WASHINGTON: American parents are Christmas shopping this year armed with product recall notices rather than a wish list for Santa, as visions of foreign-made, dangerous toys dance in their heads.
"Sarah would have liked a horse 'sculpt and paint' set, but it was made in China so I said no," said Karen, mother of 10-year-old twins, who asked not to give her full name.
"We are trying to gear the list for Santa to stuff made in America, but that's pretty hard to find," added another shopper Megan, as she and husband Steve accompanied their four children, aged three to nearly nine, to a recent grand opening of Santa's grotto at a shopping mall near Washington.
"We'd rather not get anything made in China, especially for the little ones," her husband agreed.
The alarm bells over toy safety started ringing loudly this summer, when US toy giant Mattel recalled 18 million Chinese-made products worldwide.
Since then, the number of recalls has nearly doubled, with toys -- mostly made in China -- withdrawn from shelves for various reasons, ranging from high lead content, containing potentially dangerous drugs, choking or strangulation hazards, or even because they can spontaneously ignite.
"At one point, it seemed every day brought new reports of dangers posed by another well-loved toy that could be lurking in our children's playrooms," lawyer Pamela Gilbert, a former executive director of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), told a congressional hearing last week.
"Thomas and Friends trains with unsafe levels of lead; Easy-Bake Ovens that could entrap and burn children; Polly Pocket dolls with magnets that were dangerous if swallowed or aspirated; and Barbie doll accessories -- Barbie, of all things -- with high levels of lead," she said, fuelling parent's fears.
Parents are right to be concerned but shouldn't fret to the point of shunning the shops this Christmas, said product liability expert Andrew Popper.
"When you have 30 million products being recalled within a couple of months, people are justifiably concerned," the American University law professor said.
"Now, in addition to worrying that something is too small, you also need to look at what it is and where it was made.
"Any person, parent or otherwise, who is buying a product not manufactured in the US really is well advised to at least look at the label, try to figure out where it's from and exercise some level of reasonable caution," he said.
A nine-year-old boy in a Disney Store was checking the country of origin on several all-American-looking toys -- and rejected them all because they were made in China.
"I read about the recalls in a magazine for children," he said.
The negative reaction to Chinese-made toys indicates that the publicity surrounding tainted products has reached its target audience.
But the focus on country of origin was detracting from other safety issues, said James Swartz, director of World Against Toys Causing Harm (WATCH).
"Country of origin is part of what people should consider, but we are concerned that focusing solely on where something was made will end the inquiry on the other issues that we are trying to get the word out about, like magnets and small parts," he said.
WATCH last week issued its 35th annual list of the 10 most dangerous toys, which included an electrocution-hazard light featuring children's TV character Dora the Explorer, and shiny magnetic stones with "the potential to cause severe internal injuries".
Those items and many others on the list were not among the millions recalled in recent months.
"There are plenty of hazards in toys that have not been recalled," Swartz said. "People need to know what the hazards are, what to look for, and not rely on the recall list as their sole source of information on safety.
"We don't want there to be a body count before toys are removed from the marketplace."
Blindly rejecting all toys with a "made in China" label would mean no Barbies under the Christmas tree -- and precious few toys at all.
An estimated 80 percent of the toys sold in the US are made in China.
"The Barbie doll has never been made in America. Currently, Barbie dolls are made in Mattel-owned factories in China and Indonesia," Mattel spokeswoman Lisa Marie Bongiovanni said before stressing the doll with the hourglass figure is subjected to a tough system of checks that Mattel puts all its toys through.
Meanwhile, parents were looking beyond the toy aisle for gifts.
"We're considering books ... and we would consider a puppy, but we just got one," said Megan.
