Generally a good high chair

We have two of these, bought about a year ago for our twins. Overall we’re happy with them.

Assembly and physical design

Instructions weren’t all that bad, but I recall these chairs being a tad more complex to assemble than one would expect given how simple they look and feel. I made a boo-boo partway through (missed that I had to put the footrest on at a critical stage) and ended up having to unscrew and re-assemble part of the unit…

As for how they’ve been designed, the only complaint I have is that they do not lock in the folded position, which makes them a bit awkward to store or transport despite the fact that they fold fairly compactly for a full size high chair.

Ease of use

The one-handed tray release works fine for me (grown man with strong hands) but doesn’t work for my smaller wife. It has to be pushed in quite far to release properly, and over the last year it releases less easily. The two-handed way (both sides at once) still works fine, however.

Straps are reasonably easy to use, although it is a bit annoying that the crotch strap is interfered with a bit by the plastic bump between the babies legs. I am often digging under baby to find the crotch strap. The waist portion of the 5 point straps also seem a bit on the high side, usually going over our babies' bellies rather than their hips. Perhaps not a big deal but seems odd.

The tray insert snaps in firmly to the tray and so far (15 months old) neither of our twins can pull it out/off. Much better than our portable eating seats.

Adjusting height is pretty easy to do, although it would be nice to have the height numbers on both chair legs rather than just one. It is possible to actually put the two sides on different height settings leaving the child on a bit of a tilt, and presumably less securely latched. On the other hand, it isn’t hard to avoid this mistake once you know it is possible, and you have to be very tired (did I mention I have twins) in order to make this mistake.

There are four castor wheels on the bottom, allowing the chair to roll around easily. The locks for the wheels are good, although you need at least 3 of the four wheels locked in order to immobilize the chair. The locks are VERY touchy, and will lock if my toe even touches them, which can get annoying when moving them around the kitchen, but on the up side they NEVER unlock without effort and I suppose it is safer that way than if they were hard to lock and easy to unlock.

Ease of cleaning

The chair itself (legs and plastic) are fairly easy to clean. The seat “fabric” seems to be 100% impermeable plastic and wipes clean very easily, although if you’re doing a quick clean without removing the seat you have to watch for deep folds that food can hide in.

Update: Our daughter barfed during lunch yesterday, managing to get guck not only on the easy-to-clean top of the chair pad, but underneath as well. Unfortunately, I discovered that the bottom of the pad is not as easy to clean, and the pad is *not* machine washable. To be fair though, 10 minutes with a wet cloth got the underside sorted out,and the top part was very fast to get cleaned up.

The straps get filthy pretty fast, and are impossible to clean well with a cloth, but they snap out quite easily and have no metal parts so you can just throw them in the sink to soak and then rinse. Easy but less convenient than just wiping.

Update: After the afore-mentionned barfing incident, I put the straps in our front-loading washing machine with the other gucking items. The straps came out looking good as new (except some old blueberry stains, which never come out of anything). The straps also dry very quickly when wet, they were useable after about an hour of hang-drying.

The tray insert is really to clean, and fits on the sides of my dishwasher. It’s a bit harder to wash by hand as it is big for the kitchen sink, but that’s no major problem.

Baby comfort/Ergonomics

I’m not sure if I would want to sit on what is basically raincoat plastic material (the seat cushion/padding). It looks like it would suck to have next to your skin, so we always have the babies wearing something on their legs when eating. This is not fabric folks, not even nylon, this is plastic. That’s the trade off for being easy to clean, I guess.

Height adjustment is great. There are many settings so we can feed them sitting in our own chairs without having to reach far either up or down. Our twins are quite different sizes, but we adjust the height and they’re at the same eye level.

Straps are easy to adjust, but are odd lengths and at odd heights. On a car seat the waist straps would cross the hips but are more mid-belly on the high chair. Seems to be annoying and uncomfortable for our babies unless we leave them a bit loose, which might arguably defeat the purpose of straps.

The tray adjustment is quite annoying. I have never found any use for the settings closest to the chair, they do not leave enough space for the belly for even the smallest child. Only the outermost two seem comfortable (not pressing the harness buckle into baby’s belly) and the outermost one seems wobbly compared to the others. I would like to see more room for baby’s belly, more possible adjustment settings (like the height, which has many) and the buckle being below the tray edge so you don’t feel like you’re pressing the buckle into their skin when you put the tray firmly against them. Basically I find I either give our babies lots of room for comfort (and then they get a lot of food on their laps) or I put the tray in closer and they look uncomfortable, and even complain once their bellies are full.

Perceived safety

Having read many older articles talking about unstable/tippy high chairs, I am glad to say this kind of scissors leg arrangement is very stable. My son is pretty big (15 months only but wearing 2 year old clothing) and the chair doesn’t even sway or shake when he is bopping his head to his favorite music. Being a klutz I also bump into these chairs when empty ALL the time and have never knocked one over.

Straps seems strong and securely fashioned. So far neither of the twins has figured out how to unlatch them, and as an extra bonus the latch is placed pretty much exactly at the same level as the tray so with the tray in place baby is even less likely to be able to try and release the straps. Warnings aside, I don’t feel it is dangerous to leave them for a minute in just the straps while moving one from chair to living room, etc.


Messy factor

The way the tray is arranged (see ergonomics) means there is a fair bit of food that falls to either side of babies or even between the tray and baby, in which case it makes the straps nasty. That could be better. On the up side the tray is big and wide, with a good edge all around so our babies don’t drop food on the floor unless they want to (which, of course, they often do :P )

Toys included

The teething toy attached was popular with our kids in early teething, so that was a plus. On the down side though, is that it gets grimy easily due to it’s many little grooves and ridges, and when cleaned seems to lose some of its paint/detail. On the up side, it is easy to remove for cleaning and the tether that connects it to the tray allows both kids to pick it up when dropped even from a young age.

The electronic rainforest toy that snaps in to the tray is a more mixed bag. On the up side, it is one of the neatest compact electronic toys I’ve seen for the babies. It is sturdy, easy on batteries, its noises are neat and don’t tend to annoy, etc. On the down side, the designers seem to have failed to measure babies’ arms when designing them. For the longest time our kids couldn’t even reach the buttons on the front when used as designed (child strapped into chair, toy clicked into tray), and at 15 months I’m not sure my daughter can even reach the other parts of the toy (the bit with the spinning animals, etc.).

Perceived quality

Seems like a strong, sturdy, easy to clean product, which in my opinion is exactly what a high chair should be. All the plastic is part of what makes it easy to clean, but could certainly feel cheap if one was hoping for a fabric cushion...


Overall impression/suggestion

In my opinion the base parts of this chair are quite good, with a few minor ergonomic things I’d like to change. The bits that make it a “Rainforest” product (toys, colour scheme) I could have done without. When we bought it Fisher Price made a base model with all the good features but without the Rainforest stuff, and I would recommend that, but it is now out of production. Given that the price is pretty reasonable though, I think this is still a good buy. Just make sure you have good bibs with a catch-pocket to protect babies’ laps, and you’ll be fine.