Kids Ride Tyketoter The Original Front-Mount Child Bike Seat - Portable Tool-Free Quick-Release Attachment for Age 2-5

I got involved in front mounted children's bicycle seats almost four years ago when I started bicycle commuting. I liked the first seat I used well enough. It was a Bike Tutor, which is now called the Co-Rider. It worked well for me, but I would occasionally scrape my shins against the metal leg rests. When my older son grew out of it, I didn't bother keeping it. This year my youngest son is finally big enough for a front-mounted seat and so we started looking around again. I thought about getting a Co-Rider, but read enough negative reviews that I was leery about it. We ended up trying the Wee Ride Kangaroo seat, but I hated it because the back rest was in my way. I sent it back immediately. We thought about the iBert seat, as it is really popular and I saw it used a lot back when we lived in the city, but I didn't really like the idea of the weight of the seat being on the steering. This seat has been exactly what I was looking for. It was a million times easier to mount than either of the first two seats I was looking at. There is no back rest or full leg rests to jar any part of my body against. The handle bars are great and keep my son's hands in a place that is comfortable for him and away from my gears, breaks, and bike computer. He does occasionally reach up and try to play with them, but it is easy enough to correct and hasn't been a big issues, and my kid is the type of kid who is into EVERYTHING. I put a bike bell on the handles and he loves to ring it when we are out passing people on the trail. We don't do any serious hard core riding: our rides average 7-10 miles at speeds averaging 10mph - sometimes as high as 16, sometimes as low as 7 or 8. My bike is a Fisher Tiburon with a women's step through. It's a hybrid bike that does well on roads and less well out on the dirt, but I do ride it on dirt roads often. I have felt very safe with my son on it while road cycling and trail cycling. As a hybrid, my bike does have a partial suspension seat with first couple inches of the post being square and the lower section being tubular, so I did have to raise my seat a bit higher than I was used to in order to accommodate the seat. The seat fits well otherwise, but there was a learning curve to getting on and off the bike and stopping at intersections without being able to simply put my feet down or sliding off the seat in the front. I was most anxious about this, and I was disappointed that the manufacturer doesn't make any recommendations more specific than "use the curb". A YouTube video would have been most helpful. That was months ago, though, and I am an old pro at it by now. I have not had any problems with the foot pegs sliding down, as others have reported. However, my son is only about 22 pounds and two years old and well below the manufacturer's maximum weight suggestion. The main bar itself is firmly attached to the bike and doesn't move. I check it every time we go out and it is always firmly in place. The seat itself has just a light foam padding on it, and the foam on the handlebars is the cheap kind that you see on kids' scooters or bikes: not designed to last long. So far it is holding up well for us, though. My son loves going for bike rides. I had trouble getting him to put his helmet on the first time, but once he had been out on the bike and had learned to associate helmet with bike ride the problem disappeared. The seat looks uncomfortable to me, but for the most part my son doesn't act as though it bothers him. Our average ride is about an hour long, but he does get bored if I don't let him off to play at some point. We usually take a break about 3/4 of the way through our loop and stop at a park to play. I have done the full hour without stopping, but not often. This seat is designed for kids to have a full interactive/participatory experience, which means that you do have to have your kid's full cooperation. They hold themselves in place and ride along with you. If they are throwing a tantrum or falling asleep you can't simply soldier on as you might with a full seat or a trailer: you have to stop and deal with the problem and talk your kid into cooperating. So that's something to take into consideration. I ride my bike solo all the time and I don't have to take the Tyke Toter off: I barely even know it's there. With the other seats I tried I could ride by myself, but they were so bulky that I didn't like to do it, which is why the Bike Tutor came off the second my son wasn't riding on it regularly anymore. They were also more difficult to take on and off. I don't have to take the Tyke Toter off, but if I did it would be a very simple thing to do. Finally, I felt like the seat post mount solved a major problem of front-mounted seats. It's simple design is brilliant in a lot of ways. However, I had hoped to be able to carry both of my kids on my bike: one on the mounted seat and the other on the third wheel. Unfortunately because of the way my seat post is designed I can't really handle more than one seat post mount at once. It might be a possibility for a more traditional seat post that is all tubular and has no suspension. My husband's post is a partial suspension as well, so I can't say for sure. I gave this product 5 stars because I haven't been able to find a better child bike seat, at least not in the US market. While I do feel that the seat and handlebar foam could be improved upon, the improvements are very minimal and will probably occur as this product evolves over time... which it is sure to do, as it is a great product. I'm very happy with mine, and so is my two year old.

I've been looking around for some mechanism to carry my 3.5 year old son around with me on my bike. The rear-seat models did not really appeal to me. I tried a few and ended up returning all of them. With the rear-mounted models, one has no idea if the child is uncomfortable or up to no good. It is also hard to talk to the child, and the ability to explain things to my son was high on the list of requirements. I bought this Tyke Toter product after agonizing over the price, which is pretty steep compared to the rear-mount models. I must say that I am completely satisfied. Riding with my son is such a joy, and he absolutely adores the entire experience. On to the product itself. I'll break up the review into two parts: installation, and actual use. The installation is a bit of a pain in the ass. The tyke toter is designed to attach to the frame of the seat. This design poses two problems. You have to keep your seat sufficiently high so that there is enough space underneath it for the clamps of the toter to fit to the mount. I had to raise my seat by nearly 1.5 inches to accomplish this. Since I have a seat with a built-in shock absorber, which adds 6 inches to the seating position, this makes the seat almost too high for me (I'm 6 feet). Someone shorter would have had to get rid of the seat and replace with a non- shock absorbing model. The other issue is that it is impossible to attach the clamp so tightly that the tike toter does not swing around on its axis. There are two flavors to this. If the clamp is loose, it swings around by itself. If the clamp is too tight, it swings and rotates my seat along with it! This is of course a safety issue. I ended up securing the toter to the crossbeam of the bike with an old shoelace, and this got rid of the rotate problem. It would have been nice if this mechanism was part of the design. On to the actual use: the toter is advertised as being able to support up to 45 pounds. My son is 35 pounds and it has no problems. Once secured with the shoelace as I mentioned earlier, it sits snugly and does not interfere with the balance or operation of the bike. Of course, when you are riding with a child perched between your legs, you are forced to spread your thighs to accommodate, and pedaling with thighs apart seemed a bit weird at first, but I quickly got used to it. This is also a great attention-getter and icebreaker, a number of people have stopped me and asked me about this! On the whole, both my son and I love this product and would recommend it to anyone.

An amazing product that gives the opportunity to share the experience of biking with your child. Great to chat, sing or just have an intimate moment with your special little person. Everyone is envious of my tyke otter :) I can't blame them! Thanks!! Baie-Saint-Paul, QC Canada

Great my son loves it!