Here you go, parents! A bottle nfahatadir
that helps kids, um, drink water, thanks to educational game content, a sip-tracking app, smart-phone interactivity, and animated friends. Here’s what the bottle’s Amazon page says:
- Meet Gululu, the interactive water bottle that keeps us playful and healthy – perfect for children 3+, Gululu motivates kids of all ages to be happy and hydrated
- Let your child choose their favorite whimsical pet to embark on a journey of health and discovery — play, track stats, connect with friends, and drink to your health!
- Technology meets wellbeing: durable, safe, waterproof and wireless, with auto-updated educational game content that keeps your boys and girls engaged.
- Our easy cloud-based app connects you to your child’s progress and friends; plus, modular design and easy-clean spout make your life simple
- We are on a mission! Your purchase of Gululu provides clean drinking water for life to a child in a developing country through our partnership with generosity.org. Because water = life
Isn’t Isn’t it great that a bottle can make kids playful? That’s nothing short of amazing.
My only question is: How did children ever learn to drink water WITHOUT interactive, animated, ounce-tracking, non-dishwasher safe, $129 dollar smart bottles? – L
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28 Comments
Meet Plastic Cup! The funky, retro, old-school way for kids to drink water!
Just fill Plastic Cup with water and hand it to your kid.
When it’s empty, put it in the dishwasher, or be REALLY old-school and wash Plastic Cup in the kitchen sink.
It’s both a history lesson and a fun way for kids to stay hydrated.
Plus, with the money you save by using Plastic Cup instead of a creepy Orwellian monitoring device disguised as a water bottle, you can buy food, or vodka, or food AND vodka!
Simplify you life. Use Plastic Cuo.
Ah, how did i ever learn how to drink water? I shouldve begged my parents for this when i was little! Wait, it didnt exist! THE HORROR!
LOL – this is timely, since my friend just asked me yesterday why I wasn’t taking steps to make sure my 10yo 5th grader drinks water. I’m like, she’s 10yo. She knows where the water spigot is. ???? When my kids were wee tots, I bought them a cheap water dispenser so they would always have water at their level (to serve themselves) and I haven’t thought about their “hydration” since. I should probably add that they are still alive.
A fool and his money are soon parted.
Am I officially a bad mom for not yet buying this?
“Am I officially a bad mom for not yet buying this?”
Not until it becomes ‘popular’ and you are shamed into buying one.
I always though the human body was self-regulating. Sort of tells you when its time to drink, and when you are full it removes the excess.
Ah, Marketing probably knows more than Biology anyway….
“Gululu” sounds precariously similar to “Pazuzu” which was the name of the demon that possessed Reagan in the first two Exorcist movies. Obviously this product is named after a being from the underworld. Avoid at all cost unless you want your kid to start projectile vomiting pea soup and spin their head around in a way that would normally cause it to pop off.
Proving conclusively that there is no gadget, however absurd, that some marketing executive will not convince himself Parents are stupid enough to buy.
@Coasterfreak
In D&D if you say “Pazuzu” three times he shows up and grants a wish. I assume he takes something with him, but I never tried.
“durable, safe, waterproof and wireless”
Phew! For a moment there I thought you could actually put water in this water bottle, but thankfully it’s waterproof!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adtM47RU2tc
I keep a bottle of water within easy reach at all times. My kids see me drink water and they think, “Mommy likes it. It must be good. I want it!” And then I have to keep refilling my water, because my toddler drank it all. (Getting her own cups didn’t work. Mommy’s water is special, even if it came from the exact same faucet, because it’s Mommy’s.)
“..ounce-tracking…”
Does it do location tracking as well? Because I’m not sure people would be pleased that their little one has left a $129 waterbottle somewhere and can’t remember where….
I don’t understand the obsession with tracking everything electronically.
We have some of the best first-world problems here in the good ol’ US of A, don’t we.
@Beanie
“I don’t understand the obsession with tracking everything electronically.”
That means you must have something to hide!
“”I always though the human body was self-regulating. Sort of tells you when its time to drink, and when you are full it removes the excess.
Ah, Marketing probably knows more than Biology anyway….””
You’re right on the latter. See, the concept that the non-self-regulating body being the exception is a total myth. It was only through pure luck and the intervention of alien races that humanity was able to deal with the problem of widespread body failure.
No. Just. No.
Coasterfreak February 6, 2017 at 8:14 am:
Or Cthulhu.
Who needs an expensive water bottle like that? My kids have a cheap water bottle each from the supermarket. It is a bottle that holds water, they drink from it when they are thirsty, and it has a lid perfect for taking it places or not spilling everywhere when the cat knocks it over. If for the millionth time, they leave it at school and it never turns up again, or put it down on a park bench and forget about it, or take it off somewhere in the house to drink and then it falls into the black hole where the odd socks are, it doesn’t matter because I can buy a new one.
Technology is amazing, but sometimes things go too far. We don’t need all these super technological versions of normal household objects, as there was absolutely nothing wrong with the regular kind, you just have to use your brain and common sense to work things out. You don’t need an app to tell you that youre thirsty, your brain does that itself. You don’t need an app to monitor your child’s water intake, or anything else about the way their body works. Common sense should tell you that if your child has water available and is acting the way they normally do, they are fine.
Raise your hand if you lasted all the way to adulthood without ever owning a water bottle.
Not gonna lie, I do ask my kid if she’s refilled her water bottle during the day. Back in the 80s we weren’t allowed to drink water in school though so my questioning comes from that. These days they actually allow kids to have their bottles at their desks so I don’t actually need to ask.
A ridiculously overpriced app based bottle is just plain stupid though. I guarantee that it would be lost at least once during the school year.
Whatever happened to the idea of reducing children’s screen time?
SKL, I never even thought about that. I don’t think I owned a water bottle until I was in my late twenties at least. And I spent half my childhood in the desert. Now we have 60 gabillion (cheap and plastic, thank you very much.)
I don’t think I could roll my eyes high enough to express how ridiculous these seem to me. Though I’m sure I’m going to see them showing up at school.
@Jill, I love your reply!!
Now this is certainly taking things to another level.
The stacks of old Mardi Gras cups on top of my fridge are working out just fine, plus they were, ya know…free
This is just more needless tech that will inevitably break sooner rather than later.
EVEN IF you get this water bottle, you are a bad parent and not doing enough. Witness this comment from one of the concerned parents on the Amazon reviews:
“…Hopefully there is no parent who completely trust gululu’s sensor to track consumptions… I mean they are good, but not perfect…”
Point taken! A responsible parent should use this bottle as part of a full suite of water consumption monitoring and encouragement tools, backed up by frequent manual intervention and monitoring.
And a response from the company. They’re working hard to up their game: “…the algorithm evolves via machine learning, so it improves over time as we collect more user behavior data.”
(FYI this comment is tounge in cheek)
When I see things like this my estimate for the long term survival of humanity are nil.