Shelf shock: Even a trusted toy brand couldn’t avoid a recall

Diane Brahams was flummoxed as she stood near the toy-car aisle at a Culver City Toys R Us on Thursday. What would be a safe present for her grandnephew who is almost 3 and loves cars?

Not long ago, Brahams wouldn’t have thought the paint on a modern, name-brand toy would be a threat. But with this week’s recall of nearly 1 million playthings from Mattel Inc.’s Fisher-Price unit because of possible lead paint contamination, a trip to the toy store is leading Brahams and other consumers to think twice before making a purchase.

“How can I know if this is going to be safe?” asked Brahams, 56. “Companies that manufacture to children need to be held to a higher standard.”

There have been a spate of recalls of Chinese-made products, including tires and pet food, but the Mattel recall stands out in part because it involves a long-trusted brand name and because Mattel is known for setting strict production standards.

The episode shows how even the most diligent companies can run into problems as they farm out production, said Dara O’Rourke, an assistant professor of labor and environmental policy at UC Berkeley.

“If it can happen to Mattel it can happen to anybody,” said O’Rourke, who has studied toy and other consumer goods factories in China. “These supply chains right now are neither transparent enough nor well-managed enough even for a company that is trying very hard to be able to guarantee the safety and quality and healthfulness of their products.”

Mattel said it was working to understand how the problem happened at a subcontractor’s plant in China, and what the company could do to prevent similar issues in the future.

“I’m disappointed and I’m upset this happened and I apologize. . . . The trust of our consumers is deeply important to Mattel and to me,” Mattel Chief Executive Robert Eckert said in an interview Thursday. “In the long term I think we won’t be judged by the fact that a mistake was made in a vendor’s plant, but instead we’ll be judged on how we respond.”

Edmund Mierzwinski, the national consumer program director for U.S. Public Interest Research Group, said U.S. companies needed to take greater responsibility for the products they import.

“If they choose not to use U.S. companies to make homegrown products, that’s the bed they’ve chosen to lay in,” Mierzwinski said. “That’s the challenge that these global companies face. They’ve got to meet child labor laws, safety laws, and they’ve got to have checks and balances all along the chain.”

Lead paint, which has been banned in the U.S. for 30 years, is considered particularly dangerous for children, whose brains and nervous systems are more sensitive to the effects of lead. The consequences can include learning disabilities and decreased intelligence.

Adults also are at risk from lead and are commonly exposed by breathing in lead dust as a result of remodeling older homes. But lead in toys is especially pernicious not just because of the fragility of those playing with them, but because young children’s’ tendency to put their toys in their mouths.

Dr. Robert Adler, vice chairman of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles, said children who simply played with toys made with lead paint were probably at little risk of suffering health problems.

“The actual amount of lead they get from a limited exposure to the toy, while not desirable, is probably not dangerous,” he said.

But if parents are worried that their child has been exposed to lead, Adler said they could contact their physician and request a lead test. The test requires a small amount of blood to be drawn.

Mattel, which also makes Barbie dolls and Matchbox cars, said it was able to stop two-thirds of the 967,000 toys recalled in the United States before they hit store shelves.

But that left about 300,000 Fisher-Price toys, including a Sesame Street shape sorter for toddlers and a backpack based on popular Nickelodeon shows Dora the Explorer and Go Diego Go, in the market. Mattel said it did not know how many consumers bought those toys, which were made between April 19 and July 6 and sold as early as May.

A total of 1.5 million toys were recalled worldwide.

Mattel, based in El Segundo, said a retailer’s audit of some products in early July first made the company aware that it might have a problem.

The company said it stopped production July 6 or 7 at the facility where 83 different Fisher-Price toys were made by a contractor the company has used for 15 years and began conducting tests.

Mattel is unusual in the toy industry because it owns the factories that manufacture about 50% of its toys. The rest are produced by subcontractors, which has become the norm for the $22-billion U.S. toy industry.

Those subcontractors are held to strict rules about production, treatment of workers and other codes of conduct -- a program that generally earns Mattel high marks in an industry that has been battered with reports of shoddy working conditions and unsafe products.

Jim Walter, Mattel’s senior vice president of worldwide quality assurance, said subcontractors were required to get their paint from certified suppliers. But in this case, the factory, for reasons still unknown bought its paint from an unmonitored source, Walter said.

“We are learning that we need to provide additional oversight to make sure these factories follow the rules,” Walter said. “We have already put additional steps in place to do that.”

After it confirmed the problem, which Walter said was probably just with one batch of bad paint, Mattel decided to recall any products produced in the plant at the time the paint was in the factory, he said. The company informed the Consumer Product Safety Commission of the need for a recall July 26.

A spokeswoman for the Consumer Product Safety Commission said it had “an open and active investigation to find out what went wrong in this case and to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.”

“Any time a U.S. company imports a product of a banned hazardous substance, especially one intended for children, it is unacceptable to the CPSC,” spokeswoman Julie Vallese said.

China said in a statement Thursday on the Commerce Ministry website that it was working to tackle integrity issues. “When problems occur, we never shirk, have always sought truth from the facts and responsibly deal with them,” Vice Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng said.

In a pattern that has become common as China has responded to a string of product safety scandals, however, he also suggested that the media spotlight on Chinese quality problems was overplayed. China has repeatedly pointed out that other nations have quality and safety problems as well.

In the U.S., meanwhile, shoppers expressed concern that toys with lead paint had somehow managed to find their way to store shelves.

“You’re at the mercy of these companies,” said Ann McGrath, a 60-year-old retiree from Flagstaff, Ariz., who was shopping for a present for her grandson’s third birthday this weekend at the Toys R Us in Culver City.

Danielle Gandee, 35, who was shopping at a West Los Angeles Toys R Us store with her 2-year-old daughter, said the incident “makes you realize that you have to be much more conscious of what you give your child to play with.”

Mattel estimated the cost of the recall at $30 million, which it would record in the current quarter. With the company’s annual sales of $6 billion, analysts said the effect probably would be minimal. Mattel shares fell 40 cents to $23.18.

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[email protected]

Times staff writer Mark Magnier in Beijing contributed to this report.

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List of recalled toys

List of product numbers and model names for the nearly 1 million recalled toys made by Mattel’s Fisher-Price division, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. For more information, contact Fisher-Price’s recall hotline at (800) 916-4498 or contact the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s recall hotline at (800) 638-2772. You can find more information on this recall and others at www.recalls.gov.

33662... Elmo Light Up Musical Pal

33663... Ernie Light Up Musical Pal

33664... Big Bird Light Up Musical Pal

34658... Elmo Stacking Rings

39038... Elmo Tub Sub

39054... Sesame Street Shape Sorter

87946... Elmo Keyboard

90267... Ernie Splashin’ Fun Trike

90609... Elmo Collectible

90611... Cookie Collectible

90612... Zoe Collectible

90613... Ernie Collectible

90614... Big Bird Collectible

90745... Construction Playset

93068... Elmo Boom Box

93107... Action Fire Engine

93307... Press N Go Elmo

93308... Rev & Go Cookie Monster

93492... Cookie Saxophone

93493... Elmo’s Guitar

93615... Splash Tub Puzzle

93780... Music and Lights Phone

B7554... Count to Beat Elmo

B7888... Shake, Giggle & Roll

B7987... Elmo in the Giggle Box

B7989... Silly Parts Talking Elmo

B9620... Dora’s Talking House

C6908... Dora, Backpack, Perrito Figure Pack

C6909... Diego Figure Pack

C6910... Swiper Figure Pack

C6911... Boots, Tico Figure Pack

G3825... Dora Talking Vamonos Van

G5112... Sing With Elmo’s Greatest Hits

G9717... Giggle Doodler

H2943... Grow With Me Elmo Sprinkler

H3343... Cousin Daisy

H3344... Birthday Dora

H5569... Elmo & Pals (Elmo, Cookie, Ernie)

H5570... Elmo & Pals (Elmo, Zoe, Big Bird)

H4187... Dora Figures in Tube

H4628... Water Fun Tote

H8236... Dora 3 Pack Figures in Tube

H8237... Blue 3 Pack Figures in Tube

H8238... Sponge Bob 3 Pack Figures in Tube

H9124... Chef Dora

H9125... Bedtime Dora

H9186... Giggle Grabber Ernie

H9188... Giggle Grabber Oscar the Grouch

J0338... Diego Talking Field Journal

J0343... Go Diego Go Antarctic Rescue

J0344... Go Diego Go Deep Sea Rescue

J0345... Go Diego Go Mountain Rescue

J0346... Go Diego Go Talking Rescue 4 X 4

J5935... Giggle Grabber Soccer Elmo

J5936... Giggle Grabber Chef Cookie Monster

J6537... Sesame Street Giggle Toolbelt

J6762... Queen Mami

J6763... Royal Boots and Tico

J6765... Prince Diego

J7983... Sesame Street Tub Pots & Pans

J9518... Sesame Street Giggle Drill

J9692... Dora’s Talking Pony Place

K0617... Twins Nursery

K3414... Diego -- Talking Gadget Belt

K3571... Go Diego Go Mobile Rescue Unit

K3580... Fairytale Adventure Dora

K4139... Go Diego Go Dinosaur Rescue

K4140... Toucan Motorcycle Rescue

L0305... Dora Figure

L3194... Surprise Inside Diego Eggs

L3215... Sesame Street Elmo Jack-In-The-Box

L3488... Sesame Street Birthday Figure Pack

L3507... Sesame Street -- Super Boom Box

L5202... Birthday Dora

L5813... Diego Tub Trike

L8905... Pablo & Pals

M0351... Dora Figures Dora & Kitty

M0352... Dora Figures Diego & Bear

M0524... Go Diego Go Talking Gadget

M0527... Sesame Street Giggle Doodler

M0732... Dora’s Talking House

M2051... Let’s Go Rescue Center

M2052... Fairytale Castle

From the Associated Press

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Dangerous imports

Mattel has recalled nearly 1 million Chinese-made toys because they may contain lead paint. The recall is the latest in a series of hazards linked to Chinese products since March.

* Chinese-made toothpaste contaminated with an antifreeze chemical was found in the United States and seven other countries.

* More than 60 million containers of dog and cat food were recalled because of contamination from an ingredient imported from China.

* Frozen fish from China that might have been mislabeled and could contain puffer fish, which carries a potentially deadly toxin, was recalled.

* The Food and Drug Administration placed restrictions on imports of Chinese shrimp, catfish, eel, basa and dace after finding residues of antibiotics the FDA does not allow in fish.

* Cough syrup laced with a harmful Chinese-made ingredient was blamed for at least 100 deaths in Panama.

* About 1.5 million Chinese-made Thomas & Friends wooden railway toys were recalled because paint on the toys contained lead that can be toxic if ingested by young children.

* Children’s necklaces and earrings from China were recalled because of dangerously high levels of lead.

* A snack food seasoning made with imported Chinese ingredients was found to be contaminated with salmonella.

* U.S. transportation officials ordered the recall of 450,000 tires made in China after some lost their treads on the road.

Times research by Scott J. Wilson