The Cosco Scenera has long been a staple of the child passenger safety toolkit, especially for caregivers who travel or are on a budget, or coalitions who need to make their seat dollars count. With an under 40 dollar price point, the Scenera has long stood as an example of how seats are available to keep kids safe in any budget.
Since 2009, the IIHS (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety), has been annually releasing their booster ratings, based primarily on fit of the 6 year old dummy, and, as we all know, fit is the best indication of performance. No matter how much bling your booster has, if it doesn’t place the seatbelt properly on your child, it can’t do its job.
Why do children keep growing? I’m guessing so I can keep buying seats. Our newest addition is the Cosco Pronto (also found as the Safety 1st Crossover). With the seat belt geometry of our van, my 10-year-old needs a high back booster still in the third row. He was pushing the height limit of his
*This seat has been discontinued* The car seat market is full of backless boosters whose entire purpose is to position the belt properly on children who are not ready to use the adult seat belt. They are available in every price range, from under $14 to close to $100. Finding one that meets your needs and
Ilana has a long torso for her age and doesn’t have much room left in her other boosters. She needed something taller (the third row of the Town and Country doesn’t work for backless boosters and with five kids in seats, moving her isn’t an option). The van has had problems with Safety 1st boosters in the past, but it was a good price and super cool, so decided to give it a shot.
The Safety 1st Comfy Carry Elite is one of Safety 1st’s many offerings for rear facing only seats. The Comfy Carry Elite is a lower priced seat, with a good range of features that make it easy to use. It is also a good seat for fitting smaller newborns, and preemies. With a retail price of $59.99, it’s a budget-friendly option for baby’s first ride.
The Safety 1st Complete Air is a nicely priced, lightweight convertible seat that fits in some narrow spaces, but can take up quite a bit of room front to back.
The Safety 1st OnBoard 35 and Onboard 35 Air rear facing only car seats are packed with features that make it easy to use, long-lasting, and coming in well under $150, friendly on the wallet.
We would like to take this time to introduce the newest members of the CSFTL family.
These awesome additions were provided by Huggable Images, a company that makes safety training dolls and custom huggables. Huggable Images has given us the opportunity to take their dolls for a test drive and see what we think. You’ll be seeing these dolls in our reviews down the road to fill in the gaps where we don’t have children the correct age/size to fit the seat we’re reviewing. Today we’ll be looking at these dolls on their own to see how they stack up to real life children.
Finally a booster for big kids that doesn’t look like a booster! Safety 1st hit it out of the park with this one. With the minimums to use this booster being 6 years old, 47 inches and 60 lbs., this is not a seat for the Littles.
