Toy recall, again: More serious than lead.

Monocrom

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For those of you who may have missed the news story, another Made in China toy is being recalled. But it contains something more serious than elevated lead content.....

Aqua Dots is a popular toy this year. It contains beads that can be used to create fun shapes of patterns or animals. Once completed, you spray water on the beads and they stick together. Thus allowing your child to pick up and play with his creation.

But.....

The beads are coated with a substance that mimics the effects of the Date Rape drug. Including the horrible side-effects. It's being recalled. Some children have been hospitalized after putting the beads in their mouths.

I don't have a wife or children, but I know a lot of you guys do! If you bought Aqua Dots as an early Christmas present for the kids, take it back. Tell your friends and relatives about this "toy."
 

this_is_nascar

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Thanks for posting. I saw this on the news last night. This is very sad indeed. What is wrong with these times we now live in. When I was a kid, I"m glad my GI Joe's, Bigwheel and Sit-and-Spin didn't have these issues.
 

IsaacHayes

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It contains a chemical in the manuf process that is in a high level in the finished product and the body metabolizes into GHB.
 

tygger

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Thanks for posting. I saw this on the news last night. This is very sad indeed. What is wrong with these times we now live in. When I was a kid, I"m glad my GI Joe's, Bigwheel and Sit-and-Spin didn't have these issues.


Funny thing is, even if they were loaded with nasty chemicals and had safety problems, we probably would have played with them anyway. :D Growing up, fruit loops cereal was a good breakfast, kool-aid was water, adults smoked in cars with one window half rolled down, and airplanes had useable ashtrays. Growing up I flew on lots of commercial flights were smoking was allowed. Amazing how things have changed.
 

JohnB

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I remember as a kid the Mcdonalds collectible glasses were recalled because of LEAD paint back in the 70's. It is not a new problem but it is frustrating when you here these stories. The manufacturers should never allow the people that make the items to also be in charge of QA.
 

Illum

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pretty much everything is made in china :shrug:

Not flaming China but they need to be taught of certain chemical compositions to avoid in the manufacturing systems. its the quality control thats wreaking havoc, not the workforce that creates the products. While the toy recalls been like a epidemic going about in the US we must accept the fact that JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING we use or have a great probability of it originates from China, but why are these items safe and others not? QUALITY CONTROL.:ohgeez:

[ :rant: mode on]now if you really want to search for evidence...you can find everything from catfish to electronics to toys to canned beans thats been recalled or notified as hazardous...I really don't know what the deal is, an evil plot?
theres been a few scams, theres an [Taiwanese] article somewhere that mention how the samples/evaluation kits are usually of the best quality and when the orders are put in for high quantities, the "second batch's" basically junk. the ability to fool foreign companies with premium quality samples suggest they have the technology to make it better, but choose not to, as a illegitimate manner to make money by cutting down or eliminating quality control to export products that may not have passed QC into the market...or uses alternative materials in manufacturing, which many contain hazardous chemicals of unknown quantity previously undetected because the "first batch" didn't use the other material [/ :rant: mode off]
 
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LukeA

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The manufacturers should never allow the people that make the items to also be in charge of QA.

Each industry has a regulatory commission. What I think is happening is either that the toy industry's commision is comparatively lax or that the industry is pushing out large numbers of small lots of toys, making qc more difficult.

What's happening in China is that there's not as much regulation as in nations whose industrial development evolved as the nation did, rather than China's relatively fast and somewhat haphazard industrialization. The result of this is that there's opportunity for cost-cutting by subsitiution of ingredients with inferior ones. The ingredients substituted in are perfectly legal for use in China. However, there is little incentive to do this because if the product fails qc, it doesn't get sold and no one makes money, and the customer who ordered the products will most likely never contract with that manufacturer again.

The only real hole in the system is an uninformed or unscrupulous shop supervisor who wants to return good numbers for his bosses and doesn't know or doesn't care that the cheaper ingredient he's putting in a product renders that product unsafe according to U.S. law. Nobody is intentionally making harmful products. There's no money in making products that can't be sold.
 
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binky

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It contains a chemical in the manuf process that is in a high level in the finished product and the body metabolizes into GHB.

It's good to have more useful info on this, like this.

My first thought was fear for the children who have & will get hurt.

Then I also realized that I bet there are pitiful & horrible stories about the people who manufacture these products recalled for chemical toxicity. That's also terrible to think about.

Thanks for the post.
 

MarNav1

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Do you guys recall ever eating paint chips? I know its off topic but we never ate any that I recall. But these toys are being made for probly 5cents an hour tops, thats big profit for somebody and they probly aren't Chinese.
 

jtr1962

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Do you guys recall ever eating paint chips? I know its off topic but we never ate any that I recall.
Not only do I not recall eating paint chips, but I'm not aware of any of the kids I've known ever eating paint chips. One of my uncles has a theory on lead paint and brain damage. Basically, he says that the kids who supposedly got brain damage from eating lead paint were probably already stupid just by virtue of eating paint to begin with. I know every child has a stage where they put almost everything in their mouths. However, most don't swallow things which don't taste good. I couldn't imagine any normal child intentionally swallowing enough paint chips to cause harm. It's not like these things taste like potato chips. I think my uncle is on to something. Correlation doesn't always imply causation.
 
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Monocrom

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Yep, blame the importers, they are the ones want stuff made cheap cheap cheap.

Americans wanting cheap & disposable products is nothing new. Just the way it is. (Personally, I prefer quality).

I can understand the cheap aspect though. (Job market sucks for the average, middle-class American). You really want cheap, take a look at the ridiculous wages bosses offer to experienced employees.

Cheap is one thing, but name ANYONE in America who could even remotely imagine a child's toy being coated in the Date Rape drug! Lead is one thing. An understandable problem that can rear its head from time to time with imported, cheap, toys. But something like this?! Come on.....
 

jzmtl

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Well like the other post said, it's not date rape drug per se, and I doubt toy makers understand biochemistry to know what's going on.
 

Windscale

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Ultimately, the entrepreneurs of USA and other advanced western countries are to be blamed. They created these production lines in China so as to avoid heavier labour costs in their home countries. In doing so they also created massive unemployment in their home countries. Secondly, they are only interested in bringing in cheap goods without ensuring their qualities. This led to all sorts of poisoning in their home countries whilst they are making a lot of money. May be this is what Marx referred to as "Capitalism digging its own grave". I am no communist. But for the good of our own countries, I think the proper policies would be to tax imports heavily and create strict liability offences in the event of these products going wrong and impose very heavy fines in the event of their commission. Most of the poisoning events regarding the toys could have been avoided if their importers gave all the products a laboratory test before selling to the public. The last point is that now the USA "ABSOLUTELY DEPENDS" on China for all kinds of goods. Imagine all the Made in China goods are taken away from the USA suddenly, I don't think the Americans can survive for very long. Same is true for the UK and many other advanced western countries.
 

Monocrom

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Well like the other post said, it's not date rape drug per se, and I doubt toy makers understand biochemistry to know what's going on.

Fair enough..... Not the actual Date Rape drug. But a chemical that mimics and causes the very same side effects of GHB.

All I know is, someone over at a toy company in China, came up with this chemical coating for use with this toy. I find it hard to believe that this person was intelligent enough to come up with this chemical mixture; but not smart enough to realize what could happen if a child put one of those beads in their mouth...... The more I think about it, the more I think it was a case of just not giving a damn.

"Hey, I heard you came up with a way to make the dots stick together when sprayed with water. That's great. Anything we need to worry about with this chemical coating?"

-"No..... not really."-
 

Illum

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Yep, blame the importers, they are the ones want stuff made cheap cheap cheap.

the importers are not proactive....they are reactive. and the value of the products shipped in are not absolute, but relative

typical Americans would choose to buy stuff from $1 stores and Wally aside from the more expensive [but reasonably priced] stuff from other stores..why? based on the capitalistic logic making stuff [say a printer] cheaper and allow it to retire sooner will cause people to buy the same stuff [in this case printers] more frequent than spending lots of money on it for something robust and long lasting...is kinda the same concept here.

the importers are reacting from a sharp demand in cheap goods and finds a way to make stuff the cheap way...relative to everything else thats being imported or experted in the global circulation economy. I believe its because of this relativity that we have, for years, failed to notice that such possibilities can arise from acts of our own. We are being poisoned by lead, impurities, and toxins because we want cheap goods:shakehead

Granted I'm Asian, but I admit I look for cheap goods from time to time also...its not a fault of an individual, or a race, but the mindset/inclination of the society
 

jzmtl

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Haha, speaking of cheap goods. I had to buy some D cell because my 3d mag ran dry. I bought two from dollar store because I didn't know any better. They turned out to be friggin carbon zinc battery, so I had to get a 12 pack duracell from costco. Now the carbon zinc sits around in my basement, talk about a dollar down the toilet.
 
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