Adult Baby Universe (ABU) has overhauled its Super Dry Kids (SDK) and Cushies diapers, and the changes are significant enough to append a "version 2" label to their names. While ABU has been making incremental upgrades to these products since the advent of its new management, with this iteration they're advertising a 25% thicker, 60% more absorbent diaper with better plastic backsheet.
I am reviewing the medium size Super Dry Kids V2 and Cushies V2 as provided in May 2015. The medium size is listed as fitting waists of 31"-36", the large is listed as fitting waists of 36"-46", and the extra-large is listed as fitting waists of 46"-52".
Appearance, Size, and Features
The Super Dry Kids has a printed front landing zone printed with a repeating pattern of bears with balloons and parachutes. It is based on a late 1990s Pampers Baby Dry design, with a print that is almost identical but with the addition of letters into the image and a change to the printed text. The diaper's outside is white otherwise. Version 2 changes the colors on the bears to pastel colors which now closely match the original design.
Cushies have an all-over print, with purple sizes, purple outlined icons with smiley faces on the white center, and a landing zone that features colored versions of the icons on an otherwise transparent panel. It's a generically babyish design.
Both diapers have added the ABU logo to the margins of their repeating patterns.
Front and Back of Folded Diapers, Respectively
Comparing the new and old versions of the SDK, there are obvious differences. The new version is clearly thicker by look and feel. The difference in the colors on the print are immediately noticeable. The inner blue core of the old version is gone, further serving to bring the SDK in line with the original Pampers design which had an all-white core. To the touch, the new plastic cover feels much more substantial as opposed to old version's thin tissue-paper feel.
Print and Thickness of SDK V2 and V1, Respectively
To test their dry thickness, I stacked three diapers on top of each other and placed a heavy book on top of them, and measured their height. Together, the 3 diapers had a height of approximately 12.6 cm (4.9 in). Thus, the dry thickness of a single folded diaper is 4.2 cm (1.6 in). This definitely stands up to the advertised claim of being 25% thicker than version 1 – in fact, it's close to 1.5x as thick by my measurements.
3 Diapers Stacked
The Super Dry Kids uses a single-tape system that is unusual on an adult diaper. The tapes are much wider than typical tapes, perhaps being half the width of the landing zone. I measured them to be 7.0 cm (2.8 in). This part of the diaper does not appear to have changed noticeably from the first version.
It's not obvious what the best height is to put them on the landing zone, though the pictures ABU has posted advertising the diapers show them offset a bit towards the bottom. This gives a fairly normal fit around the legs but gives a very loose top edge. I found that having a much thicker profile made it harder to get a tight fit at the top with this diaper's single tape because there was more bulging-out below.
Once stuck, the tapes adhere very tightly. It takes a bit of a tug to get them off.
The Tapes
The plastic backing feels soft and moderately thick. It has a muted crinkle to it. The landing zone is glossy and has much more friction than the rest of the diaper.
The inside of the diaper is all white and has standing leak guards. The padding is arranged in an hourglass shape that is more asymmetric than in version 1. The padding has somewhat-packed cotton feel to it. It has an elastic waistband in the back, but not the front.
Front and Back of Unfolded Diaper
With the diaper outstretched, it measures 73.8 cm (29 in) in length, 66.5 cm (26.2 in) in width at the wings, 28.8 cm (11.3 in) in width at the center, and 22.7 cm (8.5 in) in width between the leak guards.
Performance and Fit
To test the capacity of this diaper quantitatively, I ran a test to simulate use. I put a diaper on and then repeatedly poured water into the front of it in 100 mL increments and sitting down in a chair for 30 seconds each time to give the diaper a chance to absorb the liquid, pace the process, and see if it would leak when sitting.
After 1000 mL of water, it began to feel like I was sitting in a puddle. At 1100 mL, the diaper felt like it was actively spreading my legs apart. At 1400 mL, I noticed wetness around the leg on one side. At 1500 mL, the diaper leaked on my chair and I ended the test. The tapes stuck in place throughout the test.
This new version is advertised as having a 60% increase in raw capacity, and my result suggests a practical increase of at least a third, if not half. It's a definitely a dramatic increase. Moreover, the new backsheet completely eliminated the beading-through issue I had noted on in my review of the previous version. With this overhaul, this diaper now tests similarly to a fairly typical "premium" diaper.
After the test, I measured the diaper and it had expanded to roughly 10.5 cm (4.2 in), about 2.5x its original size.
Dry Diaper Next to Full Diaper After Quantitative Test
To gather qualitative data for this review, I put on a fresh diaper and wore it while going about ordinary activities. The diaper lasted about 5 hours before leaking, over which time I had several moderate wettings but did not flood it.
I have a 36" waist which typically puts me in the ideal range for medium diapers. The SDK/Cushies Version 2 list 36" as the dividing line between medium and large, which surprises me, given that the diaper did not feel like a much smaller fit than version 1, for which I was well within the range for mediums.
The diaper does fit differently given its one-tape system. Notably, there's a huge gap between the top of the padding and the top of the backsheet – the top edge of the diaper extends 8.0 cm (3.2 in) above the top of the padding. This compensates for the fact that there's no upper tapes to keep the top of the diaper taut, but it wears floppy and loose. It doesn't stay flush with the skin in front at all. I found it awkward and uncomfortable.
Price and Final Thoughts
I received these diapers for the purposes of a review from https://www.abuniverse.com. Initial orders are limited to 10- and 20-pack quantities, with 40-pack half-cases and 80-pack full-cases to be available in March 2016. Pricing for SDK V2 is $32.99/10, $59.99/20, $78.99/40, and $134.99/80. Pricing for Cushies V2 is slightly higher at $34.99/10, $64.99/20, 84.99/40, and $139.99/80. Prices include shipping, and there's an option to add a scent for $5 more per pack.
At the case size, this comes to $1.68/diaper for SDKs and $1.75/diaper for Cushies. This is a 10-20% increase from the final prices on V1 SDKs and Cushies, and prices them above non-ABDL diapers, but towards the lower end of the range for ABDL diapers.
The old versions were expensive for their capacity. The new version is far more competitive, reaching capacity more in line with "premium" diapers, but falls somewhere in the middle of the pack in price for performance. Moreover, this diaper is a good demonstration of why adult diapers typically have at least 2 tapes – it was difficult to have the legs sufficiently tight without having the top end up very loose and vice versa. This diaper has a very idiosyncratic fit, and I suspect it varies a lot more person-to-person than the typical diaper.
Where these diapers shine, however, is in the authenticity of the designs. This is especially true for the SDK - you can't beat an actual baby diaper design at authenticity, and the changes to better match the original 90s design are welcome. Though a single-tape design presents challenges, actual baby diapers are single-tape and for some, having that feature is a high priority. Up until this point, that meant dramatically lowering expectations on functionality. Version 2 of SDKs and Cushies succeeds at being the first widely-available single-tape "premium" capacity diaper.
