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DES MOINES, Iowa — The cartoonish plastic frog with bulging eyes could be a children’s toy — but for the torchlike flame that bursts from the novelty lighter’s head.
“They look like something you would get in a McDonald’s Happy Meal,” said John Dean, president of the National Association of State Fire Marshals. “They’re cute, they’re little” — but they can be deadly.
Dean’s group is backing an effort to ban novelty lighters across the country, and a handful of states are considering it. In California, Washington and Arkansas, local ordinances have been passed.
The European Union has moved to ban novelty lighters, generally manufactured in China. Fire officials worry that manufacturers will try to unload the lighters in the U.S.
