The made-in-China toy scandal keeps getting worse, and now it hits close to home.
On the heels of telling parents that their kids’ Dora and Elmo toys can cause lead-paint induced brain damage, Mattel just announced a recall of 18.2 million Barbie, Batman and Polly Pocket toys that contain little magnets.
I’m sorry, did you just say Polly Pocket?
You mean the same Polly Pocket toys that litter my daughters’ playroom like snow at the North Pole?
Oh, boy.
I can just imagine the conversation:
“Girls, some of your Polly Pockets are dangerous, so I have to take them away.”
Both girls grab their Pocahontas knife and bow and arrow set and hold them in a menacing fashion.
“You take one step toward Polly, and that vasectomy thing Mom keeps mentioning is going to come the hard way.”
I’m just saying Polly holds a rather exalted position in our household, so it’s not going to be easy taking some of them away. Actually, my girls don’t play with the magnetized Polly clothes all that much. They stick to the impossibly small shoes and accessories, which is the root cause of my love/hate relationship with Polly. I just filled out a biographical questionnaire for my 3-year-old’s preschool that asked how much time I spend with her. I wrote: “Constantly, because pulling and tugging on a tiny Polly Pocket dress requires the manual dexterity of a NASA robot, so she spends most of her waking hours coming up to me and asking “Can you put this on?”
In all seriousness, the magnet danger is kind of scary. If your kid likes to put things in his or her mouth and swallows a few of these magnets, it can perforate the intestines. There have been three fatalities. Judging by Mattel’s full-page “please don’t stop buying our toys” ad in the New York Times, this whole thing is scaring plenty of boardroom bigwigs.
For recall information, go here. For a good Polly-related laugh, go here.
For you parents of boys who think you don’t have to worry, Mattel is also recalling 436,000 die-cast cars, including “Sarge” from the movie “Cars,” because of lead paint.
Oh, boy, indeed.