Playing safely

What used to be an oxymoron—safe toys—has become a truism over the last few decades. Professional critics may take their potshots during the pre-Christmas “hunting season,” but an unsafe toy is a pretty rare animal today.

Some of us can remember when toys truly were unsafe. I had a Bob-A-Loop when I was 8 years old. Do you remember it? Let me refresh everyone's memory. It consisted on one end of a pointed stick (that you could poke in your eye) attached by a string to a heavy wooden barrel with a hole in it (that you could smash into your mouth). And my parents bought it for me, no less.

The idea was to flip the barrel in the air and, by jerking it back towards your face at just the right moment, cause the barrel to land on the stick. Today, when I look in the mirror, it seems to me that my head has a slightly lumpy potato-like quality that I don't see in other people. I believe it comes from having beaten myself to a pulp with Bob-A-Loop. Bob-A-Loop was not safe.

Products like Bob-A-Loop are fortunately a thing of the past, but safety concerns, though different, have continued to stay on everyone's minds. The toy industry is doing its part to stay up to date with those concerns in today's manufacturing environment.

Currently, a great deal of attention is being paid to safety in China. With 75 percent of the world's toys being made in China and its troubled history of substandard working conditions, Chinese factories have come under particular scrutiny from industry critics. Specifically, the main concern is workplace safety and quality of life issues.

Workplace safety involves making sure the people who make toys in Chinese factories don't work in hazardous conditions. This means guaranteeing that the equipment they use and the environment in which they work are safe.

Quality of life assures that Chinese employers provide decent wages, work breaks, reasonable hours and, in general, treat their employees with dignity.

According to Frank Clarke, a partner with the global communications consulting firm Strategy XXI and an expert on ethical manufacturing in the toy industry, workplace safety and quality of life issues have been the subject of varying mandates by retailers, manufacturers and countries. The toy industry has, until now, reacted in a similarly piecemeal fashion. Clarke says that there are so many rules and arbiters in place that one factory in China was actually audited 40 times in one year.

This can be bewildering to anyone who manufactures in China and wants to be sure they are using factories that meet the standards of U.S. retailers and watchdog non-governmental organizations.

Well, help is on the way.

Clark filled PLAYTHINGS in on the ICTI Care Process, the International Council of Toy Industries' ethical manufacturing program. He says that the process is a collaborative effort by the world's various national toy industries to create a unified policy on workplace safety and quality of life issues.

The resulting ICTI Care Process is aimed at assuring fair labor practices and safe working conditions in toy factories all over the world. Initially, the program will focus on China.

The ICTI Care Process Seal of Commitment may even become as ubiquitous as “UL Approved.” In fact, in a few years, it is likely that no toy without the seal will be sold in any U.S. retail outlet.

In order for a factory's products to bear the Seal of Commitment, it will have to pass an audit conducted by an ICTI Care Process-approved independent monitor that has, in turn, been authorized by the “Industry Accreditation Panel.”

As of now, major retailers like Wal-Mart and Toys “R” Us are working with the ICTI Care Process. Brands like Hasbro and Mattel are fully committed, as well. In fact, the major brands have already put many of their factories through the approval process. But there is a long way to go to get the rest of the toy industry “signed up,” so to speak.

For those in the industry working with factories in China, it would be wise to ask them if they are ICTI Care Process approved. If they are not, encourage them to fill out the simple application form that can be found on the Web site: www.icti-care.org.

The ICTI Care Process can help all of us in the toy industry be socially responsible, assure better working conditions, and at the same time reduce the burden on factories and brands in doing so.

It's about time.