannot tell a lie: We love the Boon Squirt.

Usually we can squelch any preconceptions we have about new products by quickly requesting and testing them out, but in this case we have a good excuse for allowing time for our biases to start masquerading as something more. We declined to check out the Squirt until recently because the original design used polycarbonate plastic - the only item in Boon's clever feeding line to be made with BPA. The company's marketing director at the time told us they'd consider making a polypropylene version if the demand was there, and they decided it was; they've introduced a new pink version of their feeding line this fall, and chose to make it with BPA-free polypropylene.



So here we are, almost a year later, and now that we have finally tried it out, I have to say that this thing is not silly, even though it might seem silly if you haven't tried it. Or, rather, it is silly, but it also works great and is actually pretty convenient for certain uses. The silliness is just, as they say, gravy.

The Squirt features a firm but squishy cavity (the pink part) with a threaded interior rim that screws on to a relatively clear front portion that has a spoon and a very small (maybe 1/2 cm) hole in it at the back of the spoon, about where the handle would be if this were a traditional spoon. The chamber holds 4 ounces of prepared baby food perfectly, and is really designed for stage-one, thoroughly-pureed foods; anything chunky, be it homemade or store-bought, anything with pasta stars or bits of turkey or what have you, is not going to be very happy trying to squeeze through that little hole. This device is really for feeding first foods only, making it a little less versatile than a traditional infant spoon.

But it does work great for those first foods, and even a teensy bit beyond. We tested it with a jar of Earth's Best raspberry applesauce, which is as smooth as silk, and were charmed by its efficiency, its simplicity, and the balanced feel of what looks like a bulky object. We also tested it with yogurt, which again had no problem. It also had no problem dispensing slightly chunky applesauce (and by slightly I mean applesauce that is free of any real chunks but kind of lumpy or fibrous in the way that non-baby-food applesauce is). So while this spoon isn't suitable for feeding certain, very chunky foods to a young child, it works with well-pureed, spoon-fed foods you'd feed to an infant.

The parts screw together nicely and solidly, and the overall design is good. The tube requires a bit firmer press to squeeze out contents than we had anticipated, and you have to hold the Squirt at the proper angle so that this food will rest against the dispenser hole and will squirt out, instead of air. It's easy to use, it means you can feed a baby (or, in this case, a four-year-old who is thrilled to "play baby") with one hand without having access to a surface to rest a jar of baby food on. Adventurers, take note.

The most impressive thing about the design of this object is its cap, which clips to the top of the spoon bowl and plugs the hole with a small piece of rubbery plastic. It can actually withstand a reasonable amount of pressure without popping off or leaking - and by "reasonable" I mean we tried as hard as we were willing to try without risking destroying the whole device. They knew how much this element mattered, and engineered it perfectly.



But using the Squirt with a four-year-old test subject meant that an additional function was pretty obvious to us. Our daughter has a bad habit of refusing breakfast and then freaking out with hunger when it's time to leave the house - a bit of psychops, for sure, but also the simple fact that when she gets hungry she MUST EAT NOW and doesn't reach that point until she's been awake for a while. So here's our thought: We think Boon should sell a separate front half of the Squirt with a cap or flip-top of some kind instead of a spoon. Parents could fill it with yogurt or applesauce, grab it on their way out the door, and make what would otherwise be messy even for preschoolers - eating something runny out of a container with a spoon - and probably dangerous (what happens if you crash?) safer and pretty much hassle-free. Basically it would allow folks who aren't interested in "to-go" yogurt packs based on the sugar content or the waste involved to offer their kids a similar kind of snack without the downside. Jenni is adamant that she would buy this version of the Squirt in a six-pack, stock them with yogurt, and use them as morning snacks. Do you hear that, Boon? A SIX-PACK. And she is not the only crazy lady out there!

As for the orange Squirt: Boon is now producing a BPA-free version, and are phasing out the polycarbonate one. That makes buying the orange version on Amazon a bit confusing; there is no BPA information with any of its listings, and although graphics appear to show the clear polycarbonate version, sometimes Amazon's graphics themselves are just outdated. Your best bet if you're interested in orange is to buy it directly from the Boon website. The pink version is currently available only on Amazon.com, with the reassurance that there is no such thing as a polycarbonate pink Squirt.