toxic toys

You get what you pay for. Japan pays for their protection by being thorough. US importers that are too lazy or indolent to do their own checking get all they deserve. They should do the checking themselves and pay for it themselves. Has this country lost all it's diligence merely in the pursuit of cheaper and shoddier products from China?

stop buying products from China, then maybe someone will take notice, even Walmart, so read the label.

the sad part of an otherwise good strategy is that I've tried to apply this only to find that every option available was made in China....

I just don't get it! Nearly every manufacturer in this country has a quality control procedure and/or standard for its products and it makes those standards known to its suppliers. Why don't the toy mfgs. simply tell the foreign suppliers to either use safe paints or don't ship the product? Can it be any simpler?

Why does a US government agency have to take on the quality control responsibility that rightely belongs to the manufacturer(importer)? Are we inviting more government control of our businesses?

simply tell the foreign suppliers to either use safe paints or don't ship the product? Can it be any simpler?

You are making several assumptions. First, that the company you are buying the product from is honest. The second is that the company has not subcontracted a part out to a dishonest or ignorant vendor.

I've had it happen that a company subcontracted out a gear to a vendor. The vendor switched the gear material. Nobody said anything until there were failures in the field. You can guess who ended up eating the costs of all the customer replacements.

This can happen anywhere but in cases where cost is a huge factor in choosing a vendor it is all the more likely. Since buying from China automatically adds significant transport costs to a product the cost pressures become so high that people will take shortcuts whenever possible. Sometimes these are deliberate efforts to cheat. In the gear case it seemed that the vendor thought that the difference didn't matter. In other cases local regulations get swapped for US / Euro standards - "it's good enough for us, why not them?"

In any case the cost of noconformity of parts coming from China can be very high.

The only assumption I'm making is that the quality of the final product is within the control of, and is the responsibility of its manufacturer or importer both before and after the part is produced and available for sale.

All of the previous answers are awesome and right on. We send a few Inspectors over for the PetroChem business, along with Equipment for other Industries. We do not need more Government Intervention in our lives, despite the fact that part of WalMart's business strategy is such (Gov., backed Health Plans, some of which including TN, have been bankrupted by WalMArt's hiring of part-timers. It should be, as expressed the US Manufacturer/Supplier's responsibility to ensure quality. But, as we all know Design and Accounting either refuse to acknowledge mistakes or are so profit driven that high reject rates have no bottom line on creative accounting. We in the US are so conditioned to the big brother syndrome, that relief will probably never happen. And I better stop here, before I get into wasteful materialism.

Good answer!

I came from a "public" company manufacturing in China. We were very careful to make sure "everything" was safe from the development stages. The problems arrive during production. The factories will implement their own changes post development to save money. Of course their is no plan in place to randomly check production goods as CPSC testing is very expensive and large scale random testing would put a large dent in margins. Suing the factory would only put them out of business which would mean no product to ship.

I now work for a very ethical private company that tracks all it's suppliers and monitors all FE activity and will "never" allow such toxic tragedies to happen.

In order to fix the problem the US government must implement stiff penalties onto offending companies. Penalties that would hold those profit driven companies accountable and into potentially into bankruptcy! This will force them to get their act together. Also, give the ethical companies a chance to get ahead.

I understand the 'circular dilemma' you outline in your post and it is good to see the overall problem of 'China Product Quality' from the view of a mainland manufacturer. However, I disagree that US buyers (Manuf./importers) are the ones responsible for driving source prices down to the point that you (they) can't produce safe, quality products.

In the first place, in your second to last paragraph, "FYI---", your figures don't add up. Next, your percentages are completely unbalanced--no manufacturer in this country or abroad can spend 80% of his gross sales for materials ($3.20/4.00) and come out with a profit. I also disagree with your premise that if our retail price is $20.00, the seller paid only $4.00 for the product. The correct cost formula would be closer to (.285 x retail$) which would mean that even the big box stores would be buying a $20.00 item for $5.70--in china too. Even your labor and overhead figure of $.80 ( 20% of sales ) is unbalanced in your allocation of costs.

Manufacturers in this country don't tell their parts suppliers what to charge for their products. They buy their parts at the best price consistant with their quality objectives and they price their products acordingly. Consumers in this country do not demand the lowest possible price for anything and everything since we have the buying power to choose junk or quality and, if we choose quality and China insists on selling junk, only China will lose in the end.

"Manufacturers in this country don't tell their parts suppliers what to charge for their products...."

Yes they do. Several companies I've worked for used a strategy of building a limited set of "preferred suppliers" and then shopping quotes out to other small, hungry suppliers. The small supplier, hungry for business with the "big order" company, would want to undercut the "preferred supplier" and low bid the job. The big company would go back to the "preferred supplier" with the lowball quote and hammer the supplier to lower the price of the part to match - or loose their status as a "preferred supplier." If the supplier's cash flow required the business from the big company they would have to cave in or go broke.

The practice really got it's start in Japan. I can remember a headlight factory in Tokyo. The "factory" was a small building under the railroad tracks. The "assembly line" was a rotating turret with as many stations as there were parts in the headlight. The circumference was such that the workers stood heel to toe around the machine. The parts were in bins around the workers. That was 20 years ago, I bet the people are automated now. Or production has moved to China...

Wall-Mart (I love that South Park episode) has taken this to extremes in China and has put more than a few US companies out of business along the way.

At the same time I have seen a few suppliers tell the "big company" where to shove it. The smart suppliers no longer allow one company to become a crucial customer. They'll figure this out in China too, eventually. Maybe. But "The Gap" was just caught still using child labor in the subcontinent. The "Economist" noted that there were no protests in the US about the news. So I expect that both practices will continue.

An no, I don't shop at either. The quality is the pits.

I believe the only thing the Chinese will respond to is punishment - by us refusing to buy their goods - and that will also hit Wal mart - and they will eventually get the message that we want quality - because every penny spent on poor quality is wasted - maybe even dangerous - and that route ends up costing more than by paying for quality in the first place. Toyota haven't become the best and the biggest by adopting the Chinese credo of constantly lowering standards to save money - Toyota are constantly RAISING their quality standards to keep their reputation intact. Toyota's suppliers are ruthlessly chopped if they don't continue to meet Toyota's standards. I agree that the Wal Mart product and the Toyota product are in markets that are not easily comparable but we could make the Chinese think about what they are doing if we boycott ALL their stuff, starting in Wal Mart.

"... boycott ALL their stuff ..." probably isn't very realistic unless you want to give up everything form pharmaceutical, to medical instruments, to virtually every piece of electronics you own, every piece of clothing you wear ... sports and recreational gear, and almost every car you drive. You could live in a tent and ride a bicycle, but that's likely made there too. Its really an issue of demand and supply ... China is a world player, economically sound, technologically advanced, and (for now) politically stable.

Toyota, Chrysler, General Motors, Ford, Volkswagen, Fiat, Citroen (and more that don't come to mind as I write) manufacture in China for world-wide distribution. Our facility was the FIRST INDIGENOUS company to be awarded Q1 by Ford NA in the mainland, and that can't be begged, purchased, or bribed ... only won through diligence to stringent quality standards. After 4 years, and nearly 10M products delivered, our PPM rejects are less than 0.04%.

China, along with other non-western suppliers (Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, etc.) are prime to deliver only what is asked, and as long as brands (yes, major brands) and retailers push for low costs, and accept low value in the process, that is exactly what they will get.

Quality isn't a matter of location of manufacture, it is reliant on the levels of quality demanded by our customer, and that is only contingent upon the quality you and I demand as consumers.

FYI, Walmart is losing its foothold in every major market including China ... except the US. I can only assume the masses insist on buying 'cheap' rather than buying 'good'.

The old adage of "you get what you pay for" is not necessarily true any longer ... better, you get what we, in mass, demand.

Sue the bastards! This is a case of lace of diligence on the part of the importer(s.)

Government should set standards but it is up to corporations to ensure that quality standards are met.

If retailers (including the ominously unnamed largest retailer) sell contaminated products, hammer them with as big a lawsuit as you can get away with. This will help motivate them to institute their own quality control.

Maybe those "cheap" toys aren't so cheap after all!

The shape of things to come?