As any parent of an infant can tell you, pacifiers have this mysterious way of vanishing without a trace. From the flinging of said item in public places to the baffling 'But he had it a minute ago!' disappearences, pacifiers leave our world with alarming regularity.
Considering the price of a single pacifier (about $3.00) I suspect that the pacifer companies are either stealing pacifiers, washing them off and reselling them (the paranoid approach) or are well aware of the life expectancy of the average pacifier and are capitalizing upon it.
To that end, I would propose outfitting each pacifier sold with a small radio transmitter that would allow parents to code it to their frequesncy, and then offer a small hand held device that would allow parents to hone in on the signal of the errant pacifier and follow the signal back down the supermarket aisles to find the missing item where it had been carefully positioned, right between the DCON mouse poison and the WD-40.
Another posibility is to utilize already existing technology and put an alarm on the pacifier that responds to a loud clap so that parents can look as silly as possible wandering around and clapping ther hands together loudly for no discernable reason.-- RobGraham, Jan 24 2001 Buy 'em a dozen at a time. Eventually you will start tripping over lost ones that can be washed off and recycled, at least around the house.
How about making them in really bright garish colors (which the kids might love too) so they are easer to spot?
Perhaps manufacture them with a place to stick on an address label and a guarantee of postage so someone that finds one could mail it back.-- lee, Jan 24 2001 How about cheap and disposable pacifiers?-- chindogu, Jan 25 2001 Superglue.-- StarChaser, Feb 18 2001 or used for finding stolen babies just incase someone happens to be trapped inside a Lifetime movie-- tumnus, Apr 29 2003 Missing pacifiers is soooo true. They go to the same place lost biros and odd socks end up. Somewhere out there there is another dimension where pacifiers, biros and socks live in peaceful bliss.-- peppina, May 31 2003 Hasn't anyone thought of tying one end of a string to the pacifier and the other end to the baby's clothes?-- joker_of_the_deck, May 31 2003 random, halfbakery