In this day and age, it’s hard to imagine a high-end toy company selling items laced with lead paint, which can cause long-lasting and serious neurological damage in young children. How could a company have such lax oversight of its product, when so much is at stake?
The answer is easy. Money.
Thomas the Tank Engine toys, immensely popular with the preschool set, are manufactured in China. It turns out that a factory in China, hired by the manufacturer RC2 Corporation, has been used lead paint on the toys for the last two years.
These are not cheap, dollar store toys. Families spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars amassing the various Thomas sets. For the RC2 Corp. and HIT Entertainment, which owns the Thomas brand, Thomas is more than a train. He’s a money-making machine.
This is the dark side of outsourcing and globalization. Corporations hire cheap Chinese labor and then turn a blind eye to incredibly dangerous manufacturing techniques. Be it lead paint on toy trains or deadly glycol (the main ingredient in anti-freeze) in toothpaste or pediatric medications, China is manufacturing poison and willfully ignorant U.S. companies are selling it here.
So where are the full-page apology ads with all kinds of strategies for making sure it doesn’t happen again? As The New York Times points out, RC2 didn’t even offer to pay for the postage when it first announced the recall of certain Thomas items.
Where is the class-action lawsuit from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission?
My daughters don’t play with Thomas stuff, but I can imagine the horror felt by parents who have seen their toddlers put Thomas trains in their mouths. Parents of kids with Thomas stuff, go here for the recall information.
Then call a lawyer.