Comments on: Parents, Toy Companies Stress After Recall

Frantic Search For Tainted Products Begins After Fisher-Price Recalls Nearly 1 Million Chinese-Made Toys

[incog-nito]

Wonderful. Americans manage to lose manufacturing jobs to other countries while at the same time get poisoned by their products, all to save a few bucks on cheap junk while the cost of health care, child care, education go through the roof.

[spiel1958]

Just go shopping at a dollar store. You can smell the toxic pollutants.

[incog-nito]

Don't worry, keep buying foreign and ship jobs overseas. The effect of toxic chemicals will not be apparent until many years from now, by which time the statute of limitations would have been long expired, so you won't be able to sue for compensation anyway.

[barbaraf4]

Okay, petfood, toothpaste, and now toys. I can remember when we recognized the fact that everything imported from China was junk. Are there any regulations in these free trade agreements?

[incog-nito]

Don't worry, keep buying foreign and ship jobs overseas. The effect of toxic chemicals will not be apparent until many years from now, by which time the statute of limitations would have been long expired, so you won't be able to sue for compensation anyway.

[incog-nito]

Don't worry, keep buying foreign and ship jobs overseas. The effect of toxic chemicals will not be apparent until many years from now, by which time the statute of limitations would have been long expired, so you won't be able to sue for compensation anyway.

[incog-nito]

Don't worry, keep buying foreign and ship jobs overseas. The effect of toxic chemicals will not be apparent until many years from now, by which time the statute of limitations would have been long expired, so you won't be able to sue for compensation anyway.

[missingamerica]

This is the kind of thing I think of everytime I hear somebody say something about "too much regulation in America" or "America job losses result from over-regulation".

Greed seems to affect people the same no matter where they live in the world: Money often becomes more important to susceptable people than the lives of you and yours.

That is why in the last 100 years we in America have found that we HAD to have regulation; the fact that so many of America's far right bemoan its existance here is silent proof that were our regulations hollow or non-existant as they are in China, the same deadly manufacturing practices would be followed here.

[gabbysmomrs]

As I read it the writer who posted just before I did, at 9:09 pm today, believes mercury and lead based paint are not an issue here...BUT China doesn't have rules regulating the elements and chemical materials used in their manufacturing. As for our people doing fine in the 50s and 60s can we possibly know what happened to people during those years...there was still lead paint in older homes, there were kids who took Mercury out of broken thermometers in containers and pouring it out on a table...what a magnet that was. It was so pretty and it was neat to stick our fingers in it to see it come apart. Touching mercury is not the only threat. Just breathing it can cause big problems for us.
Bringing goods into our homes from countries that have no rules about what they use. If we think we can regulate that we're nuts. So, these things bring us back to the "good" old days when kids chewed on lead painted toys, etc.

[cantshutup]

if manufacturers are soooooo profit greedy that they'd put Americans at risk for cheap production then maybe we could put them all out of business...kids today have too much junk to keep them occupied that they can't be creative and imaginative like a normal child should be...

how bout instead of outsourcing every D*amn thing to china, we use our prison system??? just think of all the potential citizens that could be arrested to keep our spoiled little tykes in toys!

[gmond]

Just another big tax write-off for Mattel, must have been a slow year.

[gabbysmomrs]

How about boycotting the Olympics? I know it would have a huge affect on our athletes, but we've done it before and I believe it is time to do it again. This would really hurt the Chinese economy, of course we're only one country, but perhaps others would join us. Chinese goods are threatening ... more and more often...to kill or making people ill all over the world. To say nothing of their workers. All of this so our companies can save money. Maybe refusing to purchase Chinese-made items would hurt them where they live.

[gabbysmomrs]

How about boycotting the Olympics? I know it would have a huge affect on our athletes, but we've done it before and I believe it is time to do it again. This would really hurt the Chinese economy, of course we're only one country, but perhaps others would join us. Chinese goods are threatening ... more and more often...to kill or making people ill all over the world. To say nothing of their workers. All of this so our companies can save money. Maybe refusing to purchase Chinese-made items would hurt them where they live.

[nothappyatall]

"Bring it all back to the USA and let's become the envy of the world again."

Yeah but people are not going to pay $98.00 for a toy made in America that currently is made in China and sells here for $12.95, just like I won't buy an American shirt for $59.95 when I can get imported shirts just as good for $14.95

The lead scare like the mercury scare are largely scams- both have been around for decades- both come out of the ground.
You have people being scared to death over 4 MILIGRAMS of mercury in a florescent bulb and paying thousands for haz-mat cleanups, ths is pure krap designed to extract as much money out of the dumb sheeple as they can.
Lead has been removed from all gasoline for years, all housepaints for 30 years and toys 30 years ago, all those metal train sets etc all had lead paint. So with the gas and housepaints devoid of lead, the 1/3 that may be left is 1/3 what it WAS and people did just fine in the 50s and 60s the way things were lead paint, mercury thermometers and all.
Just don't eat your peeling housepaint for breakfast and dont break your mercury thermometer in your azz and don't worry about it.

[olebd]

Enough is enough. The free trade agreements through the years have proven themselves to be disasterous not only for the middle class but for all of America. How many strikes can we give China without losing any sleep at night? Bring it all back to the USA and let's become the envy of the world again.

[blancadebree]

The free market works! By manufacturing toys in China, Fisher-Price saves money. Of course they no longer need workers here in the United States, if they are importing toys from China. They can cut those jobs here in the United States, but those people laid off by Fisher-Price can work for Wal-Mart. By working for Wal-Mart they can earn a generous discount on already low-priced, manufactured-in-China toys. These lead-laden toys are then played with by the children of these employees, damaging their brains, and thus ensuring another generation of low-skill, low-wage workers who can polish the fenders of my high-priced luxury car. God bless our free market, and God bless the man who made it all possible. Is it too early to talk about repealing the 22nd Amendment?

[timberagain]

Corporations have once again traded our health and well-being for bigger profits.

The CEOs really need bigger yachts, jets and eventually golden parachutes when they leave the mess behind.

Pathetic.

[kirstinharr]

At what point do we figure out that our middle class is disappearing all because we allowed manufacturing jobs to go to China. The reason they can make things for less money is not only labor so cheap it should be called "prison" labor but they have no safeguards in place. There is no equivalent of the EPA to ensure they aren't polluting more than acceptable amounts. There are no safety measures of any kind in place to protect our children, our pets or ourselves as consumers. Vote in 2008 for ANY candidate willing to bring the jobs back to America!