Big Day for Lead Paint Recall in Children’s Products

Today the CPSC issued seven new recalls on children’s toys and other products due to excessive lead. The recalls included the following:

Pirates of the Caribbean Sleeping Bag (sold at Disney Stores)
Tinker Bell Wand (sold at Disney Stores)
Basic Beat Shaker Guiro Instrument (sold by West Music)
Sure Grip Yellow Paint Brush (sold by Early Childhood Resource Distributors and to Teacher Supply Stores)
Floppy Friends Horse Toys
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The biggest lead paint recall today included over two million magnet sets by United Scientific sold to schools for use in science classes. These magnets have been sold to schools for the past 12 years (sales started in October 1996). An additioin 87,000 magnets by American Scientific were recalled for lead and these were sold to schools since 2006.

Rising Toy Prices and the Cost to Parents of Recalled Toys

Toy makers expect toy prices to increase by 5 to 10% by the end of the year. This price increase is apparently not due to all of the toy recalls last year but due to higher wages in China, higher costs of raw materials (plastic has risen by 25% over the past two years due to higher gas prices), and a weaker dollar compared to the Chinese yuan which makes it more expensive to buy Chinese goods.

While we as parents are going to have to pay more for our children’s toys, I would like to point out a statistic that SmartToyChoice follows which is the estimated amount of money parents spend on toys that are recalled. For the 30 toy recalls so far in 2008, the retail value of the toys recalled is $74 million ($611 million in 2007).