Origami stroller: electrified $850 self-extracting stroller

4moms has announced its forthcoming Origami stroller, a $850 baby transportation unit that uses wheel-mounted dynamos to charge batteries that power an electronic chair-folding/unfolding system, as well as a pedometer, running lights, a kid-in-seat sensor, and other instrumentations. I've never understood the hostility towards strollers ("Make your kid walk! Carry your kid! Carry your kid and all the associated junk and your shopping! Forever!"), and it's certainly true that folding and unfolding strollers can be hard, especially when your arms are busy, and yeah, that is a really cool little actuator-and-solenoid transformation to watch. But leaving aside the affordability question ($850 is a lot of dough!), there's the fact that a $850 stroller is a serious potential liability: would you feel safe checking this on an airline or leaving it in a train's luggage area? How about parking it at the playground and walking away from it for a play-session?

4moms | Origami

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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paulleader

That’s a pretty neat piece of engineering, although I’d be interested to see how it looks in real-time, rather than the speeded up version.

But yeah, $850 is a heck of a lot just to save you a minute or two of folding. But then I’m not a parent so maybe it’s worth it :)
adamacus

I have a baby daughter. I’ll stick with her current $100 stroller, and put the other $750 into her college fund.
deadbot

Buy now and we will throw in ‘the Jaws of Life’ absolutely free!
http://twitter.com/bobledrew Bob LeDrew

And what about when it begins to replicate itself and build weapons and annihilates society?

More seriously, this is a slightly obscene demonstration that while there are plenty of poor people in the world, there a lot of people desperate to show just how much money they have to waste. You could buy 9 of these strollers for one of those.
- http://www.xradiograph.com/ OtherMichael
  
  We’ve got one of those umbrella strollers — it’s lightweight and great. But when my wife is in the mall with the baby, a larger stroller is a necessity for holding stuff. Plus, the larger stroller came with a baby-seat that snapped into our car-seat base, and expanded into other features. None of which are available in the self-folding stroller, sadly.
  
  Nonetheless, even our “fancier” stroller cost at least half as much as the self-extractor.
  
  And now we have to get a tandem stroller. :::sigh:::
  
  —-
  
  A $850 stroller is obscene when there are poor people in the world? May I congratulate you on not using a computer, electric grid, cell phone, and living in cardboard box under a bridge? You are an example for us all, sir.
  - flosofl
    
    A $850 stroller is obscene when there are poor people in the world? May I congratulate you on not using a computer, electric grid, cell phone, and living in cardboard box under a bridge? You are an example for us all, sir.
    
    Come now, we all know you shouldn’t feed the Concern Troll.
http://twitter.com/markjenkinson Mark Jenkinson

I don’t actually find the folding part very difficult. It’s the lifting in and out of the vehicle. On some day trips, you’re lifting the thing over 10 times. So, unless they somehow made this thing incredibly light. They might have missed the boat.
- sriha
  
  Stroller weight is 29lbs. FAIL!
Douglas Rushkoff

I want to see it close with baby inside.
- Cory Doctorow
  
  I expect that the “baby in seat” sensor is there to prevent that.
  - nexusheli
    
    And if the baby is not “in seat”? And just like the problems with the airbag sensors in some cars, how accurate/reliable is said sensor even if the baby is “in seat”?
- http://www.facebook.com/HyperionToASatyr Jack Holmes
  
  MY BABYYYYY! MY BAAAAAAAAB–*crunch*
silkox

I want to see it close with a baby corporation inside.
Scratcheee

We had a really cool but fairly expensive stroller that worked well, carried a lot of stuff, and was nearly perfect in every way. But we still ditched it for a dirt-cheap umbrella-style stroller after a while, and never looked back. It was sorta like switching back to film from digital.
- pipenta
  
  Yes to the umbrella stroller but NO NO NO to film. Used to shoot film. Hell, used to have a bulk loader and a four-reel developing tank. Had an old Canon AT1 that I loved the hell out of and got two decades of use out of. BUT I would NEVER go back to film. I LOVE digital. It is fast and light and affordable and I love the results. They are much closer to what I envisioned when I was shooting film and I can afford to shoot so much MORE. Hell, my flickr stream alone has about 25 thousand photos on it and I’ve shoot way more than that. The only way to really get good is to shoot a lot and frankly, I shot more the first year I got serious about digital than I had the whole twenty or so years I shot film. I could never afford to shoot on film like I do with digital. It opens up photography. It used to be partly about vision and talent and technicality, but largely about MONEY. That is why you saw so many more men than women in photography. That’s why you see so many more male photo journalists. It requires a cash investment that is very difficult for women. Money is still an issue. Folks in my flickr contacts send me notifications of Nat Geo contests they think I should enter. But the contest rules say no PhotoShopping. And I am stitching like mad all the time. I have shots that are just SOOC, good ones, but the idea that PS is cheating irks me. I often use stitched panoramas to achieve the results that would require specialized lenses that I do not own. Mostly I am using a hundred-dollar point & shoot. Hell, I use PS stitching to achieve the look for lenses that nobody owns, that don’t exist. And it irks the crap out of me that this is considered, somehow, less real, less authentic. They are not understanding how we SEE. They are not grokking the difference between data and perception. And pardon me because I just went WAAAAAY off topic. Okay, no more coffee for Pip this morning. SRY. ;)
  - obeyken
    
    Warning to other commenters: be very careful not to make any oblique references to any other topics whatsoever.
http://twitter.com/spaceyslater spacey slater

I used to work with young kids — in my experience, these days $850 is not even considered expensive. Every single one of my young charges arrived in either a Stokke or Bugaboo, both of which cost over $1000.
beforewepost

I’ve always disliked strollers. They move your child to a space where he can’t interact with you as you’re moving around.

I carried my boys first in a front-side papoose and then later in a backpack. Before they could talk, we were tapping each other when we noticed something interesting and I for one, saw a lot more on our walks together than I would have had it not been for my eagle-eyed kids.

Since we started carrying them at birth, we were able to adapt to their increasing weight so they didn’t start to leave the backpack until they could walk. The backpacks were retired when they were able to walk a couple of miles.

The cooking scenes in Ratatouille were especially poignant for me as one of my boys learned to steer me the same way. That never would have happened had he been in a stroller.
- Ambiguity
  
  Since we started carrying them at birth, we were able to adapt to their increasing weight so they didn’t start to leave the backpack until they could walk. The backpacks were retired when they were able to walk a couple of miles.
  
  To this day my left arm is stronger than my right (being right handed, kids tended to be in the left arm).
  
  I used a front-carrier for my son, and it was a labor of love (he was a BIG baby, so I experienced some back pain after a day of carrying him). My daughter was (and still is) a petite thing, so I usually didn’t even bother using a carrier of any kind.
  
  My wife really liked using a sling, but lacking hips it never seemed to work well for me. Hipped women should check it out, though! My wife could basically do anything (save driving, of course) while carrying a kid along. It was impressive to me, a slightly uncoordinated male.
  - chgoliz
    
    “To this day my left arm is stronger than my right (being right handed, kids tended to be in the left arm).”
    
    Actually, it seems that babies/kids have a tendency to be carried in the left arm, no matter what. I don’t have the references at hand right now, but I’m left handed and noticed at the time how I was encumbered by carrying my children in my good arm, so I did a little research back then to try to figure out why I was doing that.
    
    As for strollers in general….the comments here already show what I’ve found to be true: there’s no such thing as finding the ONE right stroller when you’re a parent. There’s the right one when they’re still in their bucket seat, and another when the second baby comes alone, another for when the kid can walk but isn’t strong enough to walk long distances, another for when you’re traveling, etc. In the end, I think everyone goes through at least one or two cheap (under $10) umbrella strollers. As you say, expensive strollers become a possible target whenever you go out in public, and end up being too much tool for the situation much of the time.
    
    No one has only one screwdriver, right?
- Snig
  
  More power to you, but not everyone has your power or your spine. Some people’s limiting factor on how far they can take their kids is how far they can carry them. So they may get much more mileage together out of a stroller than they would carrying the kids.
  - CH
    
    Have you ever used a baby carrier? I’ve carried a six year old in my sling (sensory issues), and I’m a pretty typical nerd programmer (my fat is stronger than my muscles). I would recommend a baby carrier like a sling or an Ergo carrier _especially_ if you have a bad back, because you need the support to carry a child.
    
    For _most_ people, if you can walk and push a stroller, you can also carry a child in a baby carrier.
- CH
  
  Yes! I really don’t get why strollers have to always be turned away from the parent. Way, way too much sensory input for a baby and not seeing the parent’s face. An older child might want to see where he/she is going, but a small baby???
  - AlexG55
    
    It’s why the traditional pram does face the child towards the person pushing.
snordalisk

I’d like to see a video of this stroller folding after a couple years of use…

More expensive and harder (impossible?) to fix yourself? No thanks.
http://twitter.com/escowles esme

I’ve never had a problem with folding strollers. We had a couple of Peg Peregos that were nice, had great one-handed folding features, and cost a lot less than $850. The weight was a bigger problem, and adding a bunch of motors and batteries can’t help there. I always preferred the Maclaren strollers that were pretty comfortable, but small and light enough to fold up and carry, which makes it a lot easier to encourage walking (and climbing stairs), but still have it as a fallback when little legs get tired. The only time I remember it being a real hassle was in Venice (many miles of walking and tons of bridges with steps).
http://twitter.com/strugglngwriter strugglngwriter

If you are buying $850 strollers, you are part of the 1%. Just joking. Kinda.
Give me the cheap, “umbrella” strollers anytime. For one, they actually fit in the trunk of our Beetle. Second, they are lightweight.On the subject of strollers, I was at our local, annual Festival of the Arts. At this wonderful event of art and culture, somebody had their kid in a stroller with a mounted television and dvd player. Just made me sad for us as a culture.
icastico

You could buy 43 of the strollers we have for 850. And, ours folds quicker and easier…based on the video.
pjk

“there’s the fact that a $850 stroller is a serious potential liability”
I’m pretty sure if you can afford to spend $850 on a stroller, you can afford the potential liability. Also, having a child was the worst consumer experience of my life. We bought so much stupid shit only to find out we didn’t need 80% of it. Baby “gear” is such a scam. Ah, product differentiation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_differentiation

Kids are really pretty simple. Diaper bag = back pack. Stroller = my shoulders. Toddler bed = single mattress on the floor. His favorite toy yet = the cardboard box that the drier came in.

The caveat is if you have 3+ kids within a year of each other. You probably do need more gadgets.
- Ambiguity
  
  We bought so much stupid shit only to find out we didn’t need 80% of it.
  
  True that!
  
  When you realize that — and throw breast-feeding into the mix — taking your kids along adds no real complication to going places. Grab some diapers and some wipes, and you’re good to go.
  
  I must admit I somewhat selfishly enjoyed self-ego stroking when we’d go some place like a zoo and see how much easier things were for us than for the families who were weighed down with a bunch of tech that was supposed to make their lives easier!
phillamb168

College fund… There are days when I just dance with happiness that I left the USA. This stroller isn’t worth the price point if this is the only good feature. $850 strollers themselves are usually well worth the money, especially if (like us) you can get the previously-$850 stroller on a craigslist equivalent for $50.

@beforewepost:disqus , we carried our first in a babybjorn until he got to 8 kilos, and haven’t been able to find a backpack that has good support, so if you have a brand suggestion, I’m all ears. Otherwise we use our stroller for going from A to B, where B is the park and we make him get out and run around.
- CH
  
  I absolutely loved our Ergo carrier: http://www.ergobabycarrier.com/
  I don’t know how old our daughter was when we last used it with her… um… 4 or so? But I bet you can use it on even older children if they otherwise fit (for us it was more an issue of our size :) ). It was the original model, but the new ones look even better.
Lobster

My spouse pushes my kid around in an $850 stroller. I am the 1%.
http://twitter.com/MadelineAshby Madeline Ashby

Ah, yes. A stroller for parents annoyed that Big Dog is intended for military applications.
Ambiguity

I’ve never understood the hostility towards strollers (“Make your kid walk! Carry your kid!…

It’s actually pretty simple.

There is a large body of scientific evidence (large and growing) that carrying your kids is much better for them developmentally than pushing them in strollers. I understand that sometimes convenience trumps evidence-based parenting (I’m a parent, after all), but in general I think it’s good to familiarize one’s self with the data.

It’s kind of like the breast-milk/bottle debate. I understand that some people’s lives and life-styles don’t afford them the opportunity to breast-feed, but people should keep in mind that the evidence that breast-feeding is better for both kid and mom (which would fill a small library) when they make their parenting decisions.
- nexusheli
  
  Actually, my hostility isn’t towards the stroller, I think they’re great tools, just like cars. But as someone who has to deal with inconsiderate parents who roll their strollers up in front of the item you’re looking at in the store and then turn around to look at something else, completely ignoring you (these are the same people who pull out into traffic from a side road without looking) I really despise most people who use them.
  
  It REALLY bothers me when someone rolls their kid into a restaurant with one. Seriously? You went through all the trouble of busting out the stroller for a jaunt across the parking lot?
  - Cory Doctorow
    
    Well, I don’t own a car, and I do go to restaurants, and we took the stroller with us when the kid was in a stroller and we went to restaurants.
    - nexusheli
      
      Cory, I qualified with ‘most’. I can understand if you’re walking from your home through the neighborhood to go to a restaurant with one. I’m talking about people who pull up, pull the stroller out of the back of the minivan, plop the kid in, walk across the parking lot, put the kid in a high-chair and then park the stroller in the path between tables so the server and other patrons have to go around… I’ve seen this happen.
      - LintMan
        
        @nexusheli: A few things:
        1) Often the stroller is also used to carry the ton of crap needed for the child/children on an outing (spare diapers, formula, wipes, clean outfits, small toys, etc).
        2) If it’s an infant in a carrier, that can be pretty heavy to lug across a parking lot, especially if you’re also carrying the diaper bag, etc as above.
        3) They may very well be intending after the meal to wheel the child/children directly from the resturant to the store down the street or a nearby park. Did
        you follow these people out of the restauant, also?
  - rabidpotatochip
    
    It REALLY bothers me when someone rolls their kid into a restaurant with one. Seriously? You went through all the trouble of busting out the stroller for a jaunt across the parking lot?
    
    When we first had the micro-Chip we brought him into restaurants in his stroller because his neck couldn’t support his head yet, we both had injuries that prevent us from carrying him for too long and we wanted our hands free to eat and interact with him. We just sat in the corner where he could for all intents and purposes just be part of the wall to everyone else and had a good time. Anyway, I’m sorry our parenting decision offends you.
    
    But to continue my point without the snark, it’s not a good idea to group everyone into the same category; most of us try very hard to be unobtrusive and mindful of others’ personal bubbles. Assuming no one uses a tool properly because you regularly encounter people who don’t isn’t the way to go because it affects your interaction with everyone around you. As you get older you’re going to see that more and more of your friends and acquaintances have kids, you might even have them yourself, and you’ll be forced to see things from the other side. I would truly hate for you to realize just how difficult it is for many of us without being judged based on one decision.
    
    (Based on your comment I’m assuming you don’t have kids or are old enough to consider having them. I mean no offense with that assumption and apologize if I’m wrong.)
- Cory Doctorow
  
  I understand that when possible, it’s better to get kids to walk or to carry them. But the realpolitik (which , I suspect, the literature misses — correct me if I’m wrong) of parenting is that carrying a kid is hard (at least for me — I suffer from chronic back problems), and kids will only walk so far.
  
  In our household, where parents are working and need to do a lot of rushing around, the luxury of (for example), staying in one place during afternoon naps would mean foregoing one’s job and the associated income — and the literature on children whose parents struggle financially is also unambiguous on the advantages of being able to afford life’s necessities.
  
  Likewise in off-hours — for the first two years of my daughter’s life, I think we probably could have done zero grocery-shopping, clothes-shopping or had any sort of weekend outing without the stroller, first because of the difficulty of carrying kid and stuff, and second because of the aforementioned nap-timing. Again, I’m pretty sure that any literature that weighed the health benefits of growing up in a house that contains sufficient food and clothes and the occasional weekend trip to the park or zoo would conclude that the latter is preferable to the former.
  
  In a contrafactual world where neither of us worked, where all the people we interacted with could arbitrarily change their schedules based on whether the kid had fallen asleep, and where we were indefatigable athletes without any musculo-skeletal issues, I wouldn’t have used a stroller.
  
  But in the real world where I wanted my kid to have parents who were happy, earning, and not in pain, and where we as a family could travel and go on extended outings around the city, a stroller was an absolute must.
  - Ambiguity
    
    I understand that when possible, it’s better to get kids to walk or to carry them. But the realpolitik (which , I suspect, the literature misses — correct me if I’m wrong) of parenting is that carrying a kid is hard (at least for me — I suffer from chronic back problems), and kids will only walk so far.
    
    Absolutely! Carrying kids can be hard work, especially if they’re big!
    
    I can remember spending a few days walking around Toronto with my son in a front carrier, and if we could have swung it, I would have said “Sorry son, your development has to go on hold for a few days!”
    
    [Seriously off-topic, but: as a result of a BoingBoing post, I checked out a book reviewed (The Four Hour Body) and spent the summer swinging a kettle-ball to strengthen up my core muscles. Physically speaking, it was the best thing I ever did. For about a 15 minute-a-week investment it made me look a lot better and strengthened my muscles to the point that back pain is largely a thing of the past. I don't know if something like that would be safe for you, but it may be worth investigating.]
    
    In our household, where parents are working and need to do a lot of rushing around, the luxury of (for example), staying in one place during afternoon naps would mean foregoing one’s job and the associated income — and the literature on children whose parents struggle financially is also unambiguous on the advantages of being able to afford life’s necessities.
    
    Understood.
    
    When we started having kids, my wife and I made the decision to drastically economize and switch to a single-income mode for some years. It was a great decision for us, but we both realized we were incredibly lucky to even have that decision to make. For many families that isn’t even an option. On the subject of screwy social realities, IMO this is a really sad one. Many folks don’t have the option to choose to stay with their kids if they wanted too (I kind of wish the OWS’ers would take up the “why is society structured such that everyone has to work, all the time” issue, as that seems almost like slavery to me, but I think they’re frying other fish).
    
    But in the real world where I wanted my kid to have parents who were happy, earning, and not in pain, and where we as a family could travel and go on extended outings around the city, a stroller was an absolute must.
    
    I’m not an ideologue, so I think it’s all about striking a balance.
    
    When something like a stroller is a must, it’s a must. But I agree with some of the above comments: if you need to use one, check out el-cheepo umbrella strollers. They make things so much easier. I’ve never seen a high-end stroller where the features and “convenience” outweighed their bulk and weight.
hadlockk

Considering the wide availability of strollers that cost north of what a used toyota costs, I always thought a good business idea would be to sell hand-laid carbon fiber monocoque baby carriages (via the lost foam method), custom built to the height of the mother’s hands/waist, with a collapsible part to make it fit in the trunk. Baby carriages of that method would be about as complex as building a bicycle frame, but since the maximum speed is only about a quarter of what you might see on a road bike, wheel alignment wouldn’t be nearly as important.

Considering many bicycles these days are considerably more complex than a baby stroller, and serious bikes start at around $750, $1000 seems pretty cheap for a device you plan on using daily for 2-4 years per child. If you could get the weight of the device under 3 lbs I think many would be happy to pay dearly for it.
- chgoliz
  
  I think you’re onto something.
  
  If ever there was a perfect maker project using a 3D printer, this is it!
- E T
  
  I see you’re assuming only the mother will use the stroller. Hopefully, kids have more than one caretaker.
  - rabidpotatochip
    
    I swear stroller manufacturers assume only mothers, of average height no less, will use their products too. It’s insanely hard to find a good stroller if you’re tall.
    - AlexG55
      
      My dad (5’10″) was fine with the jogging stroller we bought for my younger sister and reused for my brother.
  - gadgetphile
    
    Even better- custom hand pieces for each caregiver. You can sell the stroller itself at a loss (okay, maybe a little markup) and make up for it with the custom parts. And at some point, they’ll realize that swapping parts is a pain and just buy a stroller for each caregiver.
- gadgetphile
  
  And here I was merely thinking about making an already light Maclaren into an ultralight by replacing the square aluminum poles with carbon fiber.
  
  Just did a search- Maclaren has a stroller with a “carbon fiber” skin which is making finding one with CF poles/beams/structural members hard.
- ashypete
  
  Hadlockk, you’re on to something there. I’d gladly buy one custom built to my height. Put a mp3 player dock and speakers in that thing and you could charge twice as much.
funchy

The hostility towards strollers is that parents use them like snowplows, forcing everyone else to get out of their way. In narrow store aisles or at events, everyone else has to make room for their giant kids loungechair/playroom on wheels. Some parents depend on them as giant personal shopping carts, loading them up with (adult) cupholders and other things for their own benefit. And the strollers get bigger…and bigger…and bigger.

And honestly — if the child is old enough to do some walking, it is teaching him bad health habits to encourage him to sit and be pushed around. And that’s why America has some of the most sedentary & overweight kids in the world.

I also don’t see the need to drop $850 on something you might get a year’s use out of. But I guess it’s a status symbol just like the supposed “need” to buy a luxury car.
- Cory Doctorow
  
  [And that's why America has some of the most sedentary & overweight kids in the world. ]
  
  Really? Citation needed, I think. Perhaps the fact that parents get visits from the police when they let their kids play outside because Americans have decided that children should be kept indoors at all times has something to do with it?
  - http://paulbeard.org/wordpress paul beard
    
    Really? Citation needed? Childhood obesity has been in the news for years now, as well as increasing rates of diabetes.
    
    Americans decided long ago that kids should stay inside from fear of Outside, not from visits from the cops. We have refashioned society to be childless and now kids look out of place if they are outside alone or in a group with no adults.
    
    The FreeRangeKids blog is fighting the good fight but longtime readers will know that its parents keeping the kids off the street that’s a bigger problem than the police. Kids in the street should be be the norm, not the exception. We need to take back public spaces for them. If we give in to the idea that only bad people are outside in the streets, that’s what we’ll get.
    - rrh
      
      I think the citation was requested not for “America has sedentary & overweight kids” but for “America has sedentary & overweight kids BECAUSE OF STROLLERS.”
  - Ratio
    
    “Americans have decided that children should be kept indoors at all times”
    
    Citation needed.
- blearghhh
  
  Newsflash: there are entitled douchebags in the world. When those people have kids, they don’t magically become better people.
  
  Edited to add: By which you should take the lesson that considerate people will be considerate no matter whether they’re using a stroller or not, or which one they may be using. On the other hand, one of the douchebags mentioned above will always inconvenience you one way or the other. It isn’t the fault of the stroller.
- Brainspore
  
  In narrow store aisles or at events, everyone else has to make room for their giant kids loungechair/playroom on wheels.
  
  You’d prefer that we let them run free (or crawl around the floor) in those places?
  - http://indigestible.nightwares.com/ Warren
    
    The point about strollers getting bigger all the time is the key here. They are not SUVs for babies, yet for some reason there seems to be an attitude that they should be.
    
    Re SUVs and babies, I had an uncle actually argue that he needed to buy an SUV so he’d have room in the back for his kid’s stroller. This was one of those massive overbuilt jobs that had everything but a flatscreen TV in it.
    
    He honestly hadn’t thought of simply buying a smaller, more compact stroller.
    
    So … yeah, the big monsters are obnoxious, and there’s a sort of obnoxious attitude that goes along with buying them.
Trevor Blake

The disabled and the elderly benefit from devices such as this.
- gadgetphile
  
  Trickle down goes both ways. Trickle up?
  
  I’d heard that baby diapers got much better at absorbing after adult incontinence undergarments were improved because of complaints from their users.
  
  No, really, the juxtaposition of trickle down/up and diapers was purely coincidental.
pipenta

I’m assuming this is offered up as an interesting novelty, not a suggested holiday gift item. It isn’t sensible to buy it, but interesting to see the design involved. But yes, as an earlier poster said, better to save the money for the college fund (If there are indeed colleges in twenty years, for the likes of us, the way things are going.) or to donate clean-burning cooking stoves or water filters or vaccines or chickens for people struggling in the third world, or to pay your heating bill this winter, as some of us are struggling here and now in this soon-to-be formerly first-world country.

When my piplet was an infant, Aprica strollers were all the rage. I was gifted one and it had the bells and whistles, not like this, of course, but it folded up this way and that. It was heavy. It was bulky. The frame had a mushy quality that absorbed a lot of energy and made it hard to push. And it had been expensive.I struggled with it for several months. Then I went out and picked up an umbrella stroller for twenty bucks. It weighed next to nothing. It folded very tidily. And the frame had enough rigidity that it was easy to push. I never used that over-priced 0ver-hyped Aprica again. It was not cool. It was a waste of money and a huge amount of non-biodegradable crap that just ended up in a landfill. I do like strollers. Pretty much from birth, the piplet was not one who wanted to spend much time gazing into his mother’s eyes, nor anyone else’s. I nursed him, so we got plenty of physical contact. But when it wasn’t time to eat, he wanted to see the WORLD please. Popped into newborn special care for the first day of his life because of idiot hospital regs (and insurance company crap, no doubt. I’d had gestational diabetes, but took good care and had good luck and the child was healthy as a horse). He was placed in such a way as to be facing the wall. At the tender age of an hour and a half, he lifted his head turned it so he could face the action in the ward. He wanted to watch, he wanted to listen. He was in a brand new world, damn it all, and it was FASCINATING!When you held him, he wanted to face outwards. So he loved his stroller. GET A MOVE ON MOM, THERE’S STUFF TO SEE! He’d only sit still when I had conversations with neighbors for a minute or so, then the fidgeting would start. MOVE MOVE MOVE MOM, I HAVEN’T SEEN THE WHOLE WORLD YET!And so we’d go. Turns out I hadn’t seen the whole world yet either! :)Pip ”never proof when u write 4 free” penta
edi

Like lots of other people here are saying I have not had problems folding strollers with my son who born in 2008. When I was babysitting kids in the mid-90′s there were definitely nightmarish strollers. Very heavy & difficult to fold. That seems to have gone by the wayside. We have a Jeep stroller that has a great “one-hand folding system”. It definitely requires two hands, but is very easy to use.
Also this stroller looks HEAVY. It doesn’t look like it would fit in the trunk of a car easily if at all. I firmly believe strollers should be totally portable. I used a sling when my son was an infant. I had an emergency c-section and carrying my son was difficult enough, let along trying to get a stroller down the 3 flights of stairs from my apartment. Eventually I got better and my son kept growing (as they are likely to do). I am a VERY short person. I am barely 4’10″. Now I can pick my son up, but cannot actually carry him because he is over half my height (he’s just a little above the average). On shorter walks he definitely walks, but when I’m going out for “my” walk we use a stroller or a wagon. If he really wants to walk it’s a great option to have him hold the side of it and when he inevitably gets tired I don’t have to figure out how to carry him home.
OldBrownSquirrel

Optimus Pram?
- kartwaffles
  
  Autobots, transform and stroll out!
Robert Cruickshank

Call me when it can get up and walk with the baby, like some kind of angry-baby Gundam.
http://paulbeard.org/wordpress paul beard

Th aggro toward strollers is akin to the aggro toward SUVs: too much vehicle for the burden to be carried and for the space available. Yes, there are times when someone needs a stroller for their kid. And most of us can tell the difference between a parent who is using the stroller as a necessity and one is using it out of habit (hint: the different in how they engage with the child is a clue). Most kids want to walk and the stroller is often used as a portable prison, to prevent them from learning how and to save the parents having to, you know, parent.

And yes, the Free Range Kids blog is a great source of information on stranger danger gone wild but the power that keeps kids indoors is not the nosy neighbors or the local PD: it’s the parents themselves and their fear that something terrible is going to happen if Junior is out of sight for 30 seconds.
jimkirk

It’s a robot in disguise.
fletcher_katherine

I’ve got 3 kids (2-y-o twins, 5-y-o). We don’t have a car, so I’m holier-than-thou and have little pity for people who don’t like folding a stroller to get it into the car’s trunk. Put kids in carseat, they’re safe, you can take your time swearing and kicking the stroller down. But when you take the bus everywhere, and the bus can only hold one stroller, and the spot is already taken, and it’s raining and you don’t want to wait for the next bus… have you ever tried to fold down a stroller while trying to restrain two wriggly babies and a runaway toddler?

My kids are actually pretty well trained, and other passengers sometimes offer to help, but that’s not enough. Babies cried if held by new people, and strangers didn’t know how to fold the stroller, and I’m breaking out in hives just reliving those moments.

What I would have given for a magic button to take care of the stroller!
- obeyken
  
  Something tells me that there is little overlap between people who would buy this stroller and people who ride the bus.
fletcher_katherine

(not saying I’d want *this* stroller — just saying, the idea isn’t as stupid as you think. And if you ever see a parent in distress with the stroller, lend a hand, don’t be a dick and tell them their kid needs to walk more. A friendly passer-by told me that when I was pushing the 5-y-old last year. The kid had chicken pox, and had been walking for an hour already, but thanks all the same for the helpful advice that made him feel like he was being a wimp)
Manny

I am often annoyed by people who use their strollers to ram people out of the way. On the DC Metro, it’s horrifying to see people shove their strollers ahead to hold the car door open, because those doors don’t have sensors and automatic re-opening. More than once I’ve seen the train roll briefly dragging the stroller, with the kid along. What are people thinking when they use their children that way, anyway?

And yes, I have children and did have multiple strollers because of gifts. I found that a sling and Baby Bjorn worked much better for us. Folding was annoying, but the weight of the thing was the main problem. The Origami would only make that worse.
- Ambiguity
  
  More than once I’ve seen the train roll briefly dragging the stroller, with the kid along. What are people thinking when they use their children that way, anyway?
  
  They’re tourists. They’ve been dragging their kids around the Mall all day.
  
  They’re not thinking. Their brain probably shut off some time around Woodley Park.
  
  [Assuming that the locals would know better. Then again, I've seen businessmen use their briefcases to similar ends and get them crushed. The fact that the trains don't have sensors on their doors is the coolest, Darwinian-friendly thing about DC.]
KludgeGrrl

As others have noted — the real issue, even for those who would want to spend such a crazy sum on a stroller, is not folding it up. Most modern strollers can be collapsed with one hand (while the other holds the kid), sometimes with a dramatic flourish if they are light umbrella ones :) The *real* issues are weight and bulk — ie how easy/hard it is to lug the collapsed stroller onto a bus, or lift it into a car trunk…
rafterman

My god, listen to you people. Why do so many posts turn into a hipster vs. non-hipster flame war.

If this stroller isn’t your style, move along.

So many snarky posts.
ackpht

Needs bigger wheels.
Brainspore

I have twins. I invite the first person who tries to tell me that strollers are nothing more than an overpriced tool for lazy douchebags to spend an afternoon trying to run errands while carrying a wild bobcat under each arm.
- http://twitter.com/orbix42 David James
  
  AMEN.
  
  Also, I’d kill for someone to design a double-stroller that’s not ridiculously huge and heavy, yet can be had for less than a small fortune. Once the kids are large enough to ride in umbrella-style strollers, that’s great, but that’s not a viable option from birth to around 7 or 8 months (or whenever your kids end up able to do so- they’re all rather different). Everything I’ve seen that does the super-compact fold is either for one kid only or absurdly expensive.
  - Brainspore
    
    I feel even worse for people with triplets. When we were shopping around for ours I saw exactly one triplet stroller for sale. It was nothing fancy and it was in used condition, but it was still almost as much money as the stroller depicted above.
http://celesteagnes.blogspot.com/ Sekino

I’ve always hated strollers and I’m a parent. The first few months, we soldiered on with our sling (and arms) as long as we could.

However, our girl started to walk at 9 months and quickly upgraded to full running speed. The problem was that even though she could walk- and loved it- she didn’t yet have the judgement not to run around like a chicken with its head off right into traffic/people/store displays. There was no way we could both keep her safe AND carry bags of groceries. Even with our arms free, we didn’t trust her running along very busy boulevards. Same issue with trying to keep her seated in a public bus (we don’t have a car).

So the stroller was very much a necessity, but we got a small, light umbrella model for about $50. It did the job just fine. I could see how the above model would be useful for parents with injuries or a disability.
dnietz

It needs LoJack and/or GPS tracker app for your smartphone.
AbleBakerCharlie

A 400lbs capacity handtruck and a ratchet strap is cheaper, and way more useful when the grub finally can walk at a useful speed.
- fletcher_katherine
  
  Yes! Why didn’t I think of that?! :-)
GlenBlank

would you feel safe [...] leaving it in a train’s luggage area? How about parking it at the playground and walking away from it for a play-session?

What, you mean it doesn’t have a 120dB siren with a remote that sets it off every time Mom or Dad pushes the wrong button or drops it in their pocket with their keys? :-)

As for the whole anti-stroller thing, I wouldn’t mind strollers if inattentive parents didn’t keep ramming them into my shins at the grocery store and the Farmer’s Market.

Apparently, some members of the Me Generation have a hard enough time concentrating on their offspring as well as their own precious selves, and thus can’t spare any attention for the world outside their immediate gaze.
ashypete

I will shamefully admit to having an expensive stroller.

When we had our kid, our friends wanted to throw us a shower but we really didn’t need anything (as we had loads of hand me downs) so they raised cash to get us a fancy stroller (like a Bugaboo). A fancy stroller isn’t something we would have bought ourselves but when we began to try out strollers we quickly discovered that they are not created equal. My partner and I are somewhat tall (over 6 feet) and most cheap strollers are definitely not made for us. I was a hunchback on all but the higher end styles. My experience with the one we got was that the build quality was simply better then the cheaper models we used and the malfunctions I experienced were fixable (with a little effort). My sister-in-law, who had 5 kids in 6 years, had 15 strollers during that period. Every single one of those ended up in a landfill because they were unfixable and unusable. That seems like a greater waste to me. Also these high end ones retain a degree of saleability after you’re done with them so they can be reused and shared. The folding was never an issue, easy peasy…

That being said I’m too polite to use a stroller in a crowded place, like the farmer’s market, so when my son was younger we used slings and Baby Bjorn type carriers. Now that he’s two, I use a back pack style carrier, if mostly for my sanity rather than practicality. I’d love my son to walk the 2 km to the market and back with our weekly groceries but I think that’s asking a bit much of a 2 year old. But others may have different kids and YMMV.
John Ridley

I’m sure that “make your kid walk” people would be just thrilled to be on public transportation with a toddler that’s been completely exhausted by walking around a zoo or theme park all day, and is now in the midst of a full on exhaustion/dehydration headache and is making sure everyone knows about it.

Actually our kids DID walk whenever possible, but by early afternoon they were usually exhausted and needed a break; having a stoller allowed us to put them in there and let them nap while we had a nice walk around the place for an hour or so. Also, the stroller is a great place to keep the stuff you need to have with you when out and about with a kid; diapers and such, snacks, general clean-up gear. Yeah, we could carry that too, so that we’d all be good and exhausted, frustrated and have much less fun. We could also walk the 20 miles from our house to the zoo but we have found it prudent to buy a CAR to do the trip instead.

Strollers are a great thing for parents. Parenting is already stressful and sometimes exhausting, they help make it a bit less so.

Personally I don’t see much point in spending more than $100 for a stroller, and most of the time we used an umbrella stroller, but to each his own I guess.
Palomino

I’m tired of seeing people who push strollers but have no idea they’re connected to it. I drove a city transit bus for a few years and I saw way too many strollers off the curb, the pusher standing perfectly safe where they would normally be. I think of this as a detachment. Some strollers are purchased out of need, and some are purchased because the baby needs to be a couple feet away. However, I never saw this with the type of strollers where the “cabin” faced the pusher.
- CH
  
  Yep… and just start walking over the street without checking the traffic while pushing that stroller right in front of them so that if a car doesn’t notice them it’s going to hit that stroller first. Somehow it feels like if they put their wallet in the stroller they would keep a better eye on it. :(
Susan Stewart

Big heavy strollers are useful if you have to walk a couple of miles to the shops and then come back with a load of shopping. For sight seeing, general getting around, then front carriers followed by backpacks when the sprog is bigger are great. I can’t see the need for a self folding stroller though – it’s the getting it into the car boot that is the pain.