The lead paint problem is your fault (and mine too)
Post written by: beagooddad
Lead is in all toys. That seems to be the basic warning for this holiday season. Stock up on books and clothes…at least until they start testing the lead content in those, too. The most recent recall I heard about was for a Fisher-Price toy that for some reason was only recalled in Illinois.
How did this lead issue get to be such a problem?
Bad politicians, evil corporations, greedy stock owners. Right? The bastards in their fancy suits and gas guzzling SUVs.
Or is it our fault. Us middle class parents just trying to get through life as well as possible hoping that one day our lottery ticket will push us into the greedy stock owner status of month long vacations to Europe. Could it possibly be our faults?
- What if instead of buying forty $9.99 toys from Wal-Mart for Christmas, we bought ten $40 toys from a specialty toy maker like Melissa & Doug
- What if instead of buying happy meals everytime we went to McDonalds, we just bought the chicken nuggets, fries and milk?
- What if instead of buying new toys and getting rid of the old, every couple weeks we swapped 10 toys with another family in the neighborhood so that each kid gets a new set of toys without anybody buying anything new?
- What if we more frequently told our kids that they didn’t need the new toy that they saw during their cartoon marathon on Saturday morning?
- What if instead of buying them a few new Transformer action figures, we took our kids to the zoo?
Sometimes it seems like everywhere we go we are presented with the expectation that we are supposed to buy toys for our kids. The marketers must be doing their job.
The problem with the constant purchasing is that we are forced to look for cheaper and cheaper toys to cover the costs and knowledge that most of the toys will be forgotten with the next purchase. When us consumers demand lower and lower prices, the producers have to find ways to lower production costs. The easiest way to do that is to outsource to countries where the workforce is not adult and not unionized and not paid more than a few dollars a day. And what do you think the quality control is like in those kinds of work environments?
I’m sure the bad politicians, evil corporations and greedy stock owners have played their own parts in the lead problem, but I think that we have to look at our own purchasing patterns to understand the whole picture.
December 14th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Well said. Our son grows tired of toys in less than a day, so what’s the point. Most of the time he’s more fascinated by the box that it came wrapped in. This year we’ve asked that people don’t get him toys. Fortunately, he loves books. If people ask, that’s what we suggest…along with clothes. Kids grow so fast, you never have enough clothes.
December 14th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
This year, I ticked off my sister by refusing to buy her 2 yo daughter the crappy fischer price toy I was “assigned” for Christmas. She’s getting a Melissa & Doug Alphabet puzzle instead. It’ll last longer and can be passed down to her little brother. (I’m boycotting all fischer price/mattel/american girl crap since they refuse to send me the packing slips for all of the recalled stuff sitting in my garage.) We went the “Melissa & Doug” and HABA route this year for our own little guy. For my 11 yo daughter it was tougher. It’s amazing what Mattel has their fingers in. There will not be as much under the tree this year, but what is there will be of better quality.
It kind of made me sick to bag up all of my girl’s recalled stuff. It made me realize what consumers our family is. You are absolutely right. We are part of the problem, a HUGE part.
On an entirely different note: we’re still working on our tree, and the pictures will be coming soon.
December 14th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
We have a lot of Melissa and Doug in our house. We also have Fisher Price, Disney, Mattel and a variety of other toys in our house. All recalled toys have been removed as far as I can tell. Fortunately, my kids are at an age (3 1/2 and 4 1/2, respectively) where they have much more fun running around the house pretending to be chased by monsters than holding a little plastic toy monster and pretending the same. They much prefer to play dress-up with themselves than dress up a Barbie or doll.
Every few months I go through all their toys and get rid of 1/4 of them. I’ll be doing the same thing just before Christmas, with a goal of getting rid of half of them in advance of the Xmas morning blowout. The last time I did a clearing out (about 2 months ago) they didn’t even notice that some of their toys were gone.
December 15th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
Or people could make some toys too. On a student teacher budget, I almost always have to resort to making stuff to use in class. Gloop is a big hit and it’s just cornstarch, food coloring, and water. Easily wiped up with a rag and no one gets sick if they decide to taste a little. Karo syrup paintings are also a big hit, and again, if anyone tastes it no big deal. All you need is Karo syrup, food coloring, and wax paper. A class room of 20 kids can paint quite a few times using one bottle, so I imagine it would go quite a long way in a household. So maybe if we all bought our kids, nieces, nephews, etc a few melissa and doug toys or from oompa.com and then bought them some “supplies” (karo syrup, food coloring, wax paper rolls, crayons, etc) they would not have as many toys to get tired of (and the toys that we did buy would be of better quality and much safer) and they would have some cool art supplies that they could use over and over again that aren’t expensive. Sorry this is such a long comment, it just saddens me when I go into classrooms and I find that there aren’t very many “thoughtful” toys (wooden puzzles, pretend food and dishes, dress up, art supplies, etc) but whatever the latest kids fad is. So I apologize if I sound like I’m ranting.
December 19th, 2007 at 10:58 am
Seems like a counter revolution might be brewing.
Rachel, I can confirm that any art supply projects would be popular in our house. Geetle and Pookie got a couple little art desks with a spool a paper that you could keep rolling out and tear off when you wanted. That was practically all they played with for a few days and Pookie ended up running out of paper he spent so much time with it.