Wednesday, June 30, 2010

A new entry in the "most ridiculous baby item" category

Procter & Gamble has announced that they're going to be launching a line of designer diapers. Cynthia Rowley has designed a line of 11 different patterned diapers that will be for sale at a major premium.

Are they kidding? No, strike that. Are they INSANE?

They say they're planning to sell a box of two dozen of these super-duper ladidah diapers for about $15.99. That's SIXTEEN DOLLARS FOR TWENTY-FOUR DIAPERS. Really. That is complete and total utter insanity. Know why? Well, of course, I'm going to tell you why. Newborns can rip through as many as a dozen diapers a day (a bad day, granted, but still). Older babies might go through five or six, maybe more, depending on how many are messy and how often they pull the old "poop in a fresh diaper" trick. So if your baby uses six diapers a day, you will use up a whole pack of those designer diapers in four days.

Also, hello, most babies are wearing clothes over their diapers most of the time. So the only time you would even see these designer diapers is if the baby is only wearing a diaper. That's all fine and all, except that I always dress my child before I leave the house. (Yes, we've all seen those mothers wearing muumuus in Wal-Mart with their babies dressed only in a saggy diaper. Fine, whatever. I don't aspire to that.) So the only time the fancy label would be visible is when I'm home alone with my child! So wouldn't that completely defeat the purpose of putting overpriced designer diapers on your child, which is to impress other people with your taste/spending power/utter stupidity?

Ah, but what if you genuinely just like the pattern on the diaper, you might be asking. After all, one of the patterns is supposed to be madras plaid, and we all know how I feel about madras plaid. I love it nearly as much as I love seersucker, which is evidenced by my children's wardrobes (and er, my own. One day I'm going to convince David to wear madras plaid or seersucker. It may take a long time, but I am going to try really hard.). But if you really like madras plaid, as I do, why not just buy a pair of madras plaid shorts or bubble for your son or a madras plaid dress and matching diaper cover for your daughter? You know, things that you can wash and they can wear again? Ragsland and Kelly's Kids have tons of this stuff. If those cost too much--and please, if you think those cost too much but are willing to fork out $16 for 24 diapers, you clearly need to reexamine your spending priorities--then check out Old Navy or even a consignment sale for the gently used stuff. I once bought a darling Ragsland john-john outfit for William at a consignment sale; it was madras plaid, still had the tags on it, and cost all of about $15. That's a dollar cheaper than those diapers, and he wore that outfit at least ten times, and Andrew will wear it one day, too.

Sheesh. Just when you think you've seen it all, they come up with something even weirder than you thought you could imagine. But I think it's hard to top designer diapers, particularly designer disposable diapers.

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