More Thomas Toys Recalled

I’ve see an abnormally high spike in hits from search engines on various incantations of “Thomas Recall.”  Curious for the new inbound traffic (welcome new readers!) I looked at Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) web site and sure enough, RC2 recalled more items yesterday from the Wooden Thomas and Friends series due to lead paint concerns.

They also recalled some other Knights of the Sword toys for lead paint.  This can’t be good financially for RC2 (they’ve previously stated how bad the first Thomas recall hit them in the pocketbook), though the scope of the Thomas toys is fairly limited.

Thankfully, we don’t have any of the affected toys in our house, but it has raised a sad state of affairs.  My youngest just turned one a few weeks back and most of the people made comments along the lines of, “I checked to see if it was made in China or not.”  We had one scare where a metal spinning top he received looked familiar to a toy I posted about earlier. A quick check on the site showed it was only tops with wooden handles, his has a plastic one.

Take a moment and scan through the recall list on the CPSC website and note how many lead paint recalls there are.  While there has been this huge outcry over manufacturing standards in China, something tells me this isn’t so much a manufacturing problem as it is a supplier problem.  Given how wide spread it is, something tells me some supplier unloaded a bunch of bad paint to various toy factories. Granted, the manufacturers still have a responsibility to test their products, but I think some of the blame may also lie on the regulations on suppliers. 

Before this mess did US toy manufacturers making toys here test all the paint they used?  I highly doubt it since no one in their right mind would attempt to sell lead paint in this country. The same atmosphere needs to happen in China.  Hopefully the Chinese equivalent of the the CPSC is looking into this.

If you’re a parent and your concerned, make a habit of checking the CPSC site.  They even have an RSS feed for toy recalls you can throw into your news reader. I’ve said it before - we haven’t seen the last of these recalls.