No trust in toys

Anna Ethington of Spokane felt good buying her 3 ½-year-old granddaughter Dora the Explorer toys. “Dora the Explorer is like a healthy role model, unlike Barbie,” Ethington says.

But now Ethington is making a doctor appointment for Aahanah and her younger sister, 15-month-old Tyla, to see if the girls have unacceptable levels of lead in their blood after playing with the toys, many of which have since been recalled.

In the meantime, she packed up all of the recalled Dora, Diego and Elmo toys, including her granddaughter’s beloved Birthday Dora, and put them in garbage sacks. She explained to the older girl that the toys could make her sick and told her she would replace the recalled toys with safer ones.

Ethington says Aahanah told her: “They’re stupid. How come they can’t make it safe?”

Plenty of parents, grandparents and kids are asking the same question in the wake of the most recent round of massive toy recalls.

Last week, Mattel recalled some 19 million toys worldwide which contained lead paint and unsafe magnets. That follows a recall earlier this month of millions of Fisher-Price licensed character toys. And another in June of Thomas & Friends wooden trains.

The move has left some toy-buyers feeling betrayed and wondering which manufacturers they can trust.

“You just think that the company is going to be so responsible,” Ethington says. “It’s really scary. You think the toys you’re going to purchase for your kids are going to be safe.”

Matt Kirsch of Spokane returned two of his son’s Thomas train accessories after they were recalled earlier this summer. He was surprised to see concerns over the Thomas line, and says he is now paying more attention to where his child’s toys come are made.

“It’s supposed to be real wood, so, yeah, you pay for it,” Kirsch says. “The only good thing out of it is hopefully it raises people’s awareness of just in general what you buy.”

Brett Sommer, who owns Figpickels Toy Emporium in Coeur d’Alene with his wife, Susan, says he hears from customers every week looking for toys that aren’t made in China.

The store does sell a line of American-made retro toys by Channel Craft and some European-made ones, but, increasingly, even higher-end toys are being manufactured in China.

“Just the fact that something’s made in China doesn’t make it bad,” Brett Sommer says. “It’s the companies … and their quality control.”

Susan Peterson, who owns three area Whiz Kids toys stores with her husband, says she hasn’t heard from very many customers concerned about the recalls. Her stores sell a large number of Thomas & Friends trains and accessories.

“Many of our toys are made in China,” Peterson says. “It’s very hard to find products that are made in America.”

A Google search of American-made toys doesn’t turn up many options, as more manufacturers move to China in search of the cheapest ways to make their products. Click on one online toy seller’s promised list of toys made in North and South America and you get back “sorry, nothing like that was found.”

Ethington says she’ll seek out unpainted wooden toys or those that guarantee the use of environmentally safe paints when she buys gifts for her granddaughters.

She doesn’t intend to seek out replacements from Mattel for the recalled toys, she says.

“To be honest, I don’t have faith in their company,” she says. “It’s kind of like getting a hamburger free from Jack in the Box the week after the hamburger scare.”