The Manliest Baby Product
By Noah Charney
We men love our babies. We love them so much that we are willing to be seen out with them, accompanied by all manner of pink, baby blue, frilly, Hello Kitty, Minnie Mouse-strewn garments, backpacks, changing bags, and assorted paraphernalia. We find this acceptable. Heck, if we're willing to take a bullet for our babies, then we can deal with a glitter-embossed Smurfette diaper bag. But while it is acceptable, it is not ideal. Surely there are some baby products out there that, while not exactly masculine and cool, would at least not make us feel like we're living an outtake from Three Men and a Baby.
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While the general outlook on manly baby gear is bleak, there is one product that will make a man's knees grow weak, his heart flutter faster - a similar sensation to seeing a must-have car. It is a stroller, but to call it a stroller is like calling Chuck Norris an actor. This is the stroller: powerful, well-made, strong enough to off-road, scoffing at potholes, ruts, and cobbles, full of thoughtful features, and brimming with gadgets. Yes, you heard me, men. If James Bond were to have a baby, this would be the stroller issued to him by Q. All it's missing is the pop-up missile launcher and ejection seat. It is the Peg Perego GT3, and it is, far and away, the most masculine and flat-out coolest of all strollers on the market. Believe me: You want this.
To kick things off, the GT3 is a three-wheeled stroller. Its wheels are proper wheels, rubber with wide treads, air chambers, and ball bearings - not round plastic Frisbees. It is made with a lot of metal, not flimsy canvas and not only plastic. It feels robust and wears wonderfully well. One GT3 will survive many children, and there is a lively market in used GT3s - the Land Rovers of the baby-carriage set. I've test-driven mine on the ruptured dirt roads around our country house in Italy, along the cobblestone streets of Rome, and on alpine hiking trails in the Julian Alps. It breezes through mud, hops over gnarled roots, and maintains a smooth ride for your little one (you almost forgot that there was a baby on board, didn't you?). It even has adjustable shocks, with three levels of firmness to choose from, depending on your terrain.
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But adjustable shocks are just the start of the GT3's gadgetry. Like the Batmobile, it transforms, with the touch of a button. The GT3 comes with three components. There is a car seat, a basinet for newborns, and a sport-style front-facing stroller seat for toddlers. The components share the same base system, and click into place. It's a piece of cake to remove the basinet, complete with slumbering infant, and carry it from the stroller to the bedroom, or to remove Junior while he's in the car seat and click the seat into the stroller base, in one smooth movement.
The base, or chassis as I like to think of it, can collapse flat for transport in the back of your SUV (you do have an SUV, don't you?). To un-collapse it, the Italian engineers at Peg Perego came up with an unbelievably cool trick. You literally snap the collapsed stroller with your hands, in a motion like smacking someone with a gym towel, and it pops back open, clicking into place, ready to carry your little one. The motion is so satisfying that I look forward to the chance to show off this wizard's sleight of hand to anyone (the postman, my mother-in-law, an insurance salesman) who will stop long enough to watch. This is a stroller that a man will actually want to be seen with, will want to interact with, not merely a functional means of transporting a child.
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In addition to the convertible, rock-solid chassis, this baby is loaded with clever gizmos in the vein of the Bondian Aston Martin. A bicycle-style hand break, with a locking mechanism, sits on the foam-padded, adjustable handlebar. Into this clicks a removable pouch (note I was careful not to call it a fanny pack) that can be worn like a messenger bag (or, if you must, like a fanny pack) and is, thankfully, in all models, a simple black. It's ideal for keys, a wallet, a water bottle, spare diapers, and more - slender but spacious, not like the parachute-sized diaper bags that most manufacturers think we want. But in case a single water bottle is insufficient to quench your thirst, there is a pair of pop-up cup holders on either side of the chassis. Beneath the stroller, there's a spacious cargo hold with a lip that clicks into place, or out of the way, to lock your goods inside, or make accessing them easy. You can adjust the angle of the bed of the basinet or the sport seat with a twist of the wrist, elevating or lowering the head or legs. You can lock the front wheel, to facilitate rocking Junior back and forth without having the wheels twist as you go. You can pop open a mesh backing to the seat, to provide ventilation and a direct view, from behind, of your toddler. The adjustable sun canopy can also be a rain blocker, as the GT3 comes with a transparent rain hood that buttons satisfyingly into place.
If you want the complete GT3, with car seat, basinet, sport seat, chassis, et al., then you want the GT3 Naked Modular System. See, even the name is cool. And yes, you'd be correct to think that most men who learn that you've bought a GT3 will think you're referring to the Porsche model of the same name. Be warned, however, that this stroller also has a Porsche-styled price tag, at around $700 for the basic model, more for the complete, arousingly-entitled Naked Modular System. It's also tricky to get in the U.S. (though you can find it at Toys R Us), the GT3 being a creature which primarily roams the lamp-lit streets and urban savannahs of Europe.
If there's a downside, it's also one of the reasons the GT3 feels so good to drive - and it does feel like you're driving it, not just pushing. It is among the heaviest strollers on the market, weighing in around 35 pounds (15 kilos). That's a lot to lift into your trunk and work up a steep hill. Add a baby to the load, and you can give yourself a decent workout, bench-pressing your baby up slopes. The weight means solidity, a proper cage of metal to protect your precious cargo, but it also means that it is not a convenient product for the slight and dainty among us. You'll want muscles to manipulate this stallion of a stroller.
So, aside from the Greek god of strollers, do manly baby products exist? In the interest of fellow baby-loving men, I embarked on an investigation.
The answer is yes, but shockingly few. My excavations dug up precious little that was genuinely masculine and cool. On the market now are products that look as though they were designed by women to be acceptable for men, but nothing designed by men, for men. About the closest you can get to a manly diaper bag is one that is just an all-black version of the one with a fluffy-cloud-and-kitten pattern. How have the male designers, the good male designers, missed this niche? It's a potential gold mine (manufacturers, are you listening?). While there is a good selection of ironic, hipster products (which speaks to a certain sort of man), and a smattering of products with flaming skulls sewn on (which speaks to another sort of man), there is a paucity of elegant, gentlemanly attire and accoutrements. Among the slim pickings, here is what we found.
The DadGear company is just about the only dedicated manufacturer of masculine baby products. They feature proper, bike messenger-style shoulder bags, in solid dark colors, compartmentalized to fit plenty of diapers, lotions, changes of clothes, bibs, and snacks. And in case you're just not into carrying a diaper bag, they offer zip-up vests kitted out with extra pockets to fit everything that you would otherwise have tucked into your bag. The idea is that you can be hands-free with your child, and still have the necessities - but it requires a minimalist approach to packing those necessities, otherwise you'll end up with a vest so full of goods that you might be mistaken for the Michelin Man. The Diaper Dude bag is something of a hybrid between a messenger bag and a construction worker's tool belt, and is available in camouflage. Each of their bags features a dragon on it, Angelina Jolie tattoo-style. But these bags come across as someone's idea of what a man will want to be seen with (how many of us really want to carry a camouflage tool belt with a blue dragon on it?), and they certainly won't pass for elegant. That's generally what you'll find out there: normal diaper bags of an unappealing shape, with cartoon-manly decals stuck on, like the diaper bag dotted with skulls, from ILOVEBABY. At least the Baby Bjorn baby carriers, with which you can strap your infant to your chest as you make your way through town, come in a series of dark colors. Or you could always opt to distract from your own gear by adding a touch of ironic spice to your kid. I always smile at the Mustachifier: a pacifier that makes it look like your baby has a mustache. It comes in your choice of "gentleman" (think Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood) or "cowboy" (if you'd like your little one to look like a miniature backup singer from The Village People). For your budding Brooklyn, facial-haired barista, there's the Fun Play Espresso Machine, which does everything but make scalding coffee. My personal favorite item of "ironic-wear" is a bib inscribed with the words: "These fools put my cape on backwards!"
Dads are cut a lot of slack when they are out with their babies. Being a good father means that no one really cares if you've got a Hello Kitty bib flung over your arm. But it would be nice to have a bit more of a selection of baby products that a man can be proud to wear, not just items that we don't mind being seen with.
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