Baby Bargains Dishes Dirt

"Welcome to the high temple of baby-gear consumerism."

Alan Fields spreads his arms to encompass the entirety of the Babies "R" Us superstore in Westminster — a cavernous expanse saturated in pink, purple and yellow and filled with two-story-high shelves stuffed with play yards and diaper bags, bouncy seats and practice potties. Denise, Alan's wife, pilots him to the section devoted to bottle-feeding. Row after row of baby bottles loom above them, surrounded by accoutrements like bottle brushes and drying racks, powdered-formula dispensers and electronic steam sterilizers. There are angled bottles and disposable bottles, non-drip bottles and hands-free bottles, even bottles with nipples that mimic the feel of a mother's breast.

"These always freak people out," Alan says about the massive variety and selection, over baby wails echoing from a distant aisle and cool jazz dribbling out of the intercom. "Trying to make sense of all this is overwhelming."

But making sense of it all is what this Boulder couple has been doing for thirteen years. The Fieldses are the authors of Baby Bargains, a best-selling book on baby products. They're currently working on an update to the sixth edition of their 600-page tome, and to keep up with the ever-changing industry, they pore over e-mails about product recalls, question manufacturers and specialty retailers all over the world, attend baby-product trade shows and seek out the opinions of the 15,000 parents who post comments on the Baby Bargains online message boards. The Fieldses will describe and grade, from A to F, more than 500 products in the new edition, which retails for $17.95.

Today they're on one of their monthly visits to the world's largest baby-product chain (they also visit competitors such as Target and Wal-Mart) to discover what new merchandise has hit the shelves — and what sort of new trouble they can get into.

Dressed casually, like other parents, they move from the bottles, past bibs printed with cute sayings like "Tax Deduction" and "Spit Happens," to food grinders designed specifically for turning food into baby-safe mush. "If you have a food processor, why do you need one of these?" Denise asks rhetorically.

In the stroller section, the two note with displeasure that, despite trendy European brand names like Mia MODA and Chicco, almost all of the models are made in China. "We imagine there is one giant baby-gear factory over there that makes all of this and then stamps different names on it," snipes Alan. Denise just grins; she lets him make most of the wisecracks. Overseas designers, they say, don't seem to consider the needs of American parents — of which there are many. Case in point: an Italian-owned brand has refused for years to include cup holders on their strollers. "In Europe, coffee is for cafes, not strollers," says Denise, while in this country, it seems physically impossible to push the little one around the park without a soy latte to go.

Then there's Combi, a Japanese brand. "They've never really listened to their customers," grumbles Alan as he rolls out one of Combi's strollers and pulls a tape measure from his pocket. He gauges the height of its handles from the floor: "About 39 inches" — a good three to four inches shorter than other models. While the Combi's dimensions are perfect for shorter-statured Japanese parents, he's worried that taller Americans could suffer a slipped disc from stooping over to reach it.

That information will be included in this stroller's grade in Baby Bargains, a book that has become, to the delight of some and the chagrin of others, the product bible for hundreds of thousands of new and expecting parents in the United States.

"Fortunately or unfortunately, [the book] does have an impact," says George Ivaldi, co-owner of Sorelle, a large U.S. crib manufacturer. "The way the book grades from an A to an F, I'd give the book a B-plus. They've given me a B-minus, but I give it a B-plus. And the only reason I give the book a B-plus is because it comes out every two years. The industry is changing so rapidly. The book comes out every two years; how can they be up to date on everything? If it came out every month, I would give it an A-plus."

New employees at Great Beginnings, an 80,000-foot baby and children's store in Maryland, are given Baby Bargains as a training manual, and when Alan showed up there last spring to autograph the book, 700 parents lined up to get copies signed.

"Without exaggeration, 89 to 90 percent of our customers walk in our door with that book in their hands," says the store's Brian Green. "We joke around here that it is the Michelin guide to having a baby. I think their company is strong enough that they could take a company off the map with a bad review."

At Baby World & Big Kids II in Denver, manager Lou Rosenthal keeps a reference copy under the counter — though it's hardly necessary, since half of his weekend customers bring their own. "Some people just don't have any idea of what they are buying. If it says it in the book, they will buy it," he says. "It eliminates a lot of other choices."

While some have questioned the Fieldses' credentials as baby-product experts, the couple points out how much research they do; in addition, as the parents of two boys, now eleven and fourteen, their expertise also comes from their own experiences — like most parents.

Back at Babies "R" Us, Alan is marching down the aisle of high chairs, carefully noting the interior dimensions of each seat, to see if an infant could actually fit comfortably inside. Denise, at his side, jots into a notepad. "It's a bit high," he declares of a Graco chair whose feeding tray is seven and a half inches from the seat bottom, suggesting that it would probably come up to an infant's chin. "That's pushing it," he pronounces of another model whose tray is six and a half inches from the seat back, making it more likely that baby will dribble food into his lap. "Never try to fold one of these on live television," he advises as he wrestles with a plastic seat. Three years ago, he struggled mightily with an infant car seat during a segment on the Today show — one of many TV appearances the couple has made.

Finally, they come to the end of the line: a particularly posh model with the sleek Italian name Peg Perego. Alan reads off its measurements with disbelief: nine inches high by seven inches wide. Its manufacturers must have been imagining an infant who could scare small dogs and dunk a basketball. "For this, you pay $200," mutters Alan.

A purple-clad employee wanders by, eyeing the couple's tape measure, notebook and aura of authoritative indignation, as well as their obvious lack of an infant in tow. "Do you need anything?" he asks warily. They wave him off. If management knew the two were on the premises, they wouldn't be happy. While Babies "R" Us stores stock 10,000 different items — including Consumer Reports Best Baby Products and a baby-health-related title by the Fieldses, Baby 411 — they will not carry Baby Bargains.

Soon the couple reaches the store's back wall, which is packed with baby bedding. Denise is passionate about overpriced products — expensive Bugaboo strollers give her fits — so crib sets costing hundreds of dollars and featuring plush quilts, crib bumpers and pillows, nearly cause apoplexy.

Not to mention the safety issues. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has recommended that crib linens be limited to a fitted sheet and a simple cotton blanket. "This is how babies suffocate. This is not supposed to be used in the crib at all," fumes Denise. "This is the baby industry at its most ridiculous."

Despite their skepticism, however, the Fieldses say they are far from anti-capitalist Luddites. "I would never say consumerism is a bad thing," says Denise. "The more competition, the better. What is better than choice? The people who produce the best products with the best safety record usually come out on top." The problem, Denise argues, is the emphasis on stuff: "I think it encourages people to be so focused on product that they forget the whole focus and point of marriage and family."

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While they still sell well, designer strollers are so 2003. Leather seats, single-action braking systems, all-terrain tires, titanium frames — it's all passé. The next big thing, the hot new baby-product trend, is high chairs. Denise and Alan consider this development as they sit in their home office, surrounded by marketing pamphlets from the recent ABC Kids Expo in Las Vegas, where they talked with more than 500 vendors over three days.

There they'd seen indignations like the Fresco highchair, a $400 cross between a barber's chair and an egg cup that would be perfect "if Mork and Mindy had a baby," says Alan. The seat, which can be transformed into a futuristic newborn "sleeping pod," is encased in a plastic shell with microsuede upholstery inside. It is available in various colors: harvest orange, Bermuda blue or, for particularly risqué parents, midnight black. For the same price, there was the Flair Elite, featuring hydraulic-lift height adjustment and a pristine white plastic seat perfect for accentuating the puréed carrot that would surely be regurgitated all over it. They'd also discovered a remnant of the stroller-as-status-symbol craze: the $800 iCandy Apple. Who, exactly, was the stroller's target audience? they'd asked. Wasn't it obvious? responded the vendor: Gwyneth Paltrow.