Toy Industry Association Q&A:

SafeToys.com discusses toys safety with TIA spokesman Frank Clarke

by Maria Raha

For most revelers, the holiday season is filled with excessive eating, drinking, celebrating—and stress. And after a year of higher toy recall rates for toys and increased media attention surrounding them, the toy industry’s busiest season carried, with its usual bustle heightened, consumer and media concerns for toy safety, along with congressional pushes for legislation to improve import safety protocols.

SafeToys.com wanted to find out how the American toy industry responded to the holiday rush, and turned to the Toy Industry Association (TIA) for answers. The TIA is a not-for-profit organization claiming members from 500 toy manufacturers and importers, as well as an associate membership comprised of “licensors, designers, inventors, safety consultants, testing laboratories, communications professionals and the media,” according to Frank Clarke, the association’s spokesman. “Our long history of leadership in toy safety includes the development of the first comprehensive toy safety standard. We continue to work with government officials, consumer groups and industry leaders on ongoing programs to ensure safe play,” he added. Here, Clarke recaps how the TIA faced the challenges of 2007.

SafeToys: How have the number of recall and safety issues involving imported toys affected the TIA?

Clarke: During and since the recalls, the toy industry has worked very hard to be able to reassure consumers that the toys they saw on shelves during the 2007 holiday season, and [in] the future, are and will continue to be safe for children.

This effort has been a multi-pronged effort [beginning] with an unprecedented level of safety inspections during the fall and winter of 2007 at every level of the toy supply chain. At the same time, a longer-term, three-part program was initiated to be able to reassure consumers of toy safety [in] the future.

While toy safety standards were judged to be excellent, testing to assure conformity of products with those standards was seen in some cases to be deficient. The TIA conformity assessment program accordingly calls for mandatory testing of toys, using standardized protocols developed with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) by accredited testing laboratories.

TIA and the industry have encouraged Congress to propose mandatory toy safety testing as a key part of a strengthened toy safety assurance system and such federal legislation now making its way through Congress. Development of the testing protocols and laboratory certification guidelines is well-advanced, with first drafts ready by the end of this month.

SafeToys: How did the toy industry handle the rush of the Christmas season and recalls?

Clarke: The entire industry focused on testing and re-testing products in the supply chain, removing recalled products from the distribution channels and reassuring consumers of the safety of toys.

SafeToys: Does the TIA deal with the public?

Clarke: The TIA represents its 500-plus members, who together comprise about 85 percent of the U.S. toy industry. As the industry’s trade association, we communicate with the public on behalf of our membership as a whole.

SafeToys: Do you think the toy recalls affected manufacturing profits for the 2007 Christmas season?

Clarke: As profitability is a confidential matter for each of our members, we do not track it for the industry. It is reasonable to expect that industry profits would have been adversely effected by the recalls and the extensive testing described above. On the whole, however, toy industry sales held up rather well, despite the current atmosphere of economic uncertainty, which was the factor deemed most likely to affect sales results.

To find out more about the Toy Industry Association, visit www.toyassociation.org.