Once again, our intrepid CSFTL Media team has descended on another fabulous baby gear trade show! This time, our travels take us to Anaheim, CA for the 1st annual JPMA Baby show.
Disneyland!
The JPMA show’s schedule is a little different than ABC Kids. The first day, the show floor doesn’t open until 2 pm. That means your faithful Media team spent the morning at Disneyland!
Once the show opened, our first day involved scheduled visits to these fabulous manufacturers: Peg Perego, Evenflo, Cybex, GoodBaby, and Kiddy. We also had a surprise visit with our friends from Safe Kids. Here’s a roundup of what we saw.
Peg Perego
Peg Perego booth JPMA 2017
Our first stop was to Peg Perego. We were excited to meet the Primo Viaggio 4-35 Nido in person. Don’t worry — we’ve got a closer look at this rear facing only seat coming your way soon!
Peg Perego Primo Viaggio 4-35 Nido
This well-featured seat features a load leg on the base, some very robust and well-placed padding for smaller babies, and ta ridiculously light 9.8 pounds weight for the carrier. At 23 inches long, the base has a pretty large footprint but the engineers from Peg Perego assured us that the portion of the base that holds the carrier is intended to hang over the edge of the vehicle seat. We wonder how this seat would fare in smaller vehicles or on trucks with a narrow bench seat, but for most scenarios, it’s a lovely option.
Peg Perego Viaggio Shuttle
We had met the Viaggio Shuttle backless booster seat at the 2015 ABC Kids Expo, and we were excited to learn that it’s now for sale! We hope to spend some quality time reviewing this seat later this summer. It’s a very plush seat with rigid lower anchors, and a cupholder with a bottom so passengers can store their precious trinkets. At $119, it’s a bit pricey for a backless booster seat, but it appears to have a lot going for it in the comfort department!
During our recent review of the Viaggio Flex 120, our intrepid reviewer, Wendy, discovered that the booster is well-featured, long lasting, adjusts to be quite wide or quite narrow, and folds up into a tidy package that’s fairly easy to carry around. We confirmed all of these findings and asked relentlessly about a possible backless option of this seat. We didn’t get an answer, but don’t worry — we’ll keep asking!
Peg Perego festival of car seats
We wrapped up our visit by sharing our thoughts on the Primo Viaggio Convertible car seat. We’ve long been fond of the fairly tall base, plush fabrics, 45 pound rear facing weight limit, and 17 inch top forward facing harness height, but we’d long struggled with the rear facing belt path, which is so small it routinely eats hands. While our relentless stream of questions about the seat resulted in no official announcements, we did learn that an update of this seat is in the works. We can’t wait to see what Peg Perego does next!
Safe Kids
Safe Kids Ultimate Car Seat Guide
We left the fabulous Peg Perego booth and made an unscheduled stop at the Safe Kids booth. They’re at the show to share their Ultimate Car Seat Guide and make some fabulous Safe Kids luggage tags for show attendees! We were thrilled to receive our very own custom tags and learn more about the guide. This tool has a lot of great information about seat selection, proper use, and things to consider when making a car seat purchase. It’s a great resource for researching options before visiting our Recommended Seats page.
Evenflo/GoodBaby/Cybex
Evenflo SafeMax
We were as happy to see our friends from Evenflo, GoodBaby, and Cybex as they were to see us! We’re already fairly familiar with the Evenflo product line, but we were amused to see a couple of random European seats on display at the show. We were super impressed by the Wheel of SafeMax multimode car seats on display.
GoodBaby has launched the gb Idan, a seat we’d met at ABC Kids in the past. It’s a plush, well-featured, extremely compact, rear facing only car seat that could be a great option for families with a small back seat. Stay tuned for a closer look at this seat soon!
Cybex Sirona M
We’d also met the Cybex Sirona M convertible car seat at ABC Kids. It’s a plush convertible car seat that has a lot to offer and is scheduled for release later this year. The biggest change to the seat itself is the addition of magnets to hold the harness out of the way while the child is loaded into the seat. HOWEVER…
Cybex Sirona M-Tek
Since we last saw the Sirona, the team at Cybex has been working hard to dream up a promising new feature. The Sirona M-Tek is a combination of an app for your phone, a sensor on the chest clip, and a receiver that connects to the vehicle’s OBD port.
Together, this system can monitor if the child’s chest clip has come undone, keep an eye on whether the child might be ready for the next click up on the harness, and give caregivers instant access to manuals, videos, and other online installation and proper use resources. Despite our many questions, we were unable to confirm if the M-Tek does laundry as well. We’ll keep you posted.
Kiddy
Kiddy Cruiser 3 comes in many pretty colors
Our final stop of the day was Kiddy. We greeted our friends with hugs, then spent a lot of time chatting about the Cruiser 3. Don’t worry — we’ve got a review in the works but here’s a spoiler: it’s a well-featured, long-lasting high back booster with a ridiculously tall 23 inch shoulder belt guide. That translates to a padded booster seat that could keep most children comfortable for all of their booster riding days. It also comes in a variety of lovely colors, most of which I can’t stop admiring.
Kiddy Cruiser 3 eye level indicator
One of our favorite Cruiser 3 features is the Eye Level indicator. It sounds like a small thing — where should the headrest be in relation to the child’s head? — and yet, we see a lot of struggle around proper headrest height. Kiddy takes the guesswork out of headrest placement with a little line that says Eye Level.
We’ve got a full agenda tomorrow so we’re off to get some rest. Thanks for coming along with us to the JPMA show!
