Toy Safety Rules Play Grinch for Artisans

WASHINGTON, Nov. 27, 2009— -- Tough new requirements banning lead and phthalates from toys are supposed to make the holiday shopping season a bit less stressful for parents this year.

But not for Jason Gold, parent and toy designer at Camden Rose toy company in Ann Arbor, Mich. Gold's voice starts to rise and he gets agitated when he talks about the new requirements.

His best-seller -- an all-natural, beeswax-treated, maple teether for babies -- is probably not what Congress had in mind last year when it enacted tough new testing requirements for toys and accessories targeted at children.

But the teethers, rattles and organic dolls that Gold's Camden Rose toy company manufactures will be subject to the very same testing requirements as plastic toys from China, when the rules are enacted in February. Gold says the added cost of the testing could hurt his business and could lead him to lay off employees, either at his warehouse and headquarters in Ann Arbor or in Indiana, where the toys are manufactured by an Amish co-op.

Gold started his Camden Rose toy company when his wife was pregnant with their daughter and he saw the bright plastic toys in stores.

"I didn't want hot primary colors on it and I wanted it made out of wood, so I made something myself," he said of the first rattle he made for his daughter seven years ago. "That snowballed from a guy in his basement shop to our company today."

A rash of recalls of plastic toys manufactured in China had sparked the legislation, which mandated outside testing for toys and created harsh fines and even the prospect of jail time for failing to comply.

"It is always a good thing to protect children, and that's the reason we got in this business in the first place and it is why we make all-natural toys," Gold said. But he argued that the law passed by Congress "doesn't protect children, it protects corporations."

Gold and Dan Marshall, the co-owner of Peapods toys in St. Paul, Minn., point to Mattel, one of the companies that manufactured toys that were recalled in 2007 and 2008 for containing lead, but has secured a concession from the Consumer Product Safety Commission to bypass the third-party testing requirement, and will instead test its toys in-house in China, with a so-called "firewall" between the company and its own lab.