'Shark Tank's PullyPalz Are A Baby's Best Friend

Remember when all you needed was a pacifier in your mouth to make you shut up, I mean, help calm you down and feel better when you were a baby? Yeah, those were the days. Well, Friday night's episode of Shark Tank will let you take a walk (crawl?) down memory lane with a spot dedicated to PullyPalz, a pacifier holder for the modern baby. You'll fall in love with the product so much that you might be tempted to buy a PullyPalz for your grown-up self — or you know, a baby in your life.

Sure, some of the entrepreneurs may want to give the sharks pacifiers when they skewer their products and business plans on Shark Tank, but it's probably been a while since they had any real experience with a binky. Let's just say they've matured well past the time they would be using a pacifier, and their children have too. Will they be able to understand just how great PullyPalz is for babies and parents alike?

Whether they do or do not doesn't really matter. PullyPalz is of course right up "Queen of QVC" Lori Greiner's alley, so I'd be shocked if she didn't at least nibble at a deal with PullyPalz. However, money is like the grown-up pacifier, and if any of the sharks think PullyPalz will bring them the cash to help them sleep better at night, they'll make an offer no matter how much or how little experience they have with baby products.

If PullyPalz does yank a deal out of the sharks, we might be hearing a lot more from the company in the future. Get a head start with these six things you should know about PullyPalz.

1. It's A Pacifier's Pal

Though the name PullyPalz sounds like baby talk, it's actually very descriptive of the product. PullyPalz are little stuffed animals that hold two of your baby's pacifiers, which can easily drop out of the baby's mouth and end up who knows where, from the crib to the car seat to (gasp!) the floor. Two pulleys move the pacifiers so that when the baby has one in his or her mouth, the other is up high where the baby can see it, because anyone that has played peek-a-boo with a toddler before knows how easy it is for them to think items and people have vanished into thin air. PullyPalz come in MoMo the monkey, Puddles the frog, and MooMoo the cow characters, who all make sure that whenever a baby needs his or her binky, it'll be there.

2. PullyPalz Has More Benefits Than You Think

When I first heard about PullyPalz, I thought it was just another cute baby product. However, when I started to learn about the impact PullyPalz can actually have on a child's life, I was convinced that no parent should live without this product. Not only could PullyPalz save parents a ton of time and headaches by not having to find itty bitty pacifiers so their kids stop crying, but there's also a ton of positive effects the product can have on child development. PullyPalz can help with right-left brain coordination, cause and effect, and hand-eye coordination, according to the company's website. Let's just hope PullyPalz has some research to back up those claims, because the sharks will probably not be too impressed without it.

3. You Can Pull This Into Your Life Now

Are you already sold on PullyPalz? Well, then. If you've got Internet access, you can get acquainted with PullyPalz IRL in no time. PullyPalz are sold through the company's official online store for $24.99 each. You can also find them at a ton of brick-and-mortar stores in the United States and around the world and through other online retailers, including Amazon. It certainly sounds like PullyPalz is doing all right for itself, even before its Shark Tank appearance.

4. The Founder Is A Mother Of Invention

An awesome product has an equally awesome inventor behind it. Julie Tabor Thompson is the founder and president of Bounce Innovations, the company behind PullyPalz. As a mother of two, she's experienced the great case of the missing pacifier before, what she called "the pacifier game," where her children would spit out their binkies but then immediately cry for them. After a while, this game wasn't so much fun anymore, so Julie came up with her PullyPalz solution. She made the first PullyPalz prototype in her kitchen after figuring out how to use a sewing machine and watching YouTube videos. And now she's built a whole business off of selling these things.

5. It Has A Big Supporter

I'm not the only one who thinks PullyPalz is too cool. PullyPalz received a $15,000 grant from the Huggies MomInspired Grant Program in 2013. This program helps start-ups and new products get off the ground with some financial backing and business counsel. Here's hoping Thompson can get all of that once again from a shark.

6. PullyPalz Doesn't Stop At Pacifiers

It looks like PullyPalz is trying to corner the market in things babies put in their mouths. Not only is its pacifier game strong, but the company also started selling teethers this year that help soothe toddlers' mouths when their teeth start to come in. These teethers, which cost $11.99 in PullyPalz's online store, also fit right into the product's pulley holders, and they come in garden and sports varieties.

Now the only thing left to do is find out which shark finds PullyPalz tantalizing enough to bite.

Image: Michael Desmond/ABC