Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
Thursday, October 4, 2007
I’m feeling betrayed on so many levels these days. When the spinach and the carrots were recalled due to contamination I starting thinking about all the things most of us do these days to make ourselves and our families, healthier and enriched mentally.
Now this latest recall comes up. If there isn’t a law now, we need to see that some new laws are written. I have links posted at the end of this article and I have assigned homework.
While I was reading the list of today’s recalled tainted toys and other items 2 things leaped off the page at me. First, some of the product recalled today have been on the market since March of 2005. These items were sold in book stores and gift stores. Second, why on earth has it taken more than 2 years to make the public aware.
The Baby Einstein Discover & Play Blocks and been in the mouths of babies and toddlers for 5 months now. Every mother, hopeful she may raise the next Einstein has thoughtfully provided an enriching toy for her child. A lead laced toy that after 5 months of being in the hands and mouth of her toddler, may very well have given her child a learning disability.
There are Alphabet and Math blocks, learning blocks and Activity learning carts that have been in the hands and mouths of toddlers for a gut wrenching 2 years. Long enough in fact to have gone into subsequent children’s hands.
It makes me sick to think about it.
Every now and again we hear a blip in the news about an illegal drug that had been manufactured, where is anyone’s guess, poisoning a number of users. As sad and tragic as something like that may be most of us can just let it pass and think ‘oh well they shouldn’t have been doing that anyway.’ Maybe we think, ‘they should have known what they were taking was made by some loaded, incompetent idiot in a basement somewhere,’ and we move on.
When young mother, and grandparents are buying toys they believe are to the developmental benefit of children and find they have, unknowingly put poison in their child’s hands the case needs to turn criminal.
I believe waiting up to 2 years to recall some of these items is criminal, and should be punishable by prison time. Waiting 5 months to recall these toys is criminal. Letting them into the hands of a child for any amount of time is unspeakable.
This is your homework assignment today:
First follow this link to see the list of items in the latest recall and send this link to anyone you know that may be affected by the recall.
Second write a letter to the editor of your local paper. Start the drums beating.
If you can’t write a letter to your editor (for some reason).
Send an email to your Representative in the U.S. you can find them at this link.
Canadian Members of Parliament: follow this link
Labels: China, Recall, Tainted, Toys, lead paint
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
More Poison Toys from China! Time People on This Side of the Pacific to do Some Real Time! PSMI Extra
Friday, September 21, 2007
In what is being billed as Mattel’s mea culpa for the unprecedented toy recalls over the past several months Mattel apologizes to China.
Nothing says, ‘I’m sorry please don’t stop making our products for a fraction of the cost it would take to make them anywhere but in China’, like a personalized apology.
There is no question China’s reputation of being a nation of pariah has been increasing almost daily; now Mattel wants to mend that perception by telling the world and China that the recent recalls are all their fault.
It’s said that fear has a recognizable scent. Is that the odor wafting out of Barbie’s Dream House?
Mattel is now claiming the majority of toys recalled were in fact recalled as a result of poor Mattel engineering, and that only a small percentage of the recall involved banned lead-based paint.
80% of children’s toys are manufactured in China equaling a mind blowing 7.5 BILLION dollars worth of products. We’ve held the opinion that regardless of what was going on in China, Mattel, as other toy companies, own the responsibility for producing safe toys.
Mattel has announced plans to upgrade its safety system?
Here is a bulletin Mattel!
The time to upgrade your safety standards is:
frequently and prior to one child being harmed while engaged in the act of play!
Don’t wait until your stock values fall. Companies making anything that comes in contact with our most valuable, precious and helpless children owe those children and their wallet carrying parents a reasonable expectation of safety.
When companies are charging obscene prices for their goods, when they are making obscene profits they need to go overboard to make their products safe. These companies spend obscene amounts of money to advertise and bend the minds of their ‘target’ consumers.
It is time that consumers ‘target’ these purveyors of hazards and tell them we have had enough! Tell the makers of Polly Pocket to stay out of your pocket until they can prove they have changed their bad practices.
Contact Mattel: http://service.mattel.com/us/contactus.aspx
Labels: China, Mattel, Tainted, Toys
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Mattel Seeks to Pull Their Moo Shu Pork From the Wok!
