Connected throughout an entire shopping center is a round accessible tube much like a water slide with clear panels here and there filled with a slowly flowing stream.

Busy mothers with new born infants are encouraged to meet on level 16, where their child is placed into a waterproof and untippable floating plastic basonet. The child is strapped in and given a firm push into the tube where the child will ride unassissted for the next 30-40 minutes. Along the way, flashing lights, happy music and animatronic pixies who jig about with ornate flutes and comical moustaches, provide the baby with a pleasant experience.

The tube flows visibly through certain sections of the shopping center i.e under the floor, overhead in the restaurant, beneath the cash register in the discount cigarette shop etc. Clear panels are installed so mother can wave as baby goes past every now and again.

A GPS system will alert staff to unforseen tube blockages, and on every floor there is an extra slow running pool for retrieval if mother needs to leave early.

Motion sensor cameras are installed to take cute snaps of baby inside the tube and are sold at the kiosk on level 1.
-- benfrost, Dec 14 2004

Who thawed Walt Disney?
-- reensure, Dec 14 2004


why just supermarkets [ben] ? I like it, and I'll have one.
-- neilp, Dec 14 2004


No doubt it was a concept just like this one that set Moses on his way. Which floor has the bullrushes?
-- jurist, Dec 14 2004


fathers might do this. Not mothers.

This being benfrost, I was expecting that you might connect this to the hospital beds where the mothers give birth directly into it.
-- sophocles, Dec 14 2004


On 2nd thought. Why an age limit? [+]
-- sophocles, Dec 15 2004


eeew
-- benfrost, Dec 15 2004


All smiles until one day a child snatcher drills into your tube. Such (probably) nebulous fears would likely discourage mothers from using the contraption. Fathers, as [sophocles] pointed out...
-- DocBrown, Dec 15 2004


Fathers would ride with the babies while the mothers went shopping. Everyone's happy.
-- wagster, Dec 15 2004


Can't stop laughing from soph's anno.
-- krelnik, Dec 15 2004


my mind reels with cons can only think of one pro, yeah dads would go for it.
-- dentworth, Dec 15 2004


I suspect not all babys would enjoy this and some would never be able to go shopping in their later lives due to a fear that the baby tubes will claim them again, for good this time.

I reserve my judgement on this one.
-- harderthanjesus, Dec 15 2004


\\A GPS system...\\

GPS? What? Blimey - where's this tube going, Cuba?

Pixies v important. [+]
-- moomintroll, Dec 15 2004



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