Thomas Comes off the Rails

Looks like the NY Times picked up on the RC2 Recall with a story titled RC2’s Train Wreck that ran on the cover of the Business section yesterday. To further enforce how bad this situation is being handled, witness what took place to a friend of ours.

We took our son to the Day Out with Thomas event in Green Bay this past weekend and ran into a family who’s son also went to pre-school with ours. Both of the kids are HUGE Thomas fans, and had a blast getting a ride on a train pulled by Thomas and seeing all the other goings on of the event. Naturally, there was a huge retail tent set up selling tons of Thomas merchandise. Curiously absent from the tent was any indication that there was a recall of several toys. Our friend brought this up to one of the cashiers you got snippy with her and told her that all the affected toys were pulled from the shelves.

Evidentially not, when they got home they discovered one of the trains they bought was in the recall and even confirmed the serial number on the packaging! A quick email off of RC2 got a canned response. RC2 doesn’t seem to be actually trying to get the trains out of the sales channel. Nor are the organizers of these events actually posting anything. Sure, HIT Entertainment probably doesn’t have any legal obligation to do so (they didn’t manufacture the toys), but from a PR and public safety standpoint, it sure does seem like they should. These events seem like the perfect opportunity to reach affected consumers - they are packed full of parents and children who are obvious Thomas fans.

According to the NYT article, several journalists in China were detained at the RC2 plant in Dongguan when researching the story (Update: Looks like this story was filed here):

Just a few hundred yards away from RC2’s main office here, a group of about 30 young workers were seen boxing, folding and packaging the Thomas and Friends products on an assembly line. In interviews over the last two days, several workers said that metal and wooden train sets were often made here, and that the paint for some of those toys appeared to be produced on the factory grounds.

…the zone’s security staff detained a journalist from this newspaper, photographer and translator for over nine hours. The three were eventually released by police and local government officials early this morning.

As a parent, you really try to buy safe toys for your kids. Wooden trains - that sounds safe and wholesome. Now I don’t know what to think.

Update: As I suspected, HIT is distancing themselves from this big time. See David Leonhardt’s A Lesson That Thomas Could Teach. As David points out, HIT is running with an outdated script on this one. That is pretty obvious.