Toymaker to pay $1.3M in tainted toy case
— -- The Consumer Product Safety Commission says toymaker Spin Master kept selling a toy in 2007 while it collected complaints it was sickening children with a version of a date rape drug.
The commission plans to announce Thursday that Spin Master will pay $1.3 million — the third-largest civil penalty ever for a toymaker — to settle the charges that it failed to report the incidents with its Aqua Dots bead craft kits and knowingly imported and sold a banned hazardous substance. About 4.2 million of the kits were recalled in November 2007.
The CPSC contacted Spin Master that November after it learned of two children falling into comas after swallowing Aqua Dots, the commission says. Toronto-based Spin Master, which has made several hot toys in recent holiday seasons, had never reported any of the incidents it knew of, as it is required to do under law within 24 hours of finding a safety hazard, the CPSC says.
A chemical in the beads converted to the date rape drug known as gamma hydroxybutyrate (GHB) when ingested.
Aqua Dots were tiny colored beads that stuck together when sprayed with water and could create different shapes.
"Aqua Dots should never have reached the hands of children," CPSC Chairman Inez Tenenbaum says. "We are holding them accountable."
Spin Master denied the allegations in a statement and said it settled the matter to "avoid further costly legal expenses."
The bead craft kits were made in China and are still often cited as emblematic of the risky toys imported from that country.
"You were talking about a possible lethal exposure that could kill a child," says the National Consumers League's Sally Greenberg,
By the middle of October 2007, CPSC says Spin Master had received reports that children — and even a dog — got sick and needed emergency medical treatment after ingesting Aqua Dots. The company also learned Aqua Dots contained a chemical that is harmful to the kidneys and nervous system and converted to the date rape drug, but it never told CPSC, the commission says.
The kits were recalled two days after the CPSC contacted Spin Master in November 2007.
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