A group of craftspeople who make handmade toys says new federal regulations that take effect in February may make this their last Christmas to be in business. The regulations were in response to the lead paint scare in toys. But some toymakers say the rules are going too far.
The Handmade Toy Alliance says:
For small American, Canadian, and European toymakers and manufacturers of children's products, however, the costs of mandatory testing will likely drive them out of business.
- A toymaker, for example, who makes wooden cars in his garage in Maine to supplement his income cannot afford the $4,000 fee per toy that testing labs are charging to assure compliance with the CPSIA.
- A work at home mom in Minnesota who makes cloth diapers to sell online must choose either to violate the law or cease operations.
- A small toy retailer in Vermont who imports wooden toys from Europe, which has long had stringent toy safety standards, must now pay for testing on every toy they import.
- And even the handful of larger toy makers who still employ workers in the United States face increased costs to comply with the CPSIA, even though American-made toys had nothing to do with the toy safety problems of 2007.
Here is a state-by-state listing of the members of this group.
The Washington Post explains that other toymakers, not just the small companies, are threatened:
For the first time, manufacturers will have to pay independent testing laboratories to verify that every component of a product meets new limits for lead and does not contain six chemicals that Congress has banned from plastic children's products.
Learning Resources, an Illinois manufacturer of educational toys, says one lab wants $24,000 to test a certain model of children's telescopes. Many companies say that the law does not spell out exactly what must be tested and that the uncertainty is creating havoc with business plans.
Manufacturers say the law will have unintended consequences: halting the sale of kids' bicycles, requiring clothingmakers to discard millions of dollars in inventory, and banning products that pose little or no safety threat.
