Irresponsible Chinese subcontractors responsible for tainting 2 million toys destined for U.S. shelves, but they by no means shoulder FULL responsibility for Mattel’s problems.

Mattel Executive Vice President for Worldwide Operations Thomas Debrowski recently surprised consumers and policy makers alike by offering an exceptional and expansive apology to Li Changjiang, the head of China’s General Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine: “Mattel takes full responsibility for these recalls and apologises personally to you, the Chinese people and all of our customers who received the toys. It is important for everyone to understand that the vast majority of these products that we recalled were the result of a flaw in Mattel’s design, not through a manufacturing flaw in Chinese manufacturers.”For months, Mattel has blamed rogue Chinese subcontractors for endangering American children by violating Mattel’s strict safety standards in pursuit of profit. The truth revealed hiding in plain sight by Debrowski’s apology is slightly more complex.Of the 19.6 million toys that [Mattel] has recalled this year globally, 2.2 million were due to lead paint; the remaining 17.4 million (11.7 million in the U.S.) were toys recalled not because of lead paint but because they were made with super-strong magnets. Now that Debrowski has apologized to China, it seems only fair for Mattel’s conniver-in-chief, Robert Eckert, to explain to American consumers why his company chose to scapegoat Chinese subcontractors while keeping the true death-peddlers on Mattel’s payroll.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 3:32 pm and is filed under Asia, Business, China, Money Savvy, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.