Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Product Review: Skip Hop Duo Diaper Bag

Duo diaper bagThe Skip Hop Duo Diaper Bag was one of the free gifts I received for attending the Martha Baby Shower Show Taping.... and it is providing me further evidence that the "expert" who chose all of the must-have baby picks for the show really have no idea what he was talking about! Sure, the bag is really cute in the wave dot print that we received, but once put into use a parent realizes it is far from a must-have diaper bag.

First off, the Duo is small at just 13" wide x 13.75" high x 4.25" deep. And while it does have 11 organizer pockets in all, they are arranged in such a way that restricts the interior storage space of the bag. I barely fit all of my son's accessories into the Duo (forget about stashing a winter coat in there) so this is certainly not at bag that will be useful to us when our second is born this Spring.

Bag interior. The black lines (zippers) running
vertically house the parent pockets.
I think that, in addition to the bag's tiny depth dimension of course, the major design flaw is this: there are two zippered parent/accessory pockets on the top of the bag that extend only halfway down into the bag's interior. If you put anything substantial into these pockets--say, your wallet--your access into the bag is cut off and you lose precious storage space.

Any mother knows that you don't want to be pulling everything out of your bag to find that one item that has gone missing. So, the folks at Skip Hop have failed miserably by making a bag with inner environs that are infuriatingly hard to navigate. They do offer a Duo Double which is 5 inches wider, but at 13.5" high and still 4.25" deep, you're still going to run into the same accessibility problems. 

Pros:
Now, there are pros to this bag of course. I do like the sturdy, fashionable material the bag is made of, the magnetic pocket closings, the side cell phone pocket, the shuttle clips that you can attach to your bag (but, seriously, I'd just hang it by the strap and be done with it) and the soft, removable shoulder pad strap. The Duo also comes with a changing pad in the back pocket and the front two pockets are insulated and nice for keeping a juice box and some snacks. Oh, and its currently listed for $58. 

BUT, what does all this matter if I can't fit or find anything inside of the bag's interior? If Skip Hop would expand the width of this bag significantly and maybe extend the parent pockets all the way down to the bottom of the bag (so one wouldn't have to deal with weird half pockets getting in the way), then we'd have something to talk about! As it stands, though, there are other better bag options and the Duo is not so much of a "must-have" if you value not pulling your hair out! 

1 comment:

  1. Oh my..... if ever I actually have kids I'll have to take YOU shopping with me!! -Kg3 ;-)

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