New York – Mattel Inc. on Tuesday announced its third major recall of Chinese-made toys in little more than a month, including 675,000 Barbie-doll accessories, because of excessive amounts of lead-tainted paint.
The recall is the latest blow to the world’s largest toymaker as the critical holiday shopping season approaches. The action, whose details were negotiated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, involves more than 800,000 units, Mattel said in a statement.
The recall covers:
90,000 units of Mattel’s GeoTrax locomotive line sold from September 2006 through August.
8,900 Big Big World 6-in-1 Bongo Band toys, both from the company’s Fisher-Price brand sold nationwide from July through August.
Barbie accessories sold between last October and August. No Barbie dolls were included in the action.
Mattel’s last recall, announced Aug. 14, covered about 19 million toys worldwide. They included Chinese- made toys that either had excessive amounts of lead paint or had small magnets that could easily be swallowed.
Mattel’s Fisher-Price division said Aug. 1 it was recalling 1.5 million preschool toys featuring characters such as Dora the Explorer, Big Bird and Elmo because of lead paint. That included 967,000 toys sold in the United States between May and August.
Lead can cause brain damage when ingested by young children.
Robert Eckert, chairman and chief executive of El Segundo, Calif.-based Mattel, warned at a news conference last month that there may be more recalls of tainted toys as the company steps up its investigations into its Chinese factories and retests products.
