(I can’t find the artist’s webpage to link to, just some credits saying that this might be a translated Russian comic posted by Piterskii Punk)
That is actually a really good point.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=baby+mobile
Almost none of these mobiles, in a quick skim, have the interesting stuff on the mobile ornaments aimed at the kid. They’re instead aimed at the adult.
Exactly this. I work with parents of very young children, and I always tell them that if they’re buying something like a mobile or art for the walls, they need to lie on the ground and look up at it from a baby’s perspective to know what it’ll really look like.
Same reason that wall decor for babies and toddlers needs to be less than 3 feet from the floor. Otherwise it’s just for the parents’ benefit.
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I imagine it’s similar to dog toys. Ultimately I don’t think my dog cares if her toys look like frogs or squirrels or ducks, but I do.
It’s not like the baby really cares. Moving colourful stuff that makes a sound, what more could you want?
Babies do start to pick up on faces early on – we’ve got some hardwired stuff there – and on the mobiles there, the faces are away from the baby.
https://www.whattoexpect.com/toddler/self-recognition/
At birth: Even though your baby doesn’t recognize you, she certainly likes the look of you. Studies have shown that even newborns, with their eyesight limited to about 12 inches, prefer to look at familiar faces — especially yours.
Months 2 to 4: Your baby will start to recognize her primary caregivers’ faces, and by the 4-month mark, she’ll recognize familiar faces and objects from a distance.
Most of the complex details and shapes are facing away. Oddly, of the mobiles I see there, the few designs aimed at the baby are mostly black-and-white, not colorful, while I’d have also thought that color would be preferable.
Stuff is done to sell, hence it targets those who make the purchases not the end-users.
You see that a lot in things like children toys, often resulting in the funny result that the kid that gets the toy as a gift ends up having more fun from the box the toy came in than from the toy itself.