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When a company distributes children toys with lead paint in them consumers exercising their right to choose will punish them for a while by boycotting the company. It's only fair. Well, toy maker Mattel is not going to give consumers that right. Mattel offers this solution on their web site: Remedy: Consumers should immediately take the recalled toys away from children and contact Mattel for instructions on how to receive a free replacement toy of equal value. 
Last month Mattle was forced to recall 20 million toys, the third recall this year , because of lead paint used in the production of the toys.
The company offered parents coupons good only for other Mattel products in exchange for the known hazardous toys. So consumers are forced to stick with Mattel toys. What guarantees do we have that those new toys are not posing a health hazard? Non, what so ever. Now Harvard Business School professor John Quelch and other business writers seem to think Mattel is handling the recall well. He writes: "Mattel has been criticized heavily for having to recall not once but twice in as many weeks 20 million toys manufactured in China with lead paint and/or loose, potentially dangerous magnets. Clearly Mattel did not have sufficiently tight quality control procedures in its supply chain to compensate for the extra risks of outsourcing to relatively new Chinese subcontractors. Clearly there were design flaws in the toys with the magnets that could come loose. But Mattel deserves praise for now stepping up to its responsibilities as the leading brand in the toy industry. Ultimately, the success of the recall will be determined by the percentage of affected products that are returned. Anything less than 90 percent within 3 months for a child safety hazard will represent failure. As long as the 2 recalls to date are the whole of the problem and not the tip of an iceberg, Mattel's brand reputation should survive." Here are two problems with his statement:  - for one, 90% equates to 2 million toys remaining in the hands of little children in the USA, 2 million children at risk from hazardous toys, a strange definition of success I say. Mattel is literally getting away with murder.
- and second, he wrote this after the second recall. We are at number 3, so it is only the tip of the ice berg. Well thanks to "free" trade agreements and international deregulation, corporations ship American jobs to countries where factories pay slave wages to their employees, use poison in the manufacturing of goods (pet food, tooth paste, toys, etc.) and all we consumers get is, "oh sorry, here is a coupon for more of the same crap. " Well thank you! |
