Mattel Blows Up
So, I’m busy with work not following toy news as closely as I usually do and what happens? The world explodes. In case you haven’t seen this… well, everywhere… Mattel has recalled all the toys in the world due to concerns about both lead paint and small magnets in several of their popular brands (including The Batman) that can get dislodged and kill children. What a nightmare.
Just when I get done saying a few months ago that toys from major brands aren’t usually a hazard they have to prove me wrong too. Blame the Chinese on this one again, because this is yet another case of a poorly made product with almost no oversight being sent over here into the hands of kids. I’m all for buying products from a potential enemy/rival in exchange of suckering them into capitalism, but they clearly have the quality standards of the early 1900s.Time to catch up , fellas. If Upton Sinclair were alive today, he’d be writing about the terrible conditions of Chinese factories as well as eating brains.*
Good luck to you for getting out of this one, Mattel. Hey, at least you don’t make pet food filled with rat poison!
toy, toy collecting, action figure, China, recall, Mattel, safety
*I’d like to congratulate myself on fitting in an Upton Sinclair joke on a toy blog. College did pay off!
August 16th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
Yeah. The owner of the Chinese production company committed suicide in the factory. Good times had by all.
August 16th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
Wow, well I had him pegged for being executed by the government, so that’s just as well I suppose.
August 17th, 2007 at 2:00 am
I was actually expecting the NY Times article to say that Mattel recalled all their toys, but it’s only 436,000 toys of a Cars character. The magnet recall is for 63 products totaling 18.2 million, which isn’t that huge considering the approximate amount of “30,000 products on sale at one time.” However, it is probably the biggest recall since ever.
And Mattel considers the Chinese company a victim as well because of a subtracted painting company, so I’m pretty sure not all Chinese factories have those poor quality standards.
There really isn’t anything “well” about this. Except maybe that Mattel’s stock only dropped 2%. They’ll make that up in no time.