Item: Bonds “Zippy” Wondersuits

Purpose: All-in-one pyjamas

Good:

• The winter ones are great for speed when your kid is throwing a tanty and doesn’t feel like getting dressed.
• The winter ones have double ended zippers, so good for nappy changes on cold nights.

• The winter ones have fold over cuffs on the hands and feet for warmth.

• Possibly have some resale value, but maybe not, since labels note that “product is designed to fade”.

Bad:

• Do not order online: Bonds have sneakily snuck some cotton-polyester blends into the range, so while you might end up with some lovely soft cotton ones, you might also end up with some horrible polyester ones too (see below email to Bonds) Well, don’t order online unless you can be arsed to go through each product description.

• The zippers on the summer ones can be really hard to engage, or join together, or whatever zips do. Particularly when you have a wriggly kid having a tanty because they don’t want to get dressed.

• They are really expensive for baby clothes. On holiday recently, I bought a similar style onesie from Target, which was $15 and had lovely penguin prints on it.

• The summer ones seem uncomfortably high-necked, not ideal for Australian weather.

Customer Service: It took a few days for a reply, but when I did get one, it was a copy paste of return instructions with a returns slip and a reply paid mailing print out. I managed to get to the post box on Thursday last week (4 days ago) so I am still waiting for the result of the return.

Verdict: If you must buy them, check the fabric labels and only bother with the winter ones.

Dear Bonds Person,

I ordered four short Wondersuit Zippies for my daughter last year, in anticipation of summer. I had some of the long Wondersuits, which we had been given, which were great for winter, and wonderfully soft and made of cotton. Therefore, in spring last year, I ordered four short summer Wondersuits in good faith that they would be made to the same standard.

You can imagine my confusion then, when she became oddly sweaty in the suits (though I didn’t particularly notice which ones) on evenings that I didn’t think were that hot. She was so sweaty on occasion that I ended up buying her some cotton singlets to wear with her nappy, thinking it was just the cut of the Wondersuit making her hot. I was just folding laundry, and noticed that two of the suits were not as soft as I was used to, and that the fabric had also begun to pil. I checked the labelling and discovered that two of the four suits that I had bought were a cotton/polyester blend.

I checked all of her other suits, and other Bonds clothes and discovered that a little t-shirt, a pair of leggings, and also, a brand new long-sleeve Wondersuit that I recently ordered from you for the next season are the same.

To say that I am disappointed in Bonds in an understatement. It seems like a sneaky, cheap thing to do, to randomly make clothes out of such awful material, particularly when the items that I described cost me about $80 – items that I will no longer use due to the discomfort my daughter must feel while wearing them.

I am now reluctant to buy any clothes from you in the future due to my uncertainty as to what they will be made of.

Jenny Cuthbert