Wednesday, November 7, 2007

This Toy Contamination Thing? Nooooo Big Deal

Do not, repeat do not buy a toy called Bindeez:
Chinese toys are back in the headlines. Today, retailers around the world scrambled to pull a popular toy called Bindeez off their shelves, after a chemical in some shipments of the Chinese-made product was found to mimic the effects of the so-called date rape drug.
Or, for that matter, a toy called Aqua Dots, which is the name the product is marketed under in the United States:
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission plans to announce a recall of the sets. The CPSC has received two reports of children in the U.S. swallowing Aqua Dots and they slipped into “non-responsive comas.” Both children are now fine.
The kids are fine! Nothing to worry about! And Bob is on the case, in his teeny toy-testing laboratory, testing all the toys coming from China, ensuring our kids are safe. Whew!

4 comments:

Toby said...

I hear these toys are quite popular with fraternities these days.

Laura said...

Hah hah hah! Those wacky date rapers!

I'm still trying to figure out the why on this. Like, contaminated pet food is the result of using "filler" to get the same price with less product. The toxic was jsut a perk! Here, I'd love to know what production benefits a date-rape drug has. Other than comotose kids, presumably.

Needless to say, the Consumer Safety board isn't revealing the name of the guilty company. God forbid they lose business, which would be the real tragedy here.

But this brings to mind what I was pondering this a.m.: presumably, the real spirit of the conservative movement--everbody on their own with an "equal shake," a bootstrap,with some more equal if you can afford to live behind the gates and kick in for better schools, a tidier safer community, and so forth. In cases like the above, money cannot shield you from lack of stingent consumer protections.

Do the rich not play with toys or feed pets?

Laura said...

Hmmm, and I lost the thread to that stupid long sentence in the next-to-last paragraph. I meant that the conservative worldview allows you to buy the circumstances and protections you "deserve." Can't afford it, too bad, die of asthma, lose your house to fire, perish of an untreated condition because you had the "choice" to buy health insurance and didn't!

Toby said...

Amen, sister.