The independent product testing group GoodGuide is eating some crow today.
Last week, the group had announced that some Zhu Zhu Pets, one of this year’s hottest toys, were unsafe because they contained high levels of certain toxins.
They are now changing their tune now that the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has stepped in and said that Zhu Zhu Pets are safe.
The CPSC says the toys passed all their safety tests and don’t appear to pose a risk to kids:
“The Consumer Product Safety Commission confirmed today that the popular Zhu Zhu toy is not out of compliance with the antimony or other heavy-metal limits of the new U.S. mandatory toy standard,” said agency spokesman Scott Wolfson.
“We will still do our own independent testing at CPSC. But we’re confident today and can confirm that the toy does not violate the very protective antimony standard that applies to all toys in the United States,” Wolfson continued.
GoodGuide admitted that the Mr. Squiggles Zhu Zhu Pet, the one that it had originally questioned, may not be so poisonous after all:
“Since issuing our release, we have learned that the testing methodology used in the federal standards (a soluble method) is different than the methodology we used in our testing (a surface-based method),” the group said. “Accordingly, while we accurately reported the chemical levels in the toys that we measured using our testing method, we should not have compared our results to federal standards. We regret this error.”
Go figure, Zhu Zhu Pets maker Cepia LLC is not the least bit happy with the mess this has created in the heart of Christmas shopping season:
“They accused us falsely of having high levels of antimony and tin in Mr. Squiggles by using a methodology that is not used by any federal standards,” said Natalie Hornsby, Cepia’s VP of marketing. “Their testing was certainly not comprehensive and certainly not at the government standard.”
Anyone else think that GoodGuide isn’t going to get away with a simple, “Our bad.”
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- Zhu Zhu Pets safe, regulators say (msnbc.msn.com)
- US Consumer Product Safety Evaluating Zhu Zhu Pets (momblognetwork.com)
- Hit toy Mr. Squiggles ‘exonerated’ in testing mix-up (cbc.ca)
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