Basically, the two sides in the toy war
are the safety organisations who say reform is necessary
and the toy manufacturers who say they can and do produce safe toys
and don't need legal pressure to make them do so.
The trouble is that many toys that are normally safe can,
unless they are very strongly built like these, disintegrate dangerously
in the hands of a determined child.
This is something that
particularly worries the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents.
Two of the society's staff showed us some of the dangerous toys
they've collected in a sort of black museum.
Well, that looks a very charming teddy bear.
- What in fact is wrong with it?
This.
You see the the bear is a shell of foam rubber,
and it had been stuffed with whole plastic bags.
The workers had been told to shred these to make them safe,
but this hadn't been done, and one mother found her small child
sitting up in her cot, putting plastic bags on her head.
The toy,
I'm very glad to say, was promptly withdrawn when this was discovered.
One of the more unusual toys and your black collection are those pink
plastic shoes.
- How did they get there?
These?
Well, they were sent to me
by a group of home safety committees who were very concerned
at the thought of little girls putting these on their feet
and tottering around in high-heeled, rigid plastic slippers.
You see, there isn't even a toe and heel to hold the shoe firmly on a child's foot.
And little girls usually wear flat shoes,
and there is a terrible risk of a fall, perhaps even down the stairs.
- Is there any record of this, in fact, happening in connection with shoes
- like this?
Not from these plastic shoes, but a good many people reported
these to us as being potentially dangerous and asked us
if we could draw attention to it and perhaps have them withdrawn.
The firm that manufactured that pair of plastic shoes is Bell Toys.
Their sales director is Frank Ashley.
Mr Ashley, ROSPA, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents
says that pink shoe you're holding is a dangerous toy.
- What would you say to that?
Before I can answer that, I must ask you in what way it is considered dangerous?
- Well, this particularly, if you could turn it over.
- It says that the supports for a child's foot are inadequate?
The band you've got across there will not hold the child's foot, but
it might fall off the shoe and perhaps break its ankle.
The best answer I can give you here is to quote you figures.
This toy has been produced by my company for in excess of eight years,
in which time we've sent out well over three quarters of a million.
We are still awaiting, and we hope we never will recieve, our first complaint
from the public that this has happened.
The straps, as you say, have a certain amount of give in them, but not too much.
The child will not slip out.
- But they might slip enough for them to go
- over the edge of the shoe and perhaps twist or break their ankle, do you think?
Once again in eight years, it has never happened.
- But it could happen because they obviously aren't
- very strong with the bits of plastic on the top?
Well, any toy can be dangerous.
A dart properly used is safe.
A dart improperly used is dangerous.
This toy is as safe as it can be made.
That doesn't necessarily cover the shoes made by Mr Ashley's
foreign competitors, and it isn't necessarily safe enough,
just as the standards shopkeepers have to observe
if they want to keep their good name,
don't have the same force for the quick-sell street market trader.
At this market in the South London, bad toys weren't much in evidence.
But at one street market in Islington, a safety organisation
found that 33 toys out of the 42 they bought were dangerous.
Some shoppers don't seem fully alive to the dangers.
- Do you think the toys here are more dangerous,
than the ones you will find a shop?
I don't think they're dangerous.
These sort of proprietary brands.
Some of these stores, you know, during the week, they do knock out
dangerous toys, I should think.
But you know, if you're careful in what you're selecting,
and I don't think you'll buy dangerous toys.
- What do you look for to avoid if you're trying to avoid dangerous toys?
Mainly made in Hong Kong, I should think.
- Do you ever think some of the toys might be dangerous?
Oh yes.
- Do you reject toys you think might be dangerous?
Oh certainly, yeah.
- Can I choose one of the toys you've got here,
- which I was looking at earlier in the store?
This one, in fact, there's a very nasty story of these things
being fired and sticking onto a little boy's eye.
- Would that have stopped you buying it?
Well, I wouldn't let him shoot it without me
around to see where he was shooting it anyway.
- Did you know that there were, in fact, no laws prohibiting the sale of dangerous
- toys in this country?
No.
These toys could be a mess of sharp edges, poisionous
and inflammable materials and powered by high-voltage electricity.
It's just our good fortune that they aren't.