Designer bicycle baby stroller from the Dutch

Is it a bicycle? Or is it a baby stroller? Or is it an expensive death trap for your toddler?

The Dutch sure do love their bicycles, so its really not surprising a designer from the Netherlands has come up with hybrid bicycle-baby-stroller. Its not the first of its kind... but its one of the more stylish. (Technically its a tricycle-baby-stroller, but whatever.)

The problem with mixing two different things is that the final concoction tends to be... ugly. This one, known as the Taga, attempts to be as stylish as possible, hoping to lure the high-class cyclist parent.

More so, it converts (in roughly 20 seconds) into a regular stroller, and is thus "the ultimate get-fit gadget for yummy-mummies" says the company. Children are carried in traffic-facing seats between the handlebars and strapped in with a five-point seatbelt, effectively making the baby a hood ornament (although thats pretty standard for baby strollers).

"If you come to a situation where you don't want to cycle or you're not allowed to cycle, at the subway or in a supermarket, in less than 20 seconds you can convert it into a stroller," says Jeroen de Schaaf, Taga's European manager. The company is hoping to launch the Taga in North America this summer.

So far the Dutch manufacturer has won three European design awards for its coveted bicycle-buggy concoction and is being wildly endorsed by parenting blogs online (freaking yuppies jumping on the latest bandwagon). It sells in Britain for £1,695 (over $3000 CDN).

Its not lightweight however, clocking in at 64 pounds despite Taga's aluminium alloy-frame Taga. That is roughly three times heavier than an average bicycle, so I guess the yuppies will be getting a workout pushing this thing everywhere.

Worse, it has an internal 3-speed gear hub (which means good luck cycling up hills in that thing). Anybody living in San Francisco or a place remotely hilly would be better off choosing a different way to tote their kid around.

The thing is apparently so hard on the uphills that health experts are warning its not good for post-partum mothers. "The abdominals and lower back are so fragile post-partum," says Toronto mom/personal trainer Dara Duff-Bergeron, who specializes in helping post-partum mothers get back into shape. "I don't know how many moms could take that."

Some mothers are just plain concerned about the scary prospect of sticking their kid way up front. In a frontal crash the kid would be the first to be injured (and bicycle helmets for toddlers are hard to come by).

So does the Taga get my thumbs up? $3000 CDN so you can put your kid's life at risk while looking like a complete yuppie? I think not.

(At the very least it should have a lot of bicycle mechanics scratching their heads and muttering about idiots who will buy anything when people come in to have it repaired.)