FOXBORO - No Slip Charlie is ready for sale and even if you don't need him, he's just so darn cute you might snatch him up anyway.

He's a giant rubber duckie your child can bathe inside - inside the bathtub - that quacks, has a no-slip grip floor where baby sits and a blue button that changes color if the bath water gets too cold or hot.

How did people ever raise children without these things?

"But they're here now," said Aija Erglis, director of American Baby Faire, the nation's largest infant and parenting expo that takes place today and Sunday at Gillette Stadium.

"You can say, no, I don't have to have it. But now it's here and you have a choice. Things change."

Boy, do they. American Baby Faire is put on by American Baby, a national magazine, to celebrate, educate and promote infant products that make up a $30 billion industry that sees the average new parent spending $5,000 to $7,000 in their baby's first year of life.

More than 100 vendors - from some of the industry's most recognizable names to locally-based smaller retailers - are crowding the Dana-Farber Field House at Gillette Stadium for the two-day event.

Walking around Friday afternoon while vendors strolled in to set up, Erglis talked with excitement about the event's first year at Gillette.

American Baby Faire has been held for years at Bayside Expo Center in Boston, but catching wind that the center was going to phase out, Erglis wanted to secure a new home for the event.

"And wanted the new home to be in an area where families are," she said. "So, we moved to the suburbs to be with our target consumer audience."

The expo is more than just selling cutesy baby items.

"We have a hybrid of people here, to showcase and educate," Erglis said. "These are the experts who design the products. Who is better to educate the consumers? That's what we pride ourselves on."

That kind of one-on-one attention and education is evident walking over to the Dorel Juvenile Group/Safety 1st booth, where Daniel Dias was setting up the company's European strollers which just hit the U.S. market in 2007.

A complete line of high-tech, and highly fashionable car seats, strollers and more, is on display - and Dias knows everything about each one. "There have been many European products on the market for a while," Dias said. "We wanted to keep the quality and meet the U.S. regulations. We wanted to make sure we also could keep the European safety features. And it's done really well. Although it's just been launched to retailers, parents have been going to the Internet for them for a while."

The Maxi Cosi line is pricey. The stroller Dias elaborately explained goes for $299, but has more features than one could imagine upon first glance: a step on/step off brake pad, an adjustable for height handle bar, a canopy that is coded with material to block UV rays and a peek-a-boo visor so you can spy on baby as you walk.

"You get here what you wouldn't get in a store," Erglis said. "Parents come here, collect all this information and now they're empowered to go home and figure it out."