Since my wife and I are expecting twins, we’ve been getting all sorts of garbage in the mail for baby stuff. Promotions, free magazines, coupons, all sorts of junk. It’s kind of amazing all these places even know we’re having babies. I have a feeling my wife must have signed something that was forwarded to a bunch of companies so that they’d start sending all this crap, but whatever.

About two weeks ago we received this paper in the mail saying there was some “free” Safety Seminar for babies in the area. I had no interest in this, but my wife wanted to go and after twisting and pulling my arm for the last few days I reluctantly agreed to go. We arrived at the hotel this morning where the event was taking place. There were only a handful of people there and it appeared to be ran by this dude in his mid 40′s or 50′s. I noticed a couple of typical baby products were set up like cribs and car seats.

This seminar claimed to go over helpful baby tips like SIDS prevention, and baby CPR, but I had a feeling there was some sort of catch to it. At the start of the seminar it seemed helpful enough. The guy wasn’t really trying to sell anything in particular, just going into detail about different types of car seats. Instead, I noticed he was working on peoples fears. Essentially telling them that unless they buy a proper car seat, their kid is going to immediately die even if the parent gets into a fender bender. I thought it was a bit strange that he was getting people worked up in a seminar that should have been about building confidence.

He then moved onto crib safety, basically saying that no matter what crib you buy you’re baby is somehow going to die in it. He then pulls out what he feels is the best crib money can buy, this is around the point where I officially caught on. This guy wasn’t trying to help anyone, he just wanted to sell his shitty, ugly, piece of crap crib. Of course if we buy his crib, from some company called Babee Tenda’s, our babies will sleep better and never die. Somehow this thing is going to prevent SIDS too. Wow. This part goes on for a while and after some time got redundant.

Then he moved onto high chairs. According to him, high chairs are the worst invention in the world. If you put your baby in a high chair, that thing is going to topple over and your baby is going to die. He says this despite the fact the room is full of adults that were once babies and used a standard crib and a high chair, but yeah, our babies are going to die or get hurt. Sure. So he pulls out this little piece of shit table that was obviously designed in 1975 and hasn’t been updated since. If you put your baby in this magical table, your baby is going to have the time of its life. Yeah, right. Of course, this awesome table was also from Babee Tenda, a company I never heard of until today.

I heard some people around me and they were obviously feeling duped too. We were all essentially tricked there with the promise of baby care, only to be sold crappy over priced products. In the process, the guy spent the entire two and a half hours putting fear into what I’m going to imagine are mostly first time parents. It’s a smart, yet obviously devious sales tactic. Make people think they’re baby is in trouble unless you buy their product. It’s really heartless when you get right down to it.

During the high chair talk is when I officially decided to zone out, took the notepad my wife had on her, and proceeded to draw pictures of Batman, Samus, Riddly, and Metroids. At least I was being productive. At the end of his talk, he finally says how he’s going to hang out clip boards with information on how to order this garbage. I was shocked by the amount of people that accepted clip boards and wanted to buy this shit.

I thought more about it later when I got home, and I also think there were some plants in the audience. One couple showed up late, and at one point during the crib pitch, he asked that man to come up and help him show off the crib. That same guy’s wife/girlfriend also happened to ask a lot of questions. During the high chair conversation she told the sales person that her mother had a high chair that she had been using for well over 25 years and that it was going to be handed down to her. The chair was apparently building of strong solid wood. Her story had a lot of details, and finally she asked if it would be safe to use this. The sales person replied “Absolutely not” and deemed all high chairs the be worthless. I also noticed after the whole thing, that same couple was the first to get up and rush over to the crib to look at it some more. That move was likely to get people thinking about looking at the crib. I mean hey, if this young couple was looking at the crib, shouldn’t everyone? And come to think of it, this couple was also the first two people to take the clip board from the dude.

There was also another time when he was describing his amazing piece of shit table where a woman said how her mother had used a similar table when she grew up and said it was an amazing product. Yeah, right.

I also thought it was interesting how the guy claimed that Babee Tenda products had never been recalled before and that their stuff doesn’t have any warning labels on them because they’re so awesome they don’t need warning labels. Something tells me that because these products aren’t sold in stores that they don’t have to follow the same regulations that Fisher Price would have to so they don’t need to put a warning label on them. If their products did malfunction, there wouldn’t necessarily have to be a recall.

It makes me sick that so many people fell for this dude’s sales pitch. Looking around the net a bit, it seems like there are plenty of others that fell for it too. Well guess what assholes, I’m not falling for your stupid shit. I’m so glad you guys make a living preying on the fear of young adults. You can go choke on the shit of a buzzard while butt humping a bear’s paws.