U.S. Agencies Sidetrack Toys Dangerous to Tots

A mirror inside a toy jewelry box shattered when the box was dropped three feet. With a baby-strength push, a plastic rattle fell apart into pieces small enough to fit down a tiny throat. A brightly colored set of wooden blocks contained two pieces a toddler similarly could swallow.

Operation Toyland had come to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

In a high-visibility campaign by two federal agencies, a team of investigators this week examined 150 shipments of toys imported from the Far East through the two ports.

They found 500 toy jewelry boxes, 5,000 plastic rattles and 9,000 sets of brightly colored wooden blocks that, they said, might be dangerous to toddlers.

Samples of each item were displayed Friday in U.S. Customs Service offices on Terminal Island.

“If you can save one kid’s life, it is all worth it,” said John Mackey, executive assistant to Chairman Terrence Scanlon of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Thirty-one children died from accidents involving toys in 1984, the latest year for which statistics are available, Mackey said. The number of nonfatal toy accidents was about 126,000.

Through Thursday, Operation Toyland had seized 15 shipments of toys--worth $250,000--that allegedly do not meet U.S. safety standards, and another 29 shipments worth $500,000 were set aside at the two ports for further examination.

The majority of those will probably be found too dangerous and seized as well, according to Lee Baxter, Western regional director of the product safety commission.

The Los Angeles effort followed what Mackey termed a trial run in San Francisco in which officials inspected 78 shipments and made 20 seizures valued at $1.5 million.

Officials put Los Angeles next on the list because Long Beach and Los Angeles together form the largest port of entry in the country for toys. In 1986, 21,722 shipments of toys valued at $858.8 million came through the two ports--more than through all other West Coast ports combined.

Sneak Toys Through

The toy safety inspectors will move on to another port after this week, returning to Los Angeles at some undisclosed time, Mackey said. He said he could not identify the next port for fear of tipping off importers trying to sneak through toys they know do not meet U.S. standards.

The series of investigations has been timed to have maximum impact on the fall toy shopping season, when shoppers spend 60% of the $6 billion that goes for toys each year.

More than 70% of the problem toys encountered by the product safety commission are typically low-priced imports. Officials report little luck in getting customers to return such toys, with less than 10% responding to announcements of recalls.

In an effort to stop the toys before they reach stores and customers, the safety officials turned to the U.S. Customs Service for help.

“Customs is going through the containers for other reasons,” including possible violations of tariff, copyright and country-of-origin laws, Mackey said. “(Commission Chairman) Scanlon asked if we could piggyback on their investigation.”

The result is Operation Toyland, the first formal attempt by the product safety commission to join forces with Customs. The investigation has concentrated on toys that appeal to children under the age of 3.

‘Improve Our Ability’

“This new cooperative program will greatly improve our ability to prevent hazardous goods, especially those intended for young children, from ever reaching retail shelves or the hands of consumers,” Scanlon said.

In a follow-up to the inspections and seizures, officials are tracing the stores and distributors that have already received shipments of allegedly dangerous toys. In addition, two safety inspectors are now in Pacific Rim countries meeting with toy manufacturers to inform them of U.S. toy safety requirements.

The seized toys with defects that cannot be fixed are destroyed. The names of the manufacturers and the importers were not released.