Fischer Price recalls millions of items.

[Rachel]

I fail to understand how a multi million dollar company can make a product, obviously test it and then let it go into the market place when I believe in my heart the company knows someone might get hurt. I know the whole purpose is to make a buck, but at the expense of a little child's safety, perhaps her life......? Makes me not wish to buy anything from them in future.

By CBC News, cbc.ca, Updated: September 30, 2010 8:25 AM
Fisher-Price recalls millions of products

Fisher-Price is recalling millions of products in the U.S. and Canada because of safety concerns.

The company is recalling several products, including about seven million Fisher-Price Trikes and Tough Trikes toddler tricycles because of reports of children being injured.

"A child can strike, sit or fall on the protruding plastic ignition key, resulting in serious injury, including genital bleeding," the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said.

About seven million were sold in the U.S, and roughly 150,000 were sold in Canada, the U.S. CPSC said.

Fisher-Price is also recalling the Little People Wheelies Stand 'n Play Rampway after receiving two reports of a wheel detaching. No injuries were reported.

About 100,000 were sold in the U.S, and about 20,000 were sold in Canada.

The company also recalled the Healthy Care, Easy Clean and Close to Me High Chairs because children can fall on or against the pegs on the back legs of the chair.

About 950,000 high chairs were sold in the U.S, and 125,000 were sold in Canada.

[Jez]

The whole point is to make money, and recalls hinder that point (as your comment about not wanting to buy from them anymore illustrates). It is in the company's best interest to check and double check every product before selling it, and that is exactly what Fischer Price and every other major company does because they want to make money. People like tarnishing "evil, greedy big businesses out to make a buck," but the reality is that their claims are illogical. If a company cared only about money, then the company would do everything they could to make the most amount of money, right? Then why would they risk their reputation with product recalls based on claims that their product is dangerous? They wouldn't. But, no matter how many times a product is tested, not everything can be tested for.

You know the saying, "Try to make something idiot-proof and they'll just build a bigger idiot"? Some things are just common sense, and a lot of people really lack that. It's impossible for a company to think of every possible misuse of their product and then put a warning for that act or design their product to avoid it. If a kid noticed that when they rubbed their plastic Fischer Price truck against a brick wall plastic shavings come off, and then if that kid decided to eat those plastic shavings, that isn't within reason for Fischer Price to know about. But the company would be sued, the media will ask absurd questions, "Why didn't Fischer Price create a plastic truck where it was impossible to scrape shavings off, or why didn't they make it out of edible plastic?" and frantic mothers will buy into the hysteria with no regard to the fact that it is not reasonable for to expect Fischer Price to know a kid would do something like this and design a product to prevent such a nonsensical action on the part of a child. Ever see those warnings on buckets for kids not to stick their heads into them and drown themselves? Kind of obvious and really absurd for a kid to even manage to kill themselves that way, but some idiot managed it and now the buckets have the warnings. You really can't blame the bucket company for that, though.

The article here doesn't mention how many children were actually injured. Actually, for one of the products it says no children were injured. It does say how many were sold (millions), but given that it doesn't have an equally impressive number of children who were injured--a factoid that would only support the article to include, I'm thinking the number of injured kids is actually really small. The quote of specific injuries refers to what can happen, not what did happen. If those things actually did happen, then it would be in the article's best interest to report those specific examples. Yet they haven't. They haven't even reported them anonymously. That's telling.

There was a crib scare that led to a few types of cribs being banned in NY state recently. It was really amped up in the media because it was a politician's recent crusade. But how many children were actually injured by this specific crib? The numbers this crusade was based off of was a few thousand injuries/deaths due in some way, shape, or form (including parental misuse) to all types of cribs over the course of 20 years. A few thousand over the course of 20 years. Think about that. That number is tiny, and it's for all cribs, and the definition for "injury" includes minor scratches and bruises, which would happen in any crib that wasn't completely padded. Serious death or injury is estimated around 40 per year during the 1990s. That's statistically nothing, and, given the numbers, most likely due to parental error, not product error.

Yet a witch hunt was led and a product was banned, despite a lack of any real danger. Sounds like what's happening with Fischer Price now.

[Jez]

Ah, after a little more searching I've found I am correct. According to the government, the recall of the dangerous genital impaling trikes is based on ten reports, only six of which required any form of medical attention.

Put in context of the over 7 million trikes sold, I'm chalking this one up to misuse and I can't see how it is reasonable to hold Fisher Price accountable.