Danger in the toy box

There have been recalls before, of course. As a parent, you learn to skim an eye over the notices posted at the school, the grocery store, the big-box store.

Car seat? Teething ring? You read. Nope, no longer part of my world.

In the past, the toys on such postings have been odd, imported ones. The ones you find at the dollar store, or flea market.

That's part of what has made the recent recalls so disturbing.

For one thing, the volume has been astonishing. The list hanging from the cork board at my 4-year-old's preschool is as thick as a notebook.

For another, the toys on the list are not the funky, cheap-o ones.

We're talking Polly Pockets and Thomas the Tank Engine. For those of you haven't been around kids lately, this is like a recall of Barbie dolls and Matchbox cars. These are the core toys. The basics.

"It seems to me it's just about everything," said Carrie Johnson, a Raleigh mom with two boys, 9 and 11, and a girl, 6.

Johnson is fairly confident her daughter's vast collection of Polly Pockets doesn't include any of the offending items. She is also comforted that her children are old enough to not stick toys in their mouths.

But Johnson cringes when she thinks of the buckets of Thomas engines she has packed away in her attic for visiting friends -- and future grandchildren.

She heard a toy company executive on the news talking about the recall and the efforts being made to protect children. But to Johnson, all the concern seems a bit late.

"It's just really disappointing," she said. "To me, it should never have happened."

Johnson's friend Danielle Sunseri, also of Raleigh, couldn't agree more.

Sunseri has an 11-year-old and an 8-year-old. But she is also eight months pregnant.

She and her husband already had been considering adding doors to close off the playroom from the new baby. The recalls only reinforce the concept.

At first, Sunseri didn't believe it when her mother mentioned the recalls. Then she pulled up a list on the computer -- and found an offending Polly Pockets set in her daughter's toy box.

"I couldn't believe in the United States we could have toys with lead paint on them," she said. "I couldn't believe we couldn't regulate the toys that come into this country."

The sad truth is that there is little here that should come as a surprise to any of us.

The irony is that our children are in danger of being poisoned by toys and other items manufactured in lands with cheaper labor and materials so that we can buy them for next to nothing at Wal-Mart.

What a bargain.

With American jobs being outsourced, no wonder we need to watch our pennies.

At our house, we're fortunate that the children are no longer in the stage of mouthing toys. (Just mouthing off.) And most of our toys were purchased long before son No. 3 was born. (That is, before the current recalled items were produced.)

But just in case, I'll be sorting through our pile of Thomas engines tonight, recall list in hand.