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Toys Safer than Ever, Toy Makers Claim

Companies try to get back in the game at annual industry expo

By Joseph S. Enoch
ConsumerAffairs.com

February 20, 2008
As thousands of toy makers convened in New York City this week for the world's largest toy fair, the phrase on every exhibitor's lips was “toy safety.”

Nowhere was this more evident than in the booths and showrooms of the companies saddled with last year's biggest safety recalls, who have since upgraded their product lines and say their toys are now safer than ever.

A kid's dream - four floors of toys

“The words 'toy safety' seem to be everywhere,” said Chrissy Cianflone, director of program operations at the nonprofit Safe Kids USA.

The five major companies conducting massive toy recalls last year were Mega, Hasbro, Spin Master, RC2 and Mattel. ConsumerAffairs.com caught up with three of those companies at the Toy Industry Association's annual American International Toy Fair.

The redesigned Easy-Bake

Hasbro, the world's second largest toy manufacturer behind Mattel, recalled 1 million Easy-Bake Ovens in 2007 after the company learned children were getting their fingers and hands caught in the device, sometimes leading to burns or amputation. The company inadvertently created the hazard through a redesign in 2006. It has now gone back to the original design that sold has 40 million in the years before 2006, said Wayne Charness, senior vice president of corporate communications at Hasbro.

“We had a new design last year,” Charness said. “We did find some issues with it, we recalled the item, but we're back with the original design.” The re-re-designed oven is expected to hit store shelves this fall.

Charness heralded 2007 as a safety success for the company.

“We were lucky that we did not (have more recalls) and I think part of that is because we have very stringent standards in place,” he said. “We've been doing it for a lot of years. Our levels have always been lower than federal standards. We think it's a good thing that the rest of the industry is doing more.”

“I think toys are generally safe and I think they have been for many, many years,” Charness said.

Date rape drug

Spin Master, a Toronto-based company that in November recalled 4.2 million Aqua Dots that contained date rape drug ingredients, spoke with 50,000 customers one-on-one and revamped its safety standards, said Donna Lee MacNeil, senior director of Communications at the company.

“I think since November, it's given us the opportunity to really go back and do an extensive, thorough safety review process from A to Z on all of our product lines, not just the product that had the incident in November,” MacNeill said.

The company suffered a brief financial impact following the recall, Macneill said, but has since rebounded and is now the fastest growing toy company in the U.S. It took two of the most prominent prizes at the fair's awards ceremony on Saturday.

“We feel that we got in a good position within the industry and we think we've only become stronger and we'll continue to get stronger through everything we've done and especially, learned, over the past few months,” she said.

The company is redesigning the Aqua Dots. There was no display of the prototypes, but Spin Master plans to release the finished product in May under a new name, MacNeill said.

Fatal attraction

The new MagNext

The Montreal-based Mega recalled more than 4 million sets of its Magnetix toys March 31, 2006 and April 20, 2007 after they killed one child and sent at least 27 more to the hospital.

The toys had magnets that easily came loose and wreaked havoc on intestines when swallowed.

Magnetix will be replaced by a similar toy, MagNext, in July. MagNext features larger parts that passed a stricter swallowing test with the magnets molded into the plastic pieces, said Harold Chizick, director of Corporate Communications at Mega.

The new MagNext -- almost impossible to swallow

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All the companies said that as a result of new Toy Industry Association standards, expected to be released Friday, increased media scrutiny and new voluntary corporate guidelines, toys will be much safer in 2008.

Mattel is mum

Mattel, which had the most recalls in 2007, would not speak to ConsumerAffairs.com without an appointment and, in a classic corporate Catch-22, wouldn't return phone calls and e-mails requesting an appointment.

Although RC2, which was second behind Mattel in 2007 toy recalls, is still in business, it did not have a booth at the fair. The phone number for its NY office was dead and e-mails to its media department bounced back.

Photos by Joe Enoch

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