Is it selfish/rude/horrifyingly inhuman/just plain wrong to look at this list of Fisher Price toys that were recalled due to lead paint and note with a snicker how many of them contain the word "Elmo"?
Perhaps. Perhaps.
Uh.. not so humorous update: A factory manager at one of the Chinese manufacturers involved hung himself.
You have no idea how much snickering this sequence of recalls has generated at our house. First Thomas the Tank Engine, then this, and my wife is sure that these are only been the beginning.
Is it wrong to feel smug that we don't have any of those toys?
Ha! The words "snicker" and "smug" were both in early drafts of this post. My guilt is somewhat assuaged.
I did not know about the Thomas recall. We're not in trouble there, but I know some folks who might be.
It's not just fisher price or thomas... it's anything coming out of China. Dog food, children's toys, I hear that ginger is the most recent. One of the toy distributors that Katie deals with was having trouble with the Chinese manufacturing facility and lead-based paint, so they had to ship the paint from Germany to China to get them to use non-hazardous paint. So we expect many more recalls of "Made in China" toys.
Ick. But we wouldn't want to corrupt the free market by pressuring China to regulate that, would we?