Hellobee Boards

I vote save your money. We never bought any special plates, bowls, or placemats for DD and it's been fine. We use our normal ceramic salad plates and bowls and place them on her highchair tray (or we used to; now she refuses to use the tray so we just scoot her up to the table and put her dishes onto the normal placemats). She has never broken or dropped anything.

I used the ezpz- style mat until around 18 or 20 months (there are knockoff brands for less $$).
Now my LO mostly uses regular dishes but I got a set of the replay plates from target which we use sometimes, it's also good for play dates because each LO can have their own plate and I don't have to worry about their individual skills.
I have one suction plate that someone gave me, I use it if I'm running low but the suction function itself is pretty useless. There are probably better versions out there (bjorn maybe?) but I never felt I needed to seek out suction.

Save your money on the suction, but definitely buy divided plates. This is embarrassing, but I struggle with portions. I've found the specific type we use (Replay, if you were wondering) helps me with portions - big part is where the meat / protein goes, one small section of fruit / veggie, and then the other small section is a carb.

All our suction cups / plates ended up losing their suction after a couple of washes. My son was also never really a plate thrower - boy likes to eat.

We tried a few types of suction things and found them annoying. Mostly they just didn't work. And I found the EZPZ stuff way too expensive. We are just not on top of things enough to have just one kid's plate. We need more like 4, so we're talking over $100 on plates. The throwing dish phase was really short so I'm glad I didn't spend the money. We have a set of replay dishes that worked great for a couple years before we moved to real plates.

Suction cups never work. We use cheap plastic IKEA plates. And really for the youngest one, his food just go straight onto the tray without a plate right now. It's just easier to deal with that way. But within the next couple of months I suspect we will transition to plates.

I think the suction plates/bowls really depends on your kid. My 18 month old is not a plate thrower. She throws food on occasion, but has only thrown her bowl or plate once or twice. We also don't do divided plates. I prefer to just use the regular salad plates we already have. We also usually give her small glass Tupperware style bowls that we already owned.

We had one suction plate/mat combo for DD1....It quit working after a use or two. I didn't care because (a) i feel like the suction was motivation for her to try to tip a plate that she wouldn't have had otherwise and (b) before it quit working, i nearly sent a plate flying bc I'd suctioned it on at a bad angle and couldn't reach the tab I needed to pull to break the suction. Whoops!

I do love divided plates, though. Besides portion control, they're great for holding dips/sauces, or for appeasing picky kids who don't want their food to touch (aka most toddlers/preschoolers). I still use them for my oldest who is almost 5.

Our son never threw/dropped his plates & he didn't care either way for divided vs. not. He had one divided plate and the rest were just regular. I will say having a "lip" ended up being VERY helpful!

Our daughter (who's G's age) throws Every. Frickin. Thing. We got gifted an EZPZ divided plate and use it every night. She's not strong/savvy enough to move it yet and it's a dream! I anticipate using it until she's at least 18-20 months and can reason better.