Big Bird Weighed Down by Lead

John Hopkins

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Fisher-Price is recalling 83 types of toys -- including the popular Big Bird, Elmo, Dora and Diego characters -- because their paint contains excessive amounts of lead. CNN reports that more than 967,000 toys have been recalled.

This is a unique recall since Mattel, the parent company to Fisher Price, maintains very high quality control standards and have had only one previous recall of a product. To their credit, Mattel apparently discovered the lead paint problem through an internal quality control inspection. Many manufacturers have such lax or non-existent quality standards that dangerous defects are either not discovered by the manufacturer or not reported by the manufacturer once discovered.

This is simply one of a series of product problems to come out of Chinese manufactured goods.

I am happy to see, however, a manufacturer such as Mattel who at least on the surface has demonstrated corporate responsibility in trying to protect a product even when they must disclose production problems.