Creepy
I find this a tad disturbing. Whatever happened to parents just checking on their kids from time to time to make sure they're okay?
Babies can now enjoy the thrill of wearable health monitors, as well as giving away their personal data for free, thanks to the arrival of a $499 teddy bear called “Teddy The Guardian”. You read that right: the teddy's price is just one dollar shy of five hundred. You're paying the big bucks for the bear's “smart paw” that …
This product is aimed at the cashed up "Guilty Mums" who are suckers for buying whatever promises to be good for the child. The fact that it is probably going to be no more than a useless toy is irrelevant if it is correctly advertised. Real parents for millennia have managed with just checking the kid out every so often. They are actually pretty tough (been a parent a few times) and seem quite able to make a noise if upset or want attention.
I can see that working well. After all, babies will always hold the correct hand and not the other hand or the ear or a foot. And they'll do it for the required amount of time in the right way.
There is SO much baby tat out there and this pretty much tops the pile of Things That Won't Work.
Agree. Who thought that babies have such good motor skills that they'd be able to grip the sensor in the first place?
By the time a child can actually hold the thing reliably, they're old enough to shout for attention.
The most important function of a monitor is to detect if a baby stops moving, not to measure their temperature or heartrate, so you'll still need to shell out for a sleep monitor..
And as for measuring heart-rate in the first place, I'm reminded of George S. Patton's (paraphrased, and possibly apocryphal) quote: "just because you can measure something doesn't mean that it's worth a damn to know it"
1. Aimed at the wrong age group of babies. Newborns, which are the ones new parents worry about in this way, can't hold anything let alone find this teddy's paw for 4 seconds. Once they're capable of such interaction the biggest worrys are that they don't fall from height head first onto concrete, run in front of a car, drink bleach etc...
2. Even if this did work they things you buy your kids and the things they like to play with are usually completely different things. Even if they loved it when they were in the shop.
charging cables, toilet rolls, cat food, cat litter, the contents of the dishwasher/washing machine, oven doors, remote controls, anything fragile and expensive/dangerous when broken and bloody Duplo, which is not quite the landmine for the unsuspecting bare foot that Lego is but it's close.
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>Or you could just use, say, a mother's soothing touch...
Don't be silly, mummy is far too busy sharing both their personal data on facebook, including the fact that they have a $500 stuffed toy.
I've never understood the monitor thing. If the baby's heart has stopped, what realistically, are you likely to do and are you likely to be able to do it in a reasonable timeframe? Once you've woken up, stumbled through the house, etc.
I can guarantee that this is a complete and utter waste of time. On the offchance that the child does actually take an interest in the teddy, it will :
not hold the correct paw most of the time
not hold the correct paw for a duration of four seconds, in the event that the child does hold the correct paw
will chew or attempt to chew the paw containing electronics - lets hope they're spit-proof!
will use the teddy to hit things, or will hit the teddy with other things
will find surprising new places for the teddy to live e.g. behind the tv, in the kitchen bin, in the dishwasher
Given the price of wearable tech these days, and the price of childrens toys, how anyone would agree to pay more than $100 I don't know. Even a hundred bucks is TOO DAMN MUCH for this, given what it does, let alone five hundred!
But the biggest failing... as there always comes a time when teddy needs to take a trip around the washing machine, can you disconnect the electroncs in this thing? Or like the sleepsuit from a favourite uncle does it need to go straight in the bin the first time it gets splattered with unwanted bodily excretions?
From a very early early age, my little monster has savagely disassembled every stuffed toy he's been given. Grandparents still keep giving them, we either hide 'em fast or prepare to clean up a lot of stuffing.
To be fair, there was the "new baby" doll the Mrs got him to prepare him for the imminent arrival of the next monster next month but that was pretty solid plastic and mostly he beats the cat with it.
My guess is that this came from a marketing exec who has either a) no kids or b) a nanny.
totally agree! Our little girls (she's nearly 3) favourite thing is the cunningly named Cat Cat (Marie from the Aristorcats) she has had this since she was very young and takes it just about everywhere, so Cat Cat needs a regular bath, visit to the washing machine!
Given the price of wearable tech these days, and the price of childrens toys, how anyone would agree to pay more than $100 I don't know.
Simples... it's cute, cuddly and about to be heavily promoted. It's thinking of the children. :) All it will really need though to fly off the shelves is some TV idol (Oprah?) to endorse it and tell everyone they "must have this"..... Gotta' love the shills and the sheeple* that follow them.
*I realize I'm treading on someone's copyright of this word and will send the requisite fee as soon as I know where to send it. Please post full detail such as name, addy, bank account number.
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Let me fix that for you, jake -
"play on the grandparents' insecurities about the exhausted parents' inability to look after the child."
Parents aren't usually the market for this shit - they're too busy and too tired. "Helpful" grandparents, on the other hand...
A poor argument, JDX?
Your multi-great-Grandmother lived in East Africa, probably over 100,000 years ago. The same woman was also likely my multi-great-Grandmother[1]. Not a single family in the ensuing years seemed to have had a need for this kind of contraption. We ARE here, today, right?
Marketards, on the other hand? They only live for this week's profit ...
[1] Like it or not, we are probably cousins. As is everyone else reading this.
"Your multi-great-Grandmother lived in East Africa, probably over 100,000 years ago. The same woman was also likely my multi-great-Grandmother[1]. Not a single family in the ensuing years seemed to have had a need for this kind of contraption. We ARE here, today, right?"
By the same argument we don't need anything invented since the birth of man
"By the same argument we don't need anything invented since the birth of man"
Of course! :-)
Needs and wants and abilities are different things, though ... But good old homo-sap made it until not very long ago without what we now call "Modern Medicine" ... and we would continue on as a species without it, if it were to magically go away tomorrow.
You wonder: "What do you reckon the infant mortality rate was 100,000 years ago?"
I dunno. Do we have stats from an electronic 100,000 year old teddy-bear? Until you can answer that, the question is pretty much moot, at least in this scenario & in this forum.
We ne'er add no teddy bear, dint even no wat one wur. All we add wur a brick us dad 'd gi us fer ten seconds t'elp us go t'sleep, an if we wunt asleep in ten seconds eed hit us oer ed wi it.
You wer lucky, you had a dad. Our cat 'd bring our brick.
Brick? you wer lucky, we used t'dream of havin' a brick.
Ay, when ah say brick ah mean...
. . . the teddy bears' fur harbors some nasty bacteria that will give little Tommy a bad tummy, or worse! Now I need a bug-monitor for the sterility of the teddy, where is this going to end!
Or - have your kidz in a test tube/incubator and put them into a sealed bubble from birth, get fone appz and rest easy so you can fix your eyes to the smart TV for all that must-have advertainment and political messaging. Welcome to the 'modern' way.
This will result in more neurotic parents freaking out over every slight variation in the kid's vital signs, because they don't have the medical knowledge necessary to understand what it means and what is or is not cause for concern. I wonder if some hospital executive is behind this, trying to see how many more urgent care visits they can get and bill for.
A child with asthma, so we have one to hand always. Couple of quid from eBay. The other children without asthma love it. Let's play "who can make their heart go the fastest by running round mad"... Let's play "what happens if I hold my breath".
The only people I can see buying this teddy are misguided NHS management (who will pay 10x the price) and overly concerned parents who don't need to look at these stats 99% of the time and will worry when they do, even in the normal range. And when something *does* go wrong, asking where the f-ing teddy has gone isn't the best care provision. Reaching into the childs emergency bag for a 3xcmx3cmx4cm finger monitor is the answer.
Device description: a device that is normally used to provide increased pleasure during moments of sexual self satisfaction that is fitted with a number of sensors that monitor the user's health by sampling body fluids, hearth rate and body temperature. It also automatically adjusts for different hearth rates according to the... um... context the user is in his/her device usage.
Let's call it "adult health monitor"
AC for obvious reasons.
It's creepy, but I can't find any mention anywhere in the article or at their website to reassure us that the data is not collected or sent outside of the teddy/phone-app closed loop.
In these days of data snooping and "user is the product", I'd expect clear disclaimers saying the data never leaves the phone-app and that the processing is not done remotely on some server operated by the company. Absent those disclaimers, I can only assume that Big Ted is evil.
Teddy the Guardian sounds like a comic book character, a beloved Teddy bear that got into a vat of radioactive marmalade and decided to go on a jihad against evildoers after seeing his companion Quackers the Calico Duck get chewed apart by the family dog.
Agree with the above postings, whoever thought this up must only have kids in short visits and not 24/7 but will be laughing all the way to the bank.