CEH Calls for Lead Testing by Retailers
The Center for Environmental Health has called on American retailers to test the toys they sell for lead.
Lead found in toys, backpacks in U.S. stores: group [Reuters]
A Curious George doll bought at Toys “R” Us was found to be tainted with 10 times the legally-allowed lead level, and vinyl lunch boxes and backpacks also had high amounts of lead, the nonprofit group Center for Environmental Health said on Wednesday.
The Curious George doll found with high amounts of lead was made by Marvel Entertainment Group Inc, the Oakland, California-based group said in a statement. A Marvel spokesman said he was unaware of the advocacy group’s finding and had no immediate comment.
Millions of toys made in China have been recalled over the last three months due to unsafe levels of lead paint, which is toxic and can pose serious health risks, including brain damage, in children.
The Center for Environmental Health also said it found high lead levels in vinyl lunch boxes and backpacks made by Sassafras Enterprises of Chicago.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Wednesday, October 10 | 0 comments | Permalink
Wal-Mart’s Sales Strategies Unsustainable
Retail analysts have expressed concerns about Wal-Mart’s habit of cutting prices to boost sales. While sales numbers might go up with this strategy, revenue inevitably goes down. Reducing prices is a quick fix on a larger problem, a problem which Wal-Mart doesn’t seem willing to address.
Wal-Mart needs a new strategy to drive sales, as revenue growth at the expense of profit growth isn’t the answer.
Wal-Mart’s Holiday Discounts: Revenue at the Expense of Earnings [Seeking Alpha]
Wal-Mart announced major price cuts in advance of the Christmas Holiday season, as part of an effort to boost sales during what is likely to be a difficult holiday shopping season for retailers. Whilst it’s likely that the retailer’s cheaper toys may lure buyers away from other retailers, it doesn’t change the fact that Wal-Mart is sacrificing earnings to generate revenue growth. I anticipate seeing the following scenario with Wal-Mart during the holiday shopping season: they’ll report solid same store sales due to the deep discounts and investors will send the stock price up, followed by a disappointing earnings report which sends the stock price back down.
The movement in Wal-Mart’s stock price from their use of deep discounts to drive sales has become quite predictable, it’s been a dependable pattern for a couple of years running, with the most recent occurrence being this past summer.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, October 08 | 25 comments | Permalink
Toys Given Out to Replace Recalled Toys Are Recalled
In an era when Wal-Mart has shipped mass product production overseas, not even consolation prizes are safe. After recalling its Thomas the Train toys, RC2 Corp. sent out “bonus gifts” to its customers as a way of apologizing. Then, in a move a sheer marketing genius, RC2 Corp recalled those toys, too. Consumerist got the apology:
Unfortunately, the discovery that certain Toad vehicles could be potentially unsafe was made in August, after Toads had been sent as bonus gifts to some families. Many of the Toad bonus gifts are safe, however some may not be. If you received a Toad vehicle as a bonus gift from us, please check its underside for the tracking code 1656OW00 to determine if it is one of the recalled toys.
As this article from the Associated Press points out,
The double recall dredges up issues of global supply chain management and China’s role as factory to the world. It also shows how a company that says it’s doing everything it can to ensure quality cannot guarantee that its products are lead free.
Toy Recall on Top of Toy Recall [Associated Press via New York Times]
The first recall was bad enough: A million-plus ‘’Thomas & Friends’’ toys pulled because of lead paint. The second was surreal: The maker of the smiley-faced trains sent customers ‘’bonus gifts’’ so they’d stay loyal—and now some of those toys have been recalled, too.
Even if you’re not 3-year-old Zoe McGaha-Schletter, it’s yet another mind-bending episode in a cascade of recalls that already had parents fretting what toys were safe for their kids.
‘’This is so exactly what the villain in a children’s movie would do,’’ said Zoe’s father, Eban Schletter. ‘’It’s just ridiculous.’’
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Wednesday, October 03 | 0 comments | Permalink
Toys “Priced to Sell” at Wal-Mart
Gosh, what Wal-Mart’s going to do with those millions of toys in its warehouses that are covered in lead and full of unsafe components that it ordered before the toy reca-- oh.
Wal-Mart rolls out early holiday toy push [Reuters via Washington Post]
Christmas started in September this year—at least in the toy aisles at Wal-Mart Stores Inc—even as retailers worry that parents may approach toy shopping with trepidation this holiday season after massive numbers of toys were recalled in recent months.
So to jump-start holiday shopping, the world’s largest retailer began cutting prices on toys in its stores on Sunday, September 30, and will be introducing special price cuts on hot toys each week during October.
“It’s a little bit earlier and a little bit deeper,” Laura Phillips, Wal-Mart’s chief toy officer, said of the timing of this year’s holiday toy promotions and the size of the price reductions.
For instance, this weekend Wal-Mart (WMT.N) cut the price on the Fisher-Price Kid Tough Digital Camera to $54.88—down from $64.88. The camera, aimed at children ages 3 and older, was one of last holiday season’s hottest selling items.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, October 01 | 46 comments | Permalink
Recalled Toys Still on Sale at Wal-Mart
Apparently you have to pry recalled merchandise from Wal-Mart’s cold, dead fingers before it stops trying to sell it to unsuspecting customers. See also: Nazi t-shirts.
Groups say dangerous toys still on store shelves [CNN Money]
Tests conducted on some toys and other children’s products sold recently at Wal-Mart, Target and Toys “R” Us stores were found to contain dangerously high levels of lead, consumer interest groups said Thursday.
The Clean Water Action, a Washington-based non-profit firm, said it tested 50 children’s toys sold at those retailers and at Walgreens stores in Massachusetts in late September.
The CWA said 11 of those toys - some of which were made out of vinyl - contained lead, including two that contained “extremely high levels of lead.”
The U.S. toy industry is reeling from a string of toy recalls this year. Over the summer, after toymakers Mattel and RC2 Corp. recalled millions of popular toys that were found to contain lead, a substance that can result in poisoning in young children if ingested.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Thursday, September 27 | 15 comments | Permalink
Mattel: China Not To Blame for Recalled Toys
Mattel apologized to China for blaming the country for recent toy recalls. Being careful not to bite the hand that feeds it, Mattel took full responsibility for the recalls and apologized to “the Chinese people, and all of our customers who received the toys.” Why is Mattel making such a fuss about taking full responsibility? It almost seems like the company’s taking the fall for someone else…
The real story of Wal-Mart, the story that never gets told, is the story of the pressure the biggest retailer relentlessly applies to its suppliers in the name of bringing us “every day low prices.” It’s the story of what that pressure does to the companies Wal-Mart does business with, to U.S. manufacturing, and to the economy as a whole. [Fast Company]
U.S.-based toy giant Mattel Inc. issued an extraordinary apology to China today over the recall of Chinese-made toys, taking the blame for design flaws and saying it had recalled more lead-tainted toys than justified.
The gesture by Thomas A. Debrowski, Mattel’s executive vice president for worldwide operations, came in a meeting with Chinese product safety chief Li Changjiang, at which Li upbraided the company for maintaining weak safety controls.
“Our reputation has been damaged lately by these recalls,” Debrowski told Li in a meeting at Li’s office at which reporters were allowed to be present.
“And Mattel takes full responsibility for these recalls and apologizes personally to you, the Chinese people, and all of our customers who received the toys,” Debrowski said.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Friday, September 21 | 0 comments | Permalink
E.U. Deems “Made in China” Unsafe
European toy companies prove that manufacturing products with unsafe matierals in dangerous conditions are NOT prerequisites for staying profitable. If that’s the case, why does Wal-Mart still choose to outsource the majority of its products to countries where these conditions still exist?
In Europe, Some Toy Makers Shun the China Label [New York Times]
Playmobil of Germany has long promoted its colorful plastic pirates, firefighters and farm animals as better-than-your-average plaything — toys to be handed down rather than chewed up. Now it can add another selling point: they are made in Europe, not China.
Attila Britting building models at Brandstätter in Bavaria. The company, maker of Playmobil toys, has passed on a move to China.
The same goes for Lego, the Danish maker of toy bricks, and for Ravensburger, a German puzzle and game manufacturer, though it does produce small quantities of nonpaper toys in Chinese factories.With Mattel and the American toy industry reeling from recalls of millions of Chinese-made toys, most because of lead paint, some of Europe’s best-known toy makers find themselves in the fortuitous position of having bucked an industrywide trend of moving production to China.
“Looking back, it feels like it was right to make that decision,” said Andrea Schauer, managing director of Geobra Brandstätter, which makes Playmobil toys. “At the level of quality we need,” she said, “we didn’t have enough manpower to inspect factories in China.”
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, September 18 | 27 comments | Permalink
New Product Idea: E-Z Test Tainted Toys Kit
Apparently, there’s an entire junior chemistry set’s worth of chemicals in the paint coating Wal-Mart’s pet toys.
Wal-Mart Reviewing Results of Tests on China-Made Pet Toys [Consumer Affairs]
Wal-Mart said today that it’s reviewing the laboratory results on two Chinese-made pet toys sold at its stores that—according to a forensic toxicologist whose company tested the products for ConsumerAffairs.com—contain elevated levels of lead, chromium, and cadmium.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission—which says it needs more money to protect consumers—did not respond to our inquiries, either last week or today.
And a pet owner in Michigan called on consumers to stop buying pet toys that are made in China.
ConsumerAffairs.com hired ExperTox Analytical Laboratory in Texas to test four Chinese-made pet toys—two for dogs and two for cats—for heavy metals and other toxins.
One of the dog toys—a latex one that looks like a green monster—tested positive for what the lab’s toxicologist said are high levels of lead and the cancer producing agent chromium.
A cloth catnip toy also tested positive for “a tremendous amount” of the toxic metal cadmium.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, September 18 | 3 comments | Permalink
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