This article from Business Week makes note of the fact that 80% of toys sold worldwide are made in China. Some parents, like the one interviewed for this Wall Street Journal article on lead-testing kits, are taking the safety precaution of throwing out all their toys made in China. From the Business Week article:
Mattel Inc. on Tuesday announced its third major recall of Chinese-made toys in little more than a month, including 675,000 Barbie doll accessories, because of excessive amounts of lead-tainted paint.
The recall is the latest blow to the world’s largest toy maker as the critical holiday shopping season approaches. The action, whose details were negotiated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, involves a total of more than 800,000 units, Mattel said in a statement.
The latest recall covers 90,000 units of Mattel’s GeoTrax locomotive line and 8,900 Big Big World 6-in-1 Bongo Band toys, both from the company’s Fisher-Price brand. The Big Big World products were sold nationwide from July through August of this year, while the GeoTrax toys were sold from September 2006 through August of this year.
The recalled Barbie accessories were sold between October 2006 and August of this year. No Barbie dolls were included in the action.
Mattel’s last recall, announced on Aug. 14, covered about 19 million toys worldwide. They included Chinese-made toys that either had excessive amounts of lead paint or had small magnets that could easily be swallowed by children.
On Aug. 1, Mattel’s Fisher-Price division said it was recalling 1.5 million preschool toys featuring characters such as Dora the Explorer, Big Bird and Elmo because of lead paint. That action included 967,000 toys sold in the United States between May and August.
Lead can cause brain damage when ingested by young children. Under current regulations, children’s products found to have more than .06 percent lead accessible to users are subject to a recall.
Robert Eckert, chairman and chief executive of El Segundo, Calif.-based Mattel, warned at a press conference last month that there may be more recalls of tainted toys as the company steps up its investigations into its Chinese factories and retests products.
In a statement issued late Tuesday, Eckert said: “As a result of our ongoing investigation, we discovered additional affected products. Consequently, several subcontractors are no longer manufacturing Mattel toys. We apologize again to everyone affected and promise that we will continue to focus on ensuring the safety and quality of our toys.”
Still, Tuesday’s announcement could further tarnish the reputation of Mattel, which has cultivated an image of tightly controlling production in China. The CPSC is also considering a possible investigation of whether Mattel notified authorities as quickly as it should have in connection with the Aug. 14 recall.
With more than 80 percent of toys sold worldwide made in China, toy sellers are also nervous that shoppers will shy away from their products in this year’s holiday season.
In June, toy maker RC2 Corp. voluntarily recalled 1.5 million wooden railroad toys and set parts from its Thomas & Friends Wooden Railway product line. The company said the surface paint on certain toys and parts made in China between January 2005 and April 2006 contains lead, affecting 26 components and 23 retailers.
In July, Hasbro Inc. recalled faulty Chinese-made Easy Bake ovens, marking the second time the iconic toy had been recalled this year.
Mattel vowed as recently as last month it would tighten its controls at factories in China. About 65 percent of the company’s toys are made in China, and about 50 percent of Mattel’s production there is produced in company-owned plants.
The recalled toys in the Barbie accessory line included a Barbie Dream Puppy House, which had lead paint on the dog; a Barbie Dream Kitty Condo playset, which had lead paint on the cat; and a Barbie table and chairs kitchen playset, which had lead paint on the dog and dinner plates. [full text]
Kmareka.com 
I wish I could say that I had an orderly house, where a few cherished toys were enjoyed by my child, but in reality I was buried under a mountain of plastic pieces of thousands of cheap toys made in sweat shops all over the globe. I always knew it was wrong, the waste and the exploitation, but it’s hard to resist my own impulses, loving gifts, and a child’s demands. I’m sorry but not surprised that people who don’t care about fair pay or worker safety aren’t careful about child safety either.
The real losers in the short run in all of the polluted Chinese toy fiasco are the kids. But the lack of distracting Chinese made toys may well be a wonderful opportunity for parents and grandparents to spend time with kids READING! That would be a marvelous notion indeed. Think of all those wonderful classics, some banned from classrooms because they are not PC, that can be read to kids. Perhaps Mark Twain can make a comeback or Sir Walter Scott or James Fennimore Cooper and kids will hear about Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer or Ivanhoe. Heck, Harry Potter works well. I wonder if the failure of dealing with the Chinese toy makers will force mattel to look to what is left of the American manufacturing base. Perhaps the industry can have a rebirth right here (and possibly without hiring illegals).