Great, apart from the fact that the bloomin' legs keep falling off! (Ikea Mammut Children's Chair)

Member Name: pmcds

Product:	Ikea Mammut Children's Chair
Date:	22/06/09 (205 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Funky, cheap

Disadvantages: Not safe

We have two of these funky looking chairs, and I have to admit, I probably use them more than our 5 year old son does. The instant appeal of them is the look, with a fun blue and curvy contours certainly catching the eye of anyone looking around the kids area in IKEA searching for furiniture, as we were a few months ago.

For me, it's great to use when I play Guitar Hero in front of the TV. We don't have any other moveable chairs in the room, and you have to sit head on as it's movement sensitive. My son uses it to sit and have tea on the occasions when he has it in the front room, and the occasional lunch at the weekend or in the school holidays.

The chair itself is a decent size. Granted I am much too big for it, but it's the perfect size for my son and he loves it. It's about 40cm wide, square in shape, and about 7cm high - I forget the exact measurements. It goes just perfectly with a little table we have for him from a different IKEA range. The chairs are also available in pink.

Sadly, though, chairs are made for sitting on, so you would expect the basic function to be to provide adequate support for someone sitting on it. Doe it? Well, if you stay very still, or you're heavier than intended for the chair (like me) then you're probably alright, but the main problem comes with the legs, as every review on here before me states as well.

It's a fundamental problem. As with most of IKEA's items, this chair comes flatpacked and you have to assemble it yourself. Attaching the back and the seat is okay - you just need to slot them together, and once they click in, they're pretty reliable for staying so. However, the legs are a different kettle of fish. They have to go in a specific way, as the designers have included a tab to go into a slot, curving round the edge. This is a bit of an effort to get in, so you need to have a bit of a good go at it before it's fully in. The problem, other than this, lies in the fact that, despite all that effort getting it in there, the legs can randomly drop off with the slightest movement or contact, and even sometimes when you just pick the thing up!

I have examined the bottom and tried to work out if I am doing something wrong, but the things just do not stay in long enough, and for me, this really is a safety problem. As a result, we are very careful with the chairs, and our son knows that they're for mealtimes only - not to be moved around. This is a shame, as we wanted him to have a chair or two that he could use wherever he wanted to in the house. Instead, he either can't, or one of us has to move it around and make sure the legs are in when we do, and this is not on.

I won't be taking them back - they didn't cost much. I think they retail for around the £10 mark each, but it's such a long way to our nearest IKEA, and it's better than no chair, that we'll just keep them as they are. If we have another little one, though, we may reconsider, and get something a bit more sturdy so he/she can use it from an earlier age without us worrying every second that the legs are going to drop off.

Not a great product from IKEA.

Summary: Unsafe chairs? Not IKEA's finest hour, I'm afraid!