Mattel Inc.’s Fisher-Price Division has issued yet another recall of toys made with lead paint. The recall of more than 55,000 Go Diego Go Animal Rescue Boats in the US, Great Britain and Canada is the fourth Mattel toy recall since August. Meanwhile, several other companies, including Family Dollar stores, also issued recalls for toys with excessive levels of lead.
According to the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC), the Chinese-made Go Diego Go Animal Rescue Boats are made with surface paint that contains excessive amounts of lead in violation of federal lead paint standards for children’s toys. The Fisher-Price toy is an orange and yellow boat that squirts water. The cartoon character Diego is in the boat’s driver seat. All of the toys are marked with the “Fisher-Price” logo, and bear the product number K3413 and a date between 137-7HF and 223-7HF. The Go Diego Go Animal Rescue Boats were sold at retail stores nationwide between June 2007 and October 2007 for around $15.00.
Children should not be allowed to play with the recalled Go Diego Go Animal Rescue Boats, as lead can cause brain damage and other serious injuries to children if swallowed. Consumers should contact Fisher-Price at (888) 299-0579 or online at www.service.mattel.com for instructions on returning the recalled toys to the company. Fisher-Price will provide consumers with a free replacement toy.
In addition to the Mattel Fisher-Price toy recall, the CPSC also issued recall notices for bobble head dolls, buckets, toy jewelry and toy gardening sets that contained high levels of lead. Those recalls include 142,000 Halloween buckets sold at Family Dollar stores nationwide, and 97,000 toy gardening sets sold at Jo-Ann Stores. Other toy recalls include 190,000 children’s toy jewelry sets imported by Greenbrier International and another 110,000 jewelry sets sold by WeGlow International.
Finally, 80,000 bobble head football cake decorations sold at bakeries and ice cream stores were also recalled. The bobble head decorations included figures based on the following teams. Baltimore Ravens, Green Bay Packers, Oakland Raiders, Chicago Bears, Indianapolis Colts, Philadelphia Eagles, Cincinnati Bengals, New England Patriots, Pittsburgh Steelers, Dallas Cowboys, New Orleans Saints, San Francisco 49ers, Denver Broncos, New York Giants and St. Louis Rams. The bobble head decorations were sold nationwide since January.
The Fisher-Price Go Diego Go Animal Rescue Boat recall is the fourth such action taken by Mattel this year. Since August 1, Mattel has recalled more than 21 million toys because they contained either toxic lead paint or dangerous magnets that could cause intestinal injuries in children if swallowed. Other companies have also been hit hard by toy recalls, including the RC2 Company which recalled more than 1 million lead-tainted Thomas and Friends toy trains in June.
The US banned lead from paint used on toys in 1978, but as companies have moved more of their toy manufacturing operations overseas to places like China, lead exposure from toys has once again become a problem. Foreign factories are under a great deal of pressure to produce goods at the lowest cost possible, a situation that causes many of these manufacturers to use cheaper materials, such as lead paint.
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