Shoezooz Review!
When I first saw Shoezooz, the brainchild of designer and Mt. Washington resident Ellen Lichtman, two thoughts immediately and simultaneously ran through my head: “brilliant!” and “why didn’t I think of that?”.
Beautifully designed, Shoezooz consist of pairs of stickers that go in the bottom of children’s shoes; one sticker in the pair depicts the left half of an adorable barnyard animal, and the other shows the right half. Both have accompanying textual labels. When the shoes are placed next to each other properly, the animal is put back together.
After I got over my initial feeling of awe/jealousy, I had two more thoughts in quick succession. The first being: “that is a darn good-looking website“, and the second being: “I must purchase this product”.
And purchase it I did — but not for me. No, I learned to match my left shoe to my left foot and my right shoe to my right foot years ago. But, as it just so happens, we have a Montessori-trained four-year-old young man living in our house who is smart, funny, creative, independent, and can’t for the life of him figure out which shoe goes on which foot. If it’s possible, this particular child seems to get it wrong more than fifty percent of the time. In other words, we have the perfect test subject.
Shoezooz come in packs of three (a cow, a sheep, and a pig) for a very reasonable price of $5.99 (if you think that six bucks is a lot for a sheet of stickers, just consider how much it might be worth to you to never again have to utter the phrase, “your shoes are on the wrong feet” and wait for them to be switched).
When ours arrived, our subject carefully considered the three options and finally decided to try the pig stickers on for size. He named her Penelope and we installed her in the appropriate footwear.
Since that moment four weeks ago, our son has not put the wrong shoe on the wrong foot. These days, he barely glances at Penelope before donning his shoes and heading out the door. While not a scientific study in the strictest sense, I’d call it a success.
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