Toy Safety In The News

Parents expect stores to pull recalled toys off the shelves before anyone can buy them. In a hidden camera investigation, we found that doesn't always happen. 

NEWSCHANNEL 13 went to six southern Colorado stores with a list of recalled toys from the Consumer Product Safety Commission. In the last three months, nearly 80 toys have been recalled. Every store and online retailer is supposed to pull the product, so no one can get hurt.

We shopped at Wal-Mart, Toys "R" Us, Dollar General and Target looking at the toys that were supposed to be popular this holiday season. Many of the retailers had pulled the recalled toy off the shelf; some even went the extra step by posting recall notices throughout the toy section.

At the Super Target off Powers and Carefree, we did find a toy that wasn't pulled... the Fischer Price Laugh and Learn Kitchen. It was recalled earlier this month because parts of the faucet and clock could fall off and cause a child to choke. We called Target's corporate office and were told that toy would be pulled from the shelf and we were thanked for our discovery.

To make sure the toy was pulled we went back and five hours later, it was still there. This time, we decided to try and buy the toy. When we got to the checkout, we were stopped and told we couldn't buy it because the toy was recalled. Target's Corporate office did let us know that is one of the safeguards put into place in case something slipped through the cracks.   

Many parents and grandparents we talked to were alarmed by what we found, "I don't think you should jeopardize lives of people because you don't take the stock off," says Richard Mckibben. Grandparent Mark Merritt says it should be the retailer's job to get them off the shelf. " That's bad, they should pull it off as soon as they heard about it because a lot of people don't hear about it."

Here is a link to the Consumer Product Safety Commission of all the recalled toys this year. Experts recommend you look at your kid's holiday wish list and see if any are toys on the recall list.