Where is Mattel in all of this? Don’t they design and set the requirements for the toys? Seems to me the manufacture was just doing that the client wanted. I think Mattel carries the lion share of the blame here.
Wasn't lead paint banned in this country like 20 years ago? That's the problem when you're dealing with manufacturing sites like China -- they have a completely different set of standards then we do here. The Chinese want to make money as fast as they can using the least expensive raw materials. The workers are paid slave wages and the top executives are open to bribes. Hardly, the ideal set-up for any kind of quality control.
I agree with you. The news story I heard on the radio claimed that the chinese company followed the Mattel design specs.
Imagine a world in which naive western companies, accustomed to things like "contracts mean something", doing business with a communst superpower with an agenda based on 1) destroying us, and 2) wringing every last dollar out of us before destroying us.
Now, imagine that in that context, the western companies provide reams of specifications to the Chinese, who in turn say, "Yup, sure, no problem, we take care of it just like you want," and then proceed to slap together the absolute cheapest crap they can manage, all the while filling out all the "compliance paperwork" and checking the boxes, dotting the i's, crossing the t's, and so forth.