Bambino discontinues small size diapers

You are looking at a picture of what is possibly the last small size Bambino diaper in existence. I went to their website yesterday and found that they were out of stock, and when I sent them an email asking when the small size would be back in, this is the email I got:

Thank you for your e-mail. Due to the lack of demand we are no longer manufacturing our size small diaper, we are however working hard to find an alternative for our customers. We have found a product the Molicare Super Plus that we feel best meets our standard for a superior diaper. This product runs a little smaller than our other diapers so please try a sample first. Please see details regarding sizing on our website.
Thank you,
*Bambino Customer Service*

The next smallest size is their medium, which will fit a 32-44 inch waist. It's depressing to think their are enough overweight people out there to justify making an extra large size, but not enough of us skinny DLs to make us a viable market. If you're reading this somewhere out there any you're as dismayed as I am about this, I suggest you send an email to bambinodiapers@gmail.com requesting that they bring back their small size. Then buy a damn case of them-- because without the support of the diaper community, who knows ... they might go under entirely.

Update:

So I did a little research, and it seems that the small size diapers were being phased out as early as June 2010. The following posts are from Bambino forum at DailyDiapers:

28 June 2010 - 10:13 AM
I just noticed Small Classicos are no longer available on the website! Sad Panda! Not all ABDLs are fatasses!

04 October 2010 - 10:02 PM

Hm. Well I E-mailed Bambino and they basically told me that they have no intention whatsoever of making small classicos or teddys again. Lame.
I'm honestly quite a bit put-out by this. It's basically Bambino saying that those of us who are smaller are, frankly, not worth the attention. This is a big mark against them in my eyes and I shall have to consider wearing another product in the future.

08 October 2010 - 01:02 AM
I wouldn't mind paying more if it meant having the variety in small.
There is also an update to this little Saga, however. Bambino sent me a further E-mail, despite saying that they have no intention of having Teddies or Classicos in small, saying they intend to have OTHER new products in small. While I am not holding my breath (of course, history tends to repeat), I am interested.
I still like the company, again, and they still make GREAT products. It just happens that I don't like being ignored.

15 November 2010 - 12:15 AM
Since they just stopped offering Small Biancos too, it seems that those of us who are smaller will just have to go somewhere else. I'm glad the medium/large/xl folks have something great for them still but now there's literally no Bambino product for us Small folks.

So there you have it. I got mine at the end of August, so they were probably among the last of them. Maybe if business picks up for them they will start offering the small size again ... but I wouldn't get my hopes up.

Last winter break ever

Hey loyal followers,

It's winter break for the last time in my school career, and I have never been busier in my life. I haven't really been keeping up with the online diaper community since September. I feel somewhat guilty because there were a couple people emailing me about meeting up at the end of the summer who I left hanging. I just wanted to post to let everyone know that I haven't dropped off the face of the earth, and that I have every intention of keeping this blog active and meeting up with people as soon as I have a bit of time and sanity to spare.

Diapers have definitely taken a back seat in my life in the last few months, but as you can see from the picture above, I have gotten a few good diapered days in over the break. I'm just about through that box of Bambinos I ordered at the end of August. As soon as I have some spare cash I will probably order more. They are basically everything that I'd hoped, but I was so used to GoodNites before I got them that I had forgotten how much trickier it is to get the tapes on a real diaper just right, especially when they aren't refastenable and tear or lose their stickiness if you don't get the right fit on the first try.

Come to think of it, the only other times I've worn a diaper with non-refastenable tapes were when I was first experimenting with Depends back in 2006 ... and by that I mean the only other times ever. My mom recently reminded me of this when she called me up during a trip to the laundromat.

"Oh, your building doesn't have a washer and dryer?" she said. "I remember those days. I used to have to go to the laundromat every day to wash your diapers. I only used organic cotton on you."

Her reminiscence of diapering me caught me quite off guard. It was the first time in my memory that she had ever spoken about me wearing diapers other than to remind me how quickly I was out of them.

"Well ..." I said, her. "You really went all out."

We both laughed, but me mostly from the irony of her complete ignorance of fact that I was still wearing diapers. The conversation soon turned to other matters, but her mention of how I had worn only cloth diapers set me to wondering, as I occasionally have in the past: why am I so much more interested in disposables?

I guess I was too much too young when I was potty-trained to have any conscious memories of my organic cotton days, and that the easiest explanation for my interest in disposable diapers would be that it arose from seeing my younger siblings diapered. I'll admit that when my second little sister was born and there were disposables in the house for the first time I was very interested in trying one, but as I mentioned in my first post on this blog, my first memories regarding my diapered desires began before that, when I was three or so and my first sister was a baby. She was in cloth diapers too ... and I can remember wanting to try them on. My current theory is that my desire for diapers originated from premature potty-training and intensified over the years as I struggled with imperfect control. These feelings were transferred to a specific desire for disposables when I saw my younger siblings and cousins wearing them them and became jealous, since they were something I could never have but by this time had realized I needed.

All this ruminating on the origins of my diaper fetish has led my train of thought to another somewhat mysterious artifact of memory from that early preschool period in my life, one that I am surprised to realize I have never written about before. It is an odd idea that I had at the time, which, looking back, says a lot about the early development of my fetish. I had this secret list in my head of things that, if you did them, would cause your potty training to be undone and land you back in diapers. Here it is.

---

1: Wet your pants
A logical first step. I was having wetting accidents so often back then, I felt sure I well on my way to being put back to diapers already. It hadn't happened yet though, so I guess I figured there was something else I needed to do before I could give up my "big boy" underwear. In retrospect, if I had just stuck to doing this one as often as possible, I would definitely have ended up in diapers sooner or later. Pooping my pants would probably would have sped up the process. Instead, I was misdirected to the second ritual task.

2: Use the baby potty
The baby potty on which I was trained continued to sit next to the real potty even after I had graduated from it, presumably waiting for the next child in line to be potty trained. I think that my notion of it possessing the power to undo my potty-training must have been tied to its standing as a constant reminder of the fact that I had once used it as a transition from diapers to my present, non-diapered state. In the murky logic of my preschool fancies, it is easy to see how I might have decided that if there was a way back into diapers, it would be the same way I had come-- through the baby potty.

3: Use a diaper

The final task here might seem redundant, but it was tied to another strange idea I had-- the idea that diapers weren't just something you wore when you didn't have control, but something that removed your control when you wore them. I figured that since my parents had granted me the ability to control my bladder and bowels through potty training, they could take it away just as easily by putting me back in diapers. As I imagined it, I would go back to zero control the minute I had a diaper on. My control would return fully as soon as the diaper was removed, but only if I hadn't used it-- once I "activated" the diaper by wetting or messing, it would be too late. If this happened, I would have no ability to control my bladder or bowels, even if I put my "big boy" underwear back on. I would be unable to regain any level of continence until my parents decided I was ready to move back up to the control-giving baby potty and give potty-training a second try.

---

So there you have it: another piece in the puzzle of what makes a Diaper Lover. My next post might not come until as late as May, (that's when I graduate) but it'll be worth the wait: I've been chipping away at first ever piece of diaper fiction for a while now, and by then it will probably be ready to see the light of day.

Until then,

CDB

New stuff

I've been trying to dress more like a grown up lately. I mean, I'm in school to be a movie producer. How am I going to fly all over the globe to meet with investors if I don't look like someone who can be trusted with a couple million dollars?

I've gotten rid of my sneakers. I now have two pairs of very sharp looking leather shoes, one black one brown. I also have five amazing looking collared shirts and a waistcoat. Nearly everything came from Uniqlo.

Here is the big one though: I bought a tie. I don't know how to tie it yet, but that can come later. With everything on, I look like I stepped off the cover of Vogue. I want to get used to dressing this way during my last year of school so that I can actually feel like it's no big deal when I graduate and dress this way all the time.

Another big change that's taken place since the last time I posted is that my girlfriend and I moved into a huge fucking apartment, which we've been filling with things from Ikea. All of this is due to the fact that I have been working overtime and making more money than I have ever had.

However: my new-found financial freedom has also allowed me to indulge my more immature side more than ever. The absolute highlight of my summer was seeing Walking with Dinosaurs: The Arena Spectacular at Madison Square Garden. My girlfriend and I were screaming along with a stadium full of five-year-olds as each new dinosaur appeared. They were incredible. I was completely freaking out the entire time.

I'm slowly filling the holes in my comic collection too. There is this publisher I can't get enough of called Eclipse. In the mid-eighties, they put out some of the greatest comic series of all time, including Zot!, Airboy, and Mr. Monster. Not only do these books feature better writing and art than nearly any mainstream comics before or since, but they are also printed on better quality paper with a laser scanned color process which reproduces the painterly work of the colorist. The mechanically separated processes which came before and the tacky digital techniques which have been invented since are wholly inferior.

Now, you'd probably imagine that Eclipse comics are really expensive, right? Wrong! They are cheap and they are everywhere. Look in any back issue bin of 80s small press stuff and you will find them for next to nothing. I've got tons of singles, but what I'd really been wanting for forever are the lavish and long out-of-print hardcover editions which Eclipse collected some of these series into. Now I've finally got them! :D

Last of all, I finally ordered myself a 24 pack of Bambino Biancos. For those of you who may not know, Bambino is the Cadillac of diapers ... and they only come in adult sizes. That's because they are the first designer diaper, made for and by diaper lovers. For the adult baby crowd, they offer a couple of options in childish prints, but I will stick to the all-white "bianco" style until they come up with some designs featuring space stuff, superheroes, or dinosaurs.

For a long time, I had been wearing Pull-Ups GoodNites, which are a lot of fun and more absorbent than people generally give them credit for. Unfortunately, the largest GoodNites are designed with pre-teen bedwetters in mind, and as such they are meant to be wet gradually over the course of the night. They are fine for recreational daytime wear, as long as you wet them a little at a time whenever you start to feel the need to go, but they can't really take a full bladder release all at once. You also have to be careful how full you let them get, as they have a tendency to overflow when you sit down.

For all their downsides though, GoodNites are nice because they are cute, trim, and readily available. There are 5-7 million kids in America who wet the bed, and as such, you would be hard pressed to find a drug or grocery store that doesn't stock them. When it comes to adult sizes though, a good diaper is much harder to find. This is pretty weird, considering that about 25 million people nationwide deal with some form of incontinence ... and that doesn't even count the recreational diaper-wearers out there who supplement that market.

In any case, the diapers you can get from your local drugstore which are actually intended for adults aren't much better in the absorbency department than GoodNites. Also, they look stupid as hell. Depends, easily the most recognizable name brand in the field, are notoriously bad, unless you get the "fitted Maximum Protection" version. These still have crappy tapes, but they at least provide sufficient absorbency to do their intended job.

The "fitted Maximum Protection" Depends aren't easy to find though. Most major chain stores seem to prefer to stock the more middle of the road ones, which in my experience are some of the flimsiest diapers ever.

So the question you are probably asking yourself now is, "if so many people in America wear diapers, why the hell aren't there better ones at my local drug store?" Well, as Justin Peters put it in his article for Slate magazine, "Like chocolate, beer, and jewel thieves, the best adult diapers come from Europe. This is not coincidental. European manufacturers don't have to cater to institutional purchasers' demands, so they're more likely to sell on quality rather than cost."

That's right. Because 50% of all people in nursing homes are incontinent, large institutional buyers make up a major part of the sales for products like Depends. The booming medical industry here in the United States knows that people who can't take care of themselves aren't in a position to complain about the inadequacies of cut-rate diapers. Keep in mind that Kimberly-Clark, the company which makes flimsy adult incontinence products like Depends and Poise, is the same one which makes better products like Huggies, Pull-Ups, and GoodNites for kids. This is because parents generally have a stronger interest in their children's well-being than professional caretakers, and are therefore more likely to purchase diapers based on quality rather than cost.

So what if Bambino products suddenly appeared on store shelves across the nation? My guess is that anyone who wears diapers on a regular basis and had a choice in the matter would switch over without a second thought. Think of the comics I mentioned above. If everyone had known about Eclipse when those comics were just coming out, they would still be around and probably be bigger than Marvel is right now.

Another bonus to having a company like Bambino at the head of the diaper industry would be the fact that they are so in touch with the recreational diaper-wearing community. Kimberly-Clark does so much to promote the statistics about how common bladder control problems are. Imagine if Bambino was out there, as visible as them, saying "Yes! It is totally okay to want to wear diapers, whether your bladder control is good or not. You are not alone." I know it would have done a lot to ease my mind as a kid.

As soon as people realize that there are alternatives to the vastly inferior, mass produced garbage that big companies force upon us, the world will be a better place. That's one of the reasons I want to produce movies. We need people out there with good sense and taste, and it's worth applying these attributes to selecting a necktie if it means I will have an opportunity to use them in bringing new films to life with previously unknown creative talent. After all, I can always go home to an apartment filled with toys, games, and other un-grown-up things.

* * *

"Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms.

"Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

-- C.S. Lewis

Finally, a day off.

Man ... the whole world is frozen out there. Winter really puts things on hold. I've been away from my usual internet haunts for a couple of weeks now, and apparently so has everyone else. Frigid weather, flu season, and a flatlining economy seem to have draped the whole world in a flat gray blanket of seasonal depression. I've been swamped with writing assignments, movie shoots, and the threat that "spring break" (which in NYC is going to be freezing, snowy, and generally not at all like spring) will interrupt all the work I am doing at school. Since today is my first day off in a while, I decided that it should be a diapered one. No ice-cold toilet seat today, thank you.

I've got a some chocolate chip cookies and an awesome comic book to read too: a thick hardcover collection of "Herbie," which is basically like if Daniel Pinkwater was writing comic books in the 1960s. Today is a day for maximum cuddling and contentment.

No news to report yet about that diapered college kids meet-up. I have a bunch of email addresses and basically just have everyone standing by for a date. We may just have to call it and decided that anyone who hasn't gotten in touch yet isn't interested. I'll probably contact people about a time and place this afternoon.

However! Despite a the recent lull in diaper activity (In my life anyway. Maybe you people have exiting diapered adventures every day.) there is one awesome development I have to announce to anyone who hasn't already heard: Monday morning, Bambino lowered their prices considerably, which is even better when you consider that they just made their diapers twice as absorbent in February. This cinches it ... I am totally springing for a case of Biancos.