Liza Ambrus remembers the day a woman came in fuming, yelling at staff at BB Buggy near Yonge St. and Bloor St.

“She was so mad,” said Ambrus, the manager of the baby goods store.

Eventually the woman issued her demand: stop selling big baby strollers. They take up too much space on the sidewalk and transit.

Ambrus was not sympathetic.

“We’ve got to suck it up,” she said. “Parents need to transport their kids and not everybody’s got a car.”

Besides, strollers are actually getting more compact, she said. Not to mention far more intricate — and expensive.

The days of the spindly $30 umbrella stroller are gone — they’re not comfortable, safe or suitable for newborns, retailers say.

In its place, the seemingly gigantic models that come with skis or snow tires, cup holders and built-in grocery bags, removable seats, parasols and meal trays can cost as much as a used car. And the bulkiness of them is raising public ire.

Earlier this week, public resentment of unwieldy baby buggies on streetcars and buses spurred the TTC to ponder limits on strollers allowed on board or charge extra. Debate on the issue has been vitriolic.

But parents do ask for the smallest options, particularly if they are part of the wave of condo-living, transit-riding families in downtown Toronto, said Ambrus.

Her most popular stroller, the Bugaboo Cameleon, is about 90 cm. long and 60 cm. wide. It weighs just over nine kilograms and has a 24-litre undercarriage for storage. It costs around $1,000, depending on the model.

Baby on the Hip assistant manager Fritz Marcel said many customers worry about heaving large strollers on and off public transit and angering other TTC-riders.

“They come in and they tell you, ‘I do need to take public transit,’ ” said Marcel. “It’s not like people are trying to buy big strollers.”

Janet McLaughlin has tested and reviewed strollers for more than a decade in Santa Monica, Calif., and said strollers couldn’t get much smaller and still safely allow a newborn to lie down.

They are, however, getting far more high-tech.

4moms’ Origami stroller comes with a walking-powered generator that fuels a USB port to charge cellphones and iPods, an LCD kilometer-counter, running lights and headlights for the dark. It’s also power folding — just hit a button.

Viktor and Rolf paired up with stroller-maker Bugaboo for the “My First Car” stroller, which boasts of a “grey, classic sports car-style fabric, a leather-look canopy with a matching leather-look wheel skin,” along with handstitching and rear silver alloy wheels. That model sells for $1,600 at BB Buggy in Toronto.

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But it’s hardly a match for the latest: the BMW luxury baby stroller, adorned with logos on the baby belt bucked and hubcaps, the famous Beamer grille design on the cover.

The stroller one uses has become a social statement, said McLaughlin.

“Consumers want something as small and compact as possible,” said McLaughlin. “People are also quite spoiled right now and they want all those things.”