Everybody’s talking about it

A series of toy product recalls last summer damaged the image of the toy industry. Now EU commissioner Günter Verheugen has declared that safety is a key issue and is calling for more regulation of manufacturers and importers. Is this justified or is it an over-reaction? Looking forward, looking back.

Günter Verheugen, the German Commissioner for Industry and Enterprise in Brussels, is calling for stricter quality controls on toys. In January he proposed some draft guidelines. For example, toys containing electronic chips would not only have to be checked by the manufacturer but also licensed by an external authority. "The toy world has changed completely," he argues. The twenty-year-old rules in Toy Safety Guideline 88/378/EEC are badly in need of an overhaul, he thinks.

Product recals in 2007
First, a bit of background. Last year toy manufacturers had to recall products from sale on several occasions. One American toy-making group recalled toys three times in a five week period because they contained lead, which can cause brain damage if ingested. Worldwide about 800,000 items were recalled (some 38,000 in Germany), including 675,000 fashion doll accessories containing small magnetic parts that kids could have swallowed. To begin with the giant toy firms were inclined to believe that the defects were confined to articles made in China. As it turned out, only 13 percent of the toys were recalled because they contained lead paint; with 87 percent it was because of design defects. And the metal parts in the dolls came from the US parent company. The Chinese authorities received an official apology for the incorrect diagnosis.

One sales firm took a million baby bibs off the market last year after New Zealand researchers detected lead in them. In November the Simba Dickie Group recalled some toy beads being sold by an Italian partner as a precautionary measure after it turned out that children had been swallowing them. They reacted before it was absolutely clear whether the same toys being sold here in Germany contained the same critical materials. The manufacturer was an Australian manufacturer, but it had had the goods produced in China.