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The U.S. government recently passed stricter safety laws for toys in response to the millions of toys that were recalled last year due to lead paint. The laws are aimed at big toy manufacturers, to ensure that toys made overseas are adhere to the safety policies. Unfortunately the new laws are having a substantial negative affect on small toy makers, who can't compete with the added costs.

Under the law, all children's products must be tested for lead and other harmful substances. Toy makers are required to pay a third-party lab for the testing and to put tracking labels on all toys to show when and where they were made.

Those requirements make sense for a multinational toy manufacturer churning out thousands of plastic toys on an overseas assembly line, said Marshall. But a business that makes, for example, a few hundred handcrafted wooden baby rattles each year cannot afford to pay up to $4,000 per product for testing, a price some toy makers have been quoted, he said.

A revisement to the law is under consideration so that unfinished materials will be exempt from testing such as wood and fibers - cotton, silk, wool, hemp, flax, and linen. However, not everyone is satisfied that the proposal goes far enough to alleviate the burden on small toy makers. Because the exemptions only apply to unfinished materials, very few toy makers will have products that are entirely spared from testing, said Julia Chen, owner of The Playstore in Palo Alto, which specializes in wooden and organic playthings.

Already, some small toy manufacturers have announced that they will stop importing their toys to the U.S. or reduce their volume because they cannot afford the testing fees.

It is uncertain at this time what kind of affect these new laws will have on the small 3rd party Transformers makers, such as: Fansproject, Impossibletoys, or Justitoys. Because the toys are made from plastic, metal, and paint, they would not be exempt from the testing fees.

The product safety commission has until Jan. 5 to decide on the recommended exemptions.

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And the idiots in Congress strike again...

Merry Freaking Christmas...I vote to remove their pensions and salaries. All in favor?

I would vote for that too. I wonder how this would affect overseas toy sites like Action-HQ or etoysjapan??

Why get mad at congress? It's the toy manufacturer/buyers fault for using/buying substandard components. Lead exposure is a serious problem. Can't blame the parents (in most case).

http://www.aacap.org/cs/root/facts_for_ ... d_behavior

Small companies will have to find a way to adapt to survive. For companies like JustiToys, I have no sympathy. Do they have any intellectual property/ideas that hasn't been robbed from Takara/Hasbro?

One more reason I'm glad I'm Canadian.

Another reason jobs need to come back to the states. If we can't trust the foreign factories to adhere to our rules than take the business away from them. Simple as that.

I dont know who I would want to be more, British or American now.

Britain- Very high Tax, Very Bad Music, Ignorant People On Ebay (another american invention runined by some greedy brits) got JXR or JKR from car robots for £20 and after the auction, said he wanted £40, one way to get bad feedback and loose a customer but has been resolved hopefully . Goverment getting on my nerves.
Note. i know there is a lot of nice people wo would be offended but i only mean the minority of greedy people and people who complain about tiny ignificant little things.

America- Pound-Doller 1.04 last time i checked, could afford to live there. This with the paint. Scared to death of the weather in certain places.

Canada- Nice, dosnt have US or british safety laws,

im confused at the moment, im goign to live in spain or japan.

Blackstreak wrote:Another reason jobs need to come back to the states. If we can't trust the foreign factories to adhere to our rules than take the business away from them. Simple as that.

Plus we get needed jobs here.

Plus the Chinese government hates us already, what better way to attack someone by selling them toxic stuff and making some cash at the same time?

I'm sure the small 3rd party Transformers makers could get around it by calling them "collector's accessories" or something similar, to make it clear that their products aren't toys intended for children.

Like was just mentioned, stamping the products age 13+ would severely lower the chances of the buyer putting the toy in their mouth.

Stamping the toys age 13+ puts the burden and fault directly on the buyer... If the seller sells to a person under age, fault lies on the seller. Never should it reach the manufacturer unless the 'illness' can be contracted through passive contact with the item. [example; Can you open this for me? Sure... Ack, ack, sigh... Hello, emergency? My friends hands just melted off from opening a toy!]

The purpose for these laws is to generate revenue by regulating the lesser of 2 moral evils; Punish the manufacturer for making something that can be abused dangerously OR Punish the parent for not being a good parent by finding a good parent for their soon to be former child.

Personally, I feel most bad parents would celebrate the theft of their child because then they won't have to worry about getting in trouble anymore for being their ignorant selves. Unfortunately, doing so would seriously cut into the revenue generated by fining bad parents or worse yet, the bad parent might reform into a good person and no longer make deposits into the criminal revenue system. Either way, big gov loses money.

Now forcing the manufacturers to spend money in the economy by mandating third party examinations... that's money in the bank. Takara/Tomy will pay because they need to to continue making money themselves.

Fansproject, on the other hand, will be forced to close it's doors due to insane prices for the testing. How would this benefit big gov? Well, small business succeed by putting out a quality product, one that doesn't need replacing after usage as designed. That equals less taxable revenue and more unemployment, both are things hated by big gov for reasons I won't get into here. [it's worse then you think.]

In the end it's about money, not safety...

To our Brit friend who is looking for somewhere to move... I'm in America. I want to leave. I'm looking for a place where there are no preventative laws for the citizen, I'm fully capable of supporting and protecting myself and my family. Ignorance of self preservation equals death in my book, not laws that infringe on the liberties of intelligent individuals because Dingbat Darla doesn't watch out for her child's well being.

If you know a place like this, let me know and I'll split the cost of a house with you... As long as there is near 0 annual snowfall... I'm sick of the snow.