Buyers Beware ! Millions of unsafe toys are constantly pulled from the primary market place. However that does not keep them off the secondary market place as people decide to dump them in second hand shops on eBay and other auction sites.

Your Children Are in Danger if you are not alert!! In a recent NBC/CBS TV news cast here in Columbus Ohio I took notes of the announcement because of the danger it presents to children.

 Over 9 million Mattel toys have been recalled. This includes the ever popular die cast cars,the Sarge cars,Polly Pocket dolls,Batman Action toys and many others. Often instead of contacting the company or returning dangerous toys for a rebate people just dump the toys on other unsuspecting buyers.

This is the same thing as murder as far as I am concerned. Several injuries have already resulted  from these toys and one child and perhaps more have died from injesting the small magnets on the Polly Pocket Dolls and the Magnetix Building sets. The magnets connect together in the stomach or digestive system of the child and lock tissues together inside tissues and nothing can be done short of surgery to save the life of the child. Nineteen children so far have required surgery. If you type magnet or Magnetix in your EBay search engine you will be suprized at the number and sizes of magnets available. Over 3.5 Million Magnetix Building sets were recalled last year.When I was a kid anything with a magnet in it was torn apart to get the magnets out to play and experiment with seperately. The magnets now are more powerful  and cheaper than ever and they come in all sizes and materials.

Remember those fun, small, magnets can be extremely dangerous in the hands of small children.

Lead Paint seems to be the other culprit and the danger from it is even more subtle and insidious if you have every read the research and warnings regarding lead paint. Lead paint can cause long term damage to the body and brain of adults and children. If you suspect long term exposure to lead you may want to get your MD to do a blood test for lead content.If the child has a habit of placing items in their mouth, and most do, and the lead paint comes off of the toy then you should get the test as quickly as possible.

 It is my understanding that lead can build up in the blood stream over a period of time. Recently one of the Chinese supervisors in the Toy Industry committed suicide because he was responsible for these items to be marketed to other countries.The lead paint subcontractor provider in China was a personal friend of his.

My recent count indicated at least 4,559. Mattel toys are listed currently on Ebay and several other recalled items from other companies. This is just a partial list:

132 Polly Pocket Dolls

150 Magnetix items

36 Vinyl Baby and Toddler Bibs

2004 BatMan Action figures

36 Sarge Die Cast Cars

3 or 4 Barbie and Tanner sets

If you type magnets in the search engine you will end up with many other toys ,refrigator magnets,etc with small attached magnets. The question is how well are the magnets attached? There are several unattached magnets also listed in the craft area that a child might swallow during play some are so strong they would hold the stomach to any other tissue or organ with a magnet in it in the digestive tract. There are several magnets listed for crafts that are pill, button ,or spheres of a tiny size that would be extremely dangerous in the hands of any child.

Some of the popular magnets of highly polished materials such as hematite often called singers,clackers, wizzers,etc are extremely dangerous.They have a warning about harming electronic gear but not Children.

  I would be willing to bet some of these are the previously recalled items and items that are on the recall list now.If you don't believe me do a web search of your own check them them out, I am not sure at this point how you can tell a dangerous toy from a good one without expert analysis. Certainly some of the same named toys have safe paint on them.I would ask the seller many questions for proof their toys are safe! If you are really interested in purchasing one of the listed items for a child but remember to many sellers the money is the most important thing in the transaction. Unfortunately that is the main thing many eBayers are interested in.

If you find dangerous toys being marketed, take photos and write a eBay public service guide of your own. Some of the toys are actually still on the store shelves as I write this guide. Also in my experience I have found in the past some major stores would rather resell these toys at a highly discounted prices to a unsuspecting public rather than go the effort and expense of returning the large shipments back to Mattel. Eager eBayers often attend these clearance sales and buy the items unaware they are defective and hurry to list them on the eBay marketplace. I have purchased items from other ebayers that were placed on auction eventhough they were known to be defective. Some didn't know they were defective until they had purchased a quanity and then the seller would not allow them to return the same.So they got stuck with hundreds of dollars of defective products what did they do but pass it on to cut their losses.

Unfortunately I cannot list the Mattel recall 800 numbers here because of Ebay's ridiculous web site and phone number control  policies,hopefully Ebay will put as much effort forth to screen these dangerous items from reaching the markeplace as they put forth in maintaining this control. You can see a complete list of the harmful toys by doing a search and going to the Mattel,Fisher Price,Magnetix or NBC website.

Thanks for reading my ramblings and if this article has been helpful to you please indicate so on your evaluation.

God Bless you and your Children,

Be Safe,

Woody

P.S. These dangerous toys sure make Santa's job difficult!!!!