15 Top Questions About Moonkie Baby Products

We get questions all the time about our baby products. Thankfully, we love questions! Answering your questions helps us be even more transparent with parents.

We make our products from high-quality food-grade silicone to ensure durability, long-lasting quality, hypoallergenic products, simple cleaning, and no chemical leaching. All our products meet U.S. and E.U. standards for baby product safety and material ratings.

We go above and beyond in our product design and material choices to ensure our little customers have the best and safest options on the market. In an effort to be totally upfront with you all, here are the most common questions we receive from customers.

1. Where Are Moonkie's Products Manufactured?

Moonkie's products are manufactured in our very own factory in Southern China. However, we store our goods in North America, Europe, and Asia warehouses. We ship from the closest warehouse to a customer's location to ensure the most efficient processing.

Our products undergo stringent quality control measures and certifications from the FDA, CPSC, and others to ensure their absolute safety and compliance with the regulations outlined in CPC and CPSIA. We have also obtained a CE market qualification, which enables us to sell in Europe.

Our Research Center partners with pediatricians, midwives, ergonomists, doulas, and parents. Our dedicated lab's countless experiments give us the ability to bring you the safest and most considerate baby essentials.

2. What Materials Are Your Products Made of?

Our team makes our products from 100% food-grade silicone. We opted to work with this grade of silicone because it is free from BPA, BPS, PVC, phthalates, lead, and latex. It's simply the best material to work with in terms of durability and chemical safety.

If you are unsure of why those common product ingredients have a bad name, read about it in Are Plastic Toys Bad for Babies?

3. How Can I Clean Moonkie's Silicone Products Well?

The good news is that cleaning our silicone products is simple! One can clean our 100% food-grade silicone items in the dishwasher or sterilize them by boiling them in water for three to five minutes.

Use mild or baby-safe soap when washing toys to avoid any residual soap getting into your little one's system. After cleaning, you can either air dry or towel dry the item.

You can follow this process for any of the following Moonkie products:

• Feeding Series Pieces

• Teethers

• Cleaner Kits

• Pacifiers

• Phone Press Toys

• Stacking Teething Rings

• Stacking Cups

However, DO NOT put the UFO Pulling Toy or the Pacifier Clip into the dishwasher or boiling water because they have other materials (as listed in their product descriptions and the packaging).

4. How Can I Remove Carrot and Berry Stains from the First Bites Set?

As impressive as silicone is, it is not 100% stain resistant to certain foods infamous for staining, like beets, carrots, red cabbage, turmeric, pesto sauce, blueberries, blackberries, or tomato sauce. Thankfully, we have some tricks you can try to remove them!

First, let your silicone plate sit in warm water. Then, move it into a glass or pyrex dish with hydrogen peroxide to soak for 24 hours. Afterward, clean with gentle soap and water.

Alternatively, you can whip up a baking soda and water paste and rub it firmly onto the plate with a paper towel or washcloth. Then, rinse the plate with hot water and let it air dry.

5. How Can I Remove Food or Soap Smells From the First Bites Set After Cleaning?

Some strong food or soap scents may leave a smell on your silicone products. If the food smell doesn't go away with the stain after trying the steps above, try the options below. If your scented soap consistently leaves a strong smell, opt for a different soap or try the following.

We have found that these steps take care of most smells left on the First Bites Set:

• Don't leave the dishes facing up when washing in the dishwasher. Holding dishwater for hours may cause the smell.

• To maintain clean, smell-free dishes, clean and sterilize the affected pieces by boiling them in water for 3-5 minutes at least every two days.

• Avoid leaving silicone plates and pieces to soak in soapy water for more than 10 minutes; it may leave a soapy residue on the items.

• Leave the set out to air dry for a day after washing. Most smells go away entirely when allowed to breathe before being stored.

One of the best ways to keep smells and stains off your Moonkie First Bites items is to avoid putting strong-smelling or staining foods on the silicone at all. For these, opt to use glass plates or containers and plan to spoon-feed your baby.

6. Why Does the First-Stage Infant Drinking Cup Have a Weird Smell, and How Can I Remove It?

You may notice a weird smell once you start serving milk or juice to your little one in the First-Stage Drinking Cup. Silicone can pick up smells from strong flavors and hold them until sterilized.

So, take the cup apart and boil all the pieces in water for two hours. If the smell is still there somehow, get fresh water and try boiling them again for another two hours. Allow the pieces to cool and air dry completely before use.

If you have hard water or tap water with a strong smell, we recommend using filtered water. Otherwise, the silicone may pick up the smell of your tap water!

7. What Age Is the UFO Silicone Pulling Toy Suited for?

We designed the UFO Silicone Pulling Toy for toddlers aged 18 months and over. Though the whole thing is chewable for teething babies, they may try to swallow the silicone strings and gag on them.

As such, we recommend watching your toddler as he plays with the UFO toy. It's a lot of fun, especially on a road trip, but keeping an eye on your little one is wise to ensure he doesn't try swallowing one of those strings.

8. How Can I Clean the UFO Silicone Pulling Toy?

Whether it's food stains from snack time or scribbles from the forbidden office markers, the UFO Pulling Toy is bound to require cleaning at some point.

We never recommend spraying silicone products with Lysol or bleach disinfecting wipes because they almost always leave a residue that babies and teething toddlers shouldn't have in their systems.

Instead, we recommend heating a pot of water to 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit) and dipping the UFO toy into it for less than two minutes.

WARNING: Dipping the toy in hotter water or for longer may deform it.

9. Can I Use Toothpaste with the Baby Oral Cleaner Kit? How Can I Clean It?

Yes, you can use baby-safe toothpaste with the  Baby Oral Cleaner Kit. Little ones don't need much toothpaste at all! To clean, rinse the pieces thoroughly in warm water. 

As a side note, keep the oral cleaner kit out of your little one's reach (especially that of any toddlers you have) and away from any cleaners. We kept ours in a box on a shelf up high.

10. Which of Moonkie's Products Can be Washed in the Dishwasher or Boiled for Sterilization?

We pride ourselves on creating practical, sensible baby products that can be cleaned easily. All of our 100% silicone baby products can be tossed into the dishwasher or boiled for sterilization.

Here is a specific list:

• Feeding Series Pieces

• Teethers

• Cleaner Kits

• Pacifiers

• Phone Press Toys

• Stacking Teething Rings

• Stacking Cups

However, please DO NOT use the dishwasher for the Pacifier Clip or the UFO Silicone Pulling Toy because they have other materials (as listed in their product descriptions and packaging).

You can boil the UFO Pulling Toy in water NO HOTTER THAN 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit) for less than two minutes. No hotter and no longer.

11. What Should I Do with Silicone Moonkie Products that Get Damaged by a Dog?

Silicone is fabulous until it needs to be recycled. Even our high-quality food-grade silicone cannot be recycled at a regular recycling facility. Instead, silicone items are processed at a unique recycling facility to give unwanted silicone a new life as industrial-grade silicone, playground mats, or running tracks.

So, should a stubborn dog, mower, or some other destructive force damage your Moonkie silicone item, send your damaged items to Pura  or  ECO USA .

For more on the durability and life cycle of silicone toys, read Are Silicone Toys Durable Enough for Toddlers?

12. Does Moonkie Use Other Materials in Its Products?

At this point, we create most of our products with 100% food-grade silicone from our very own factory so we can control the quality from start to finish. However, we do have a high-quality food-grade plastic ring for rigidity in our UFO Silicone Pulling Toy, a wooden pacifier clip, and beautiful muslin baby blankets.

Silicone is a brilliant material for baby products, but it isn't perfect for every job. Rest assured, we test everything thoroughly, attain certifications in the U.S. and Europe, and go through rounds and rounds of meetings and feedback from pediatricians, parents, midwives, and doulas before any Moonkie product makes it to the store.

If you ever have a question about the material safety of our products, feel free to email us at info@moonkieshop.com.

13. How Does Moonkie Come Up With Product Designs?

Our chief designer and co-founder is Cindy, a mom of two kids who got frustrated with terribly designed, unsafe, or outright impractical baby products. Using her engineering and design skills, Cindy creates product designs that complement the home, keep babies safe, and actually do the job well.

Many of Moonkie's designs come from parents complaining about a common issue in a popular product or requesting a more practical way to do something.

For instance, our Silicone Breast Pump is discreet, totally silent, easy to clean, and incredibly gentle, precisely what electric pumps and plastic shields fail to do.

Cindy leads an in-house design team that tirelessly works to ensure each design has zero glaring oversights in practicality or functionality. Such thoughtfulness and quality are evident when you hold our products for the first time and begin using them regularly!

If you want to learn more about Cindy and keep up with her, join our email list! Cindy sends emails about life, working at Moonkie, and parenting every week.