Customer Reviews

Fisher-Price Child Carrier with Toddler Helmet

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

I love to bicycle. I wanted to share that experience with my daughter. I liked this carrier for a few reasons; it has padding (the seat cover) [some other carriers don't], it comes with a small helmet, it claims to be removalble without tools and the price was competive.

I found the assembly instructions to be a little incomplete. One part wasn't listed and is only shown on the box cover. (I'm not sure how much the safety of the seat is affected by a velcro strap--I guess they include it to facilate removal / re-installation of the seat.) The struts which attach the seat to your rear forks do not seem to be designed correctly. (I had to keep the bolts loose to the seat until after installation.)

Anyway, the easy of removal of the seat is okay for a guy who is good with taking things apart - I wouldn't recommend it for anyone who needs to keep their bike locked up outside. After I bought the seat - I found an interesting design which uses a rear bicycle rack as the mounting point. Might be worth it to get that.

The helmet - difficult to fit - but this is a problem with all helmets. Someone recommended wearing a cap under the helmet.

I tried to contact "tech" support for a recommendation to mount a flashing light on the carrier - they told me to contact their supplier (Bell.) (I'm a quality engineer - so I found this to be very ironic.)

With all that in mind, the carrier is very nice - and functions well.

I wouldn't recommend this bike seat for anyone, in fact we are returning ours. It is extremely hard to put together and we can't even get it on our bike - we're going to return this and get a better one.

I was desperate for a fast way to get my youngest child to the park when my older children ride their bicycles. Unfortunately the only thing in stock anywhere was this seat. And it took me all morning to get it put together. The holes for the straps to go into were so small I had to widen them with a screwdriver and shove them through the holes with the screwdriver as well. The screws to attach the seat to the seat post of my bike were too short, and the washers needed to be pried together. Finally I was nearing the final steps, when lo and behold, I was missing a piece. I call customer support, which is at Bell, not Fisher Price or Mattel. I was on hold for 20 minutes before I was able to speak to anyone. Then when I spoke to the representative, she put me on hold to speak to her supervisor for another 15 minutes. This happened twice. Their solution to my missing piece? Use a zip tie, "We don't ship that piece separately."

Excuse me? You make a mistake, you fix it. Regardless of whether or not "the piece is shipped separately. Ridiculous. And at the end of the conversation, there was no apology offered, no attempt to make the situation right. Ugh.

So now, I have nothing to show for my morning of effort.

Also, I attempted to adjust the strap on the seat to see how it would fit my daughter. I sat her in the seat, and she BARELY fits. She is two years old, barely weighs 23 pounds, and is tiny. I have no idea how a child any bigger than her would even fit in the seat. I had hoped to use this seat for family rides for the nextfew years. That would NOT happen with this seat.

So, it is going back to the store, and I am buying a Kettler Flipper, or a Bobike Maxi, or a Topeak. I will steer clear of Bell products in the future!

Oh, and to top it all off, the helmet provided with the seat has the plastic cover peeling off without me even removing it from the packaging!! Worthless.

Save your time and your money, avoid this seat at all costs.

The instructions were easy to follow. However, once the carrier was put together, it would not fit my average size adult bike. The item advertises as fitting most bikes, but I believe this to be totally false. The brackets that attach to the rear frame of the bike (one to each side of the bike) were too close together. In fact, they touched one another when there should have been several inches between them. The only way that I could have gotten this installed on my bike was to actually bend these brackets apart which could have broken the parts and compromised the safety of the carrier. After reading other negative reviews concerning this same problem, I returned this and bought the "Baby Quick N EZ Bike Trailer" from Target with which I am very satisfied.

This bike seat IS a HUGE pain to install on a bike. It took my husband and I working together about an hour to get it right and there were several points when we thought it wouldn't work...we persevered and got it on. It is fabulous to ride with our son. It is very sturdy. Our son is very large and rides in it just fine. The helmet slides on his head, but most helmets are tricky to get just right. Overall we have been very happy with this purchase.

I bought this seat for $40 on sale at toys-r-us, since it stated it would fit "most" bikes. I followed the directions that came with the seat, and that made it impossible to install on both bikes that I tried it on. After several choice words and approximately 2 1/2 hours later per bike (5 hours total), I finally had this piece of crap installed, only to find out that both my and my wife's heels grinded against the footrests of the seat. DO NOT buy this piece of crap, it is not worth any amount of money as far as i'm concerned

I have two of these carriers. One was mounted on a 12 speed touring bike, the other on a mountain bike. They are easy to mount and remove due to the thoughtfully designed clamps.

Our two kids love them. The only problem is that I don't see how they can be used up to 7 years. We last used them for 2 and 4 year olds, who were actually a little small for their age. Their knees keep poking you in the butt and thighs as you pedal. But this must be a problem on all child seats of this type.

Also, you have to be careful when you the child is in the seat before you mount and after you dismount the bike. Again, all seats of this type will have this problem due to the weight distrubution.

Although the box claims that this carrier works with "most road and mountain bikes" I doubt the validity of the claim since it didn't work with my Trek mountain bike and another poster had a similar problem with the connection to the rear frame supports. Of course, I didn't get to learn this until I was about 70% through the the assembly. If you have a standard road bike (think Schwinn 10-speed) this seat will likely fit. Although there are many parts, I did think the assembly instructions were pretty clearly written - they worked hard to make sure you knew what tools were needed and provide accurate descriptions to identify the parts. FP would do customers, and themselves, a favor if they included a max diameter measurement for the rear frame support on the OUTSIDE of the box. I've returned the seat due to the incompatibility.

The package was missing pieces (paint guards), and had an extra one (strap to hold the carrier to the bike) not listed in the instructions. Either the seat or the supports were manufactured or designed incorrectly, so I couldn't get it mounted to my bike. I took it back. This carrier is manufactured by Bell, and the ones sold under that name don't go together any easier.

I can put entertainment centers together, yet it took me FOUR hours to put this bendy,...flimsy seat on my Specialized Rockhopper mountain bike.

I think I'll be taking it off after my 1st trial ride and I'll return it and purchase the seat the specialty bike shop was recommending for $... that easily detaches.

Like someone else said, I would never attempt to disconnect the bike only because it's so much work to put together. The instructions are terrible (I could have drawn better pictures) and I plan to call FP in the am and give them my complaint.

Also--one of the most difficult parts of putting this seat together was dealing w/ the 'butterfly' straps. The straps are flimsy too and not what is pictured on the main page. This seat does not come w/ a 3 point plastic guard. It's merely yellow strapping material. Anyway, the straps do not fit thru the slots and after tugging and pulling w/ the pliers, the strap began to fray in several places. Yeah--like that will be real sturdy.

So DO NOT buy this seat. If I had the $ to throw away I'd spend $... on the IN STEP 1-2 seater trailer I had seen at a specialty sports store.

Also--the helmet inside the box is not the same one that was pictured. And it says nothing about a free book inside the box, so that was the only nice surprise.

But I am sure we'll be returning this fiasco in the making.

Melanie in NJ