WASHINGTON, Aug. 2, 2007
Parents, Toy Companies Stress After Recall
Frantic Search For Tainted Products Begins After Fisher-Price Recalls Nearly 1 Million Chinese-Made Toys
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Play CBS Video Video Lead-Tainted Toys Recalled Nearly 1 million Fisher-Price toys that were manufactured in China have been recalled by Mattel because they were tainted with lead paint. Sandra Hughes reports.
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Fisher- Price's "Go Diego Go Mountain Rescue," and "Birthday Dora," right, two of 83 types of toys that are being recalled due to lead paint concerns, are seen on a store shelf in Alexandria, Va., on Aug. 1, 2007. (AP)
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News Tools Toy Recall A complete list of toys recalled by Fisher-Price
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Timeline Popular Playthings Take a trip back in time with this look at some of toymaking's greatest debuts.
"I'm less inclined to buy anything from China," said Schneider-Fisher, of New Albany, Ohio, who was heading into a local Toys 'R' Us on Thursday. "And I'm upset our government doesn't do more to stop it."
Schneider-Fisher's comments reflect the quandary many American parents face after the world's largest toy company, Mattel Inc., recalled almost 1 million Chinese-made toys because they may contain lead.
As if fears over contaminated toothpaste, poisoned pet food and faulty tires weren't enough, the latest recall of Chinese-made products has anxious parents rummaging through toy chests to find tainted Big Birds and Dora the Explorer toys.
It also has stressed-out toy companies, which are going through their inventory to see if their products are harmless. And it has China, again, insisting that its products are safe.
On Thursday, Mattel's Fisher-Price brand announced it is recalling 83 types of toys — including the popular Big Bird, Elmo, Dora and Diego characters — because their paint contains excessive amounts of lead. The recall involves 967,000 plastic preschool toys made by a Chinese vendor and sold in the United States between May and August.
Under current U.S. regulations, children's products found to have more than 0.06 percent of lead are subject to a recall.
Mattel says it is investigating why the manufacturer did not follow company rules and use paint "from approved and certified suppliers," reports CBS News correspondent Sandra Hughes.
'They actually entrusted the testing of these toys to the actual factory that was producing them," says Don Mays of Consumer Reports. "We think that that was a mistake."
For parents, replacing the tainted toys with ones they trust are safe could pose a problem: 80 percent of all toys are made in China.
"It seems like everything's from China. But if I could find a similar toy that was American-made, I would definitely buy it even if it cost more," said Allen Mayne, of Columbus, Ohio., who was shopping at a local Toys 'R' Us for his 9-year-old daughter.
"I think it would be in everyone's best interests to look for American-made products, stuff you can feel confident about, stuff that's just not the cheapest junk that you can get," he said
With discounters like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. waging price wars, the pressure has been on toy companies to cut costs by producing cheaper toys in China. With exceptions like Mattel, which estimates that about 50 percent of its production in China is made in company-owned plants, many toy companies turn to contract factories, a cheaper alternative.
Thursday's toy recall follows the June recall by RC2 Corp. of 1.5 million wooden railroad toys and set parts from its Thomas & Friends Wooden Railway product line because of lead paint. Those toys were also made in China.
Industry experts are worried there will be more toy recalls to come, and fear parents will be more skeptical when buying holiday toys, even avoiding Chinese products altogether.
"Everyone is concerned that this could really undermine the traditional toy business if consumers think that the toys are unsafe," said New York-based toy consultant Chris Byrne.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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See all 58 CommentsNo one that reads your comments here can do anything. Your concerns have to make it onto a ballot somewhere before anything will truly be done about all this.
So......what are you waiting for?
Bush, Clinton, whomever. It shouldn't matter who is President..We ALL make our choices and make the decisions for our country..That%u2019s why YOU VOTE and get involved!! Shame on all of us!! Let%u2019s take some ownership of who is making the toys for our children!!
This is what you get for shipping your intrest to the Chinese so you could get a bigger profit.
SHAME on YOU.
Posted by ecuadoriana at 01:15 PM : Aug 02, 2007
WHEN these toys were made in America those Standards were met, now they are not and we're being posioned. It's time to stop this garbage... to many American's have suffered, to many Jobs have been exported. It's time to care about America and stop this NOW!!
Posted by galaxiana at 02:17 PM : Aug 02, 2007
Is there ANYTHING you Corporate Nazi's won't do? What does CBS News have to do with the POSIONING of our Kids? IF they DIDN'T release that news to EVERY American Parent the MINUTE they got it, I sure wouldn't listen to them EVER again. As for you and your Greed, while you wanted CBS to wait some child is chewing a toy.. But of course that's just a Working American's Child and is of no concern to you huh? God where do you Fascist come from?? Sieg Heil Y'all.
Pissed
There is a fine balance between "working with" your sources and betraying them. Mattel/Fisher-Price could have simply held off on releasing ANY information, but they gave it out early, asking the news agencies to honor a release date and time, so that the news agencies would have time to prepare stories and properly investigate. Of course, the company wanted time also to set up its hotline and get more product off the shelves, so it worked for both sides' benefit.
One has to wonder why CBS couldn't act ethically in its pursuit of a scoop. Is the best scoops they can get the ones handed to them by a press release? That's sad...
Whew, someone who makes some sense! Thank you, mariony.
Now, rather than everyone immediately turning to bash mariony & myself, stop & think about how much we're all not so much dependent on mass manufacturing from other countries, but rather how we've allowed ourselves to become hypnotised by our greed for more so that we've allowed ourselves to become dependent on mass manufacturing. We've become a nation of believing that we want & need more of basically nothing important & wanting it now & for as cheap as possible.
Why on earth are we buying so much plastic cr@p in the first place? Does one really need so much stuff? How many toys can one kid play with? Multiply that by millions of people & it becomes an endless track of junk that we later toss into the landfills while replenishing our homes & lives with more junk!
If we're complaining about other countries' manufacturing processes not living up to our standards then we are being disingenuous, because we've set the standard. We demand more cr@p & that's just what we get.
Posted by incog-nito
Hillary by contrast has went before Silicon Valley executives and promised to raise the H1B1 caps.
Posted by omega39
These are excellent points -
I believe it is total helll for "regular" parents to afford sending kids to college. It may never have been easy, but higher education for American kids has not been a priority to scum politicians for quite some time.
The manufacturing base is quickly disappearing, and Americans will suffer for it. Manufacturing is the backbone of the economy, creating wealth by adding value to raw material and selling it. Manufacturing is what made Japan, a tiny country with little natural resources, one of the richest nations.
What's more, America is starting to lose on the technology front also, not graduating enough scientists and engineers. Kids nowadays just want to get rich quick and skip the hard courses by going to business school. Well the economy won't go very far if everybody is a manager, salesperson, or paper-pusher.
It appears as if the Chinese manufacturers could care less about what they are using in products intended to be shipped to America. It's time to bring these companies back home!!
It may have started with Reagan (actually, Nixon, Ford, and Carter) but it was also a cornerstone of Clinton foreign policy. This is something he is CHAMPIONED for is foreign policy circles....dealing diplomatically through economics. Sharing the economic wealth is a very valid method of gaining friends abroad.
You may debate whether or not we have done it responsibly, but to blame one side of the aisle or the other is, quite frankly, demonstrating a poorly informed opinion. Both sides advocate "outsourcing". One does it to bring down costs and the other does it as a measure of sharing the wealth.
Then along came Reagan and the Republicans. Look up the change in income inequality since 1980; it paints a precise picture of when greed began to destroy America.
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