Hellobee

Shortly after A turned six months old I realized that seating him in his floor chair was not gonna cut it for mealtimes for much longer. It was a good chair for when he was learning to sit, and it will probably be a good chair when he’s big enough for a booster and doesn’t need the tray, but for a chubby-legged baby with a lot of mealtime enthusiasm, there were two big problems: the tray would pinch his thighs, and the whole thing threatened to tip over when he lunged for food (and the tray was so small that when he did that he lost his food).

I wanted to buy the baby led weaning gold standard high chair, Ikea’s ANTILOP, but I had no plans to go to Winnipeg (didn’t want to drive five hours each way), and couldn’t stomach paying a high shipping fee for such a cheap chair. So, I investigated, and came across the Phil and Ted’s Poppy chair. I liked that it is made out of a foam aerocore material for the seat — I swear by our Keekaroo baby changer because the foam makes it so easy to wipe! I also liked that the Poppy is so adjustable, as you can knock the legs down by one level to bring it to the height of a regular chair, and remove the tray apparatus to make it a toddler chair.

Now that we’ve had it for a few months, I’ve drawn my conclusions about Poppy.

The Good:

• It’s definitely wipeable! Food-stained fabric really bothers me so I love that I can scrub the foam clean with no remnants. It also works well being washed down with a garden hose, though the water will get trapped underneath unless you tilt it to drain.
• The colours are cute and the whole chair looks really modern — I’ve had a handful of visitors comment on how cool it looks.
• Some people don’t like the wide-set legs on it but I do, because it feels quite stable despite being a very lightweight, portable chair at a nine-pound weight.
• It was remarkably easy to set up. I did it myself in less than 10 minutes.
• The tray has a lip that is angled a bit so food stays on, and it also wraps around and is quite wide, so even if A chases food around it takes more effort to make it drop off the tray entirely. You can also throw the whole tray in the dishwasher and it won’t warp.
• Apparently it’s easy to store, if you pop off two of the legs. I haven’t had to store it but I can see how it would be incredibly simple to do so, based on how easy it was to set up.

The Not-so-Good:

• All of the common complaints I read in customer reviews are my complaints too: the shoulder straps of the five point harness are terribly designed and useless. I took ours right off after a week. The baby still seems secure between the waist belt and the tray, though. Common complaint #2 – there’s a spot where the leg divider plastic piece creates a hole in the foam layer, and that’s where gross bits of food inevitably wind up. Because I knew this was a problem, I lift the bottom of the foam up and wipe that area while cleaning, but for the record, it is not completely airtight.
• There’s a little plastic ring that covers that area that seems to spin around and move all over the divider which is annoying because it’s really not doing its job of keeping food away.
• The straps get gross with food. My kingdom for a highchair with truly wipeable straps.
• If you wipe up the foam seat with a paper towel or wipe, it attracts little fuzzy cloth bits. Not a huge deal, but annoying.
• BLWers, be careful how you set the tray down after you remove it — just putting it on the table is asking for it to tip, with all the food on it. You either have to balance it carefully and hope it doesn’t tip, or do what I do and drop it in the sink right away. You can’t take the baby out until you take the tray off, so it adds an element of work.

The not-so-good things aren’t bothersome enough for me to dislike the chair — I just have to work with its quirks. Overall, I think that it’s a stylish chair, with potential for longevity, and it didn’t cost an exorbitant amount of money.