Handmade Toy Alliance

It's all over the news! There has been a stay of implementation on the "SAFE TOY LAW", known to us toy folks as the dread CPSIA. Understandably, with this kind of headline, my customers feel well, a little less safe. First of all, let me state that I would feed my children any toy on my shelf without fear of poisoning them. In all seriousness though, all of our larger manufacturers, Corolle, Melissa and Doug, Ganz, Plan, Toysmith, Schylling, Manhattan, Learning Curve, International Playthings, and on and on, are already compliant.
Secondly, I think we need more than just a stay of implementation. It is my fear that the CPSC is just giving the industry a year to figure out how to comply with the law the way it is written. It's vitally important to amend the content of this law before it is implemented. The tea set in the picture is hand crocheted by Tammy. She crochets while she waits for her husband to finish his chemotherapy. She crochets tea sets,cookies,cakes, tool belts, you name it. The way the law is written now, I could no longer legally sell Tammy's products. They are made from 100% cotton yarn. They are produced in the US. They are well within the limits for lead (the very environment has some lead in it so I won't say lead free, but practically) They are Phthalate free (phthalates are used in plastics to make them more malleable...not in cotton). They are hand made here in my own town. They are some of the coolest most unique items in the store and yet, they would be illegal for me to sell.
Why? Because Tammy can't afford the $300- $4,000 per batch for testing. And,I dare say, you don't want to pay her $300 for a tea set. The way the law is currently written if every strand of yarn she puts into her product has been tested free of lead and phthalates, she still has to test the finished tea sets. There are also no exemptions on testing for materials that don't ever contain lead or phthalates. Unpainted wood, cotton, wool, and other organic materials.
We need standards and requirements. That of course was borne out by the recalls of 2007. We just need to write a law that makes sense, and does not put our small manufacturers out of business. The big guys like Mattel and Hasbro will have no problem meeting these requirements. One test over a batch of a million Bratz dolls only marginally impacts the cost to manufacture each doll. They also have the advantage that the majority of testing labs are in China where they manufacture. The ironic thing is that it was the large manufacturers who had quality control issues in the first place, and as a punishment we are going to put their domestic and European competitors out of business.
There are several European manufacturers, most notably Selecta, that have decided that the US and this law are not worth the trouble, and they will be ceasing shipments to the states. These are great companies with decades of experience selling toys that meet the highest standards in the world, but they can't justify the costs of doing business with us anymore. *sigh*, I call, I fax, I e-mail, I write, and there are thousands of us the handmade toy alliance. It is now time to get to work on influencing amendments to this over-reaching and faulty piece of legislation. We are worried about our cottage industries, our U.S. craftspeople. We don't want to reduce the number of quality toys our children have available to them. We love the folks who are making them. They love making toys for our children. We need to let them keep doing that.