Et tu, Elmo?

Today we learned about a recall issued by Mattel for certain Fisher-Price toys, including Sesame Street and Dora The Explorer licensed toys. Apparently, one of Mattel's Chinese suppliers had applied decorative paint to the toys that "contained excessive amounts of lead."

A list of the toys affected by the recall, and a news article about it, is here: http://www.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?id=78607

Unfortunately we had one of them: Silly Parts Talking Elmo. So this afternoon, he became Wrapped In A Bag And Thrown Away Elmo. I explained to the boys that I had to dispose of Elmo because he had bad paint on him, and they didn't seem to mind. Luckily, I don't recall them ever biting into the toy, as this thing's body is entirely plastic and covered by that leaded paint.

Doing an inventory of all the other plastic/painted toys, it struck me that almost all of them are "Made in China." The boys are big Sesame Street and Dora fans, so there were other toys to go through and compare to Mattel's list.

Ironically, I was reading an article in Fortune magazine a couple of weeks ago about how Mattel is the model for how to do manufacturing in China. By all accounts they're very careful about how they choose their suppliers, as well as their quality controls, so if something like this got past them, what about those less stringent toy manufacturers? Bearing that in mind, Singing Nemo joined Elmo in the disposal bag: this Nemo was by some Chinese-sounding company, hence my refusal to give its plastic orange and white painted body the benefit of lead-free doubt. I'm not being a Mattel apologist here, nor am I exercising a reflex prejudice against Chinese goods. But the litigation-happy environment in the United States has made American companies (rightly) paranoid about safety concerns, something that can't yet be said about those manufacturing on the cheap out there in Guanghzou.

Then again maybe I threw Singing Nemo away because it was just so damn annoying. That toy did one snippet of a song in a high pitched yet pinched, nasal voice, all the while rotating in circles on the floor (it had wheels).

Maybe all this is just an overreaction, and that 0.06% lead content in paint (the standard used by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission) isn't really harmful. Certainly those metal painted toys from our childhood was in the day before all this lead paint/sharp edges/small parts/Not Safe For Children Below 3 consciousness. But as a parent there's no way you take a chance on any of this; so God help Mattel and that Chinese paint supplier, if I ever get them in a room with me.