New Safeguards Against Lead in Thomas and Friends Toys, but Parents Wary
Company that makes Thomas toys sets tougher standards at China plants.
Oct. 29, 2007 — -- Curt Stoelting is a little bleary-eyed after enduring a 15-hour flight from Chicago to China, but the mission for the CEO of the embattled RC2 Corp. is important to his company's survival: to make sure the toys he has made in China are lead-free.
"I want to see it with my own eyes," said Stoelting, "so we can ensure parents that we're taking all the right steps to keep their toys safe."
The rush to produce Chinese-made toys for the holidays is peaking while U.S. toy companies like RC2 — battered by a rash of recalls — attempt to convince parents their products are safe.
"I would say we've added probably three of four layers of assurances and safeguards," said Stoelting whose company makes the popular Thomas and Friends wooden train sets. RC2 issued the first major recall of toys covered with lead paint this summer.
In an ABC News exclusive, we followed Stoelting to southern China as he visited his company headquarters and contract manufacturers for the first time since the recall to see these new safety measures.
"We had procedures in place before, but what we found was that people were cutting corners," Stoelting said.
Before the recalls, RC2, like other companies, received certification papers from factories and paint suppliers claiming paint was lead-free. Obviously, that wasn't enough, so the U.S. companies are creating their own safety systems. RC2 calls its "multi-check."
Now when paint arrives at a factory, it is segregated, in essence quarantined. "We are now testing every batch of paint and we didn't do that before," said Stoelting.
A yellow label goes on the can of paint when it arrives. A sample is taken and sent to an outside lab. If it passes tests, the can gets a green label.
"So, it's very clear to anyone in the facility what paint has been tested and is released for production," Stoelting said as we walked through a factory paint shed in the Chinese city of Dongguan. A paper trail of each batch of paint is kept, and date codes are now stamped on the toys made here.
"What we found in the first recall was that if we had a system like this in place in the first place, we could have isolated the problem sooner … narrowed the recall and created less concern for our parents." Stoelting said.
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