theITbaby

the IT city, the I.T. Baby

reviews

Babies R Us Gentle Infant Formula vs up&up gentle infant formula

up&up vs Babies R Us

Babies R Us Gentle Infant Formula vs up&up

In this corner we have the Babies R Us Gentle Infant Formula (store brand,) weighing in at 38 ounces, and in the opposing corner we have Target’s store brand up&up gentle infant formula with iron.

Both of these formulas have the same nutritional information, the same packaging other than color and label, and about the same content although the Target brand is an ounce or two lighter.

Looking at the boxes they look like they were done by the same company, from the phrasing to the positioning of the warnings these look exactly the same and if you were to ask me, I’d say they were manufactured at the same plant.

Top view of the same container

Maggie tends to disagree.

We’ve been suspecting that problem days tend to come when we feed M from the Babies R Us can and today I think we’ve verified that after attempting to see if she hated it for about three days.

Yesterday on the Target brand, 28+ oz drank. We sent her to daycare today with Babies R Us, next to nothing drank. Came back home and fed her 4 ounces of up&up, she was still hungry so we swapped with Babies R Us and she refused the bottle. Swapped with two ounces of up&up and she devoured it. Swapped back to the untouched BRU bottle, wouldn’t drink it, switched back to four more ounces of up&up and bam – more bottle destroyed.

So, we’ve determined that Maggie can tell the difference, and she doesn’t like the Babies R Us version even though there’s no evident difference. I mean I would swear these came from the same factory and Maggie has no idea what I’m handing her.

So, the Babies R Us version of the formula she despises, so we’re having to return it and go with the slightly more expensive Target brand even though we’ve had a pretty bad recent experience with Target that’s left a bad taste in our mouths, it’s evidently not as bad a taste as the Babies R Us brand to Maggie.

During our rather unscientific tests it also seemed Maggie had more stomach rumblings on the Babies R Us version when she would eat it.

Now, if someone tells me there’s absolutely no difference and they come from the exact same factory, I wouldn’t be surprised, but Maggie is tasting something and hating it and we’re having to return the less expensive formula due to her hatred of it.

As a note, although I included Amazon links up top to both of these, I’m pretty sure in-store pickup is significantly less expensive.

Also, your mileage may vary, this is just my baby’s experience with this.

2 / 5 stars     

Paul King

Paul King lives in Nashville Tennessee with his wife, two daughters and cats. He writes for Pocketables, theITBaby, and is an IT consultant along with doing tech support for a film production company.