After toy scare, 'we're trying to buy closer to home'
After a huge lead-paint recall, some parents, shops and toymakers say local is the way to go when it comes to buying kids' playthings.
By Maria Elena Baca, Star Tribune
startribune.com
Last update: August 18, 2007 – 10:33 PM
In the days after the recent massive recall of Mattel toys over lead-paint concerns, local retailers and manufacturers are fielding e-mails and telephone calls from parents who want to know how and where their kids' toys are created.
A handful of Twin Cities toy retailers and manufacturers say they have been asking the same questions, and finding the answers in a smaller, more controlled business model.
Shoppers at a Minneapolis specialty toy store said they buy local because of safety concerns, and because they like the uniqueness and scope for imagination that comes with smaller-batch toys.
At Wonderment, a shop in the Linden Hills neighborhood of Minneapolis, Lucky Nielsen bought an unfinished wood and rope doll with her daughter, Violet, 4. They intended to paint it themselves.
Concerns about toy manufacturing aren't new to her.
"I try to buy wood or felt, more natural toys," said Nielsen, of Minneapolis. "I am concerned about lead and plastic."
Bobbe Parker, of Golden Valley, said that while she was aware of dangers in lead-based house paint, she had not been following the news about Mattel's recall of millions of toys made in China over concerns they contained lead paint. Rather, she was shopping with her son Jaxon for something unique. Jaxon had already played for half an hour at the shop with a set of wooden freight trucks.
"We're looking for something exciting and different," she said. "Plastic, versus something that's a little more well-made, out of wood and will last longer is a better bet. ... It seems so many toys are made in China. We're trying to buy closer to home."
Local workshop
From the sidewalk outside Beka Inc.'s Selby Avenue manufacturing plant, you can hear the hum of routers and power sanders. The air inside smells of sweet sawdust. Since 1973, the Kreisman brothers and their families have created mostly unfinished wooden toys and art supplies at the St. Paul workshop.
Beka sells in small batches, mostly to specialty toy stores and catalog outlets all over the United States and in Canada, said the youngest brother, Jamie Seeley Kreisman.
In recent days, they've been fielding calls, mostly from their retailers, who need reassurance about the safety of their toys. And just in the past week, they've declined to participate in a promotion with Toys "R" Us. They've consistently declined opportunities to work with mass-market retailers.
"It's just not our niche. ... We like the idea of making what we sell," he said. "It gives us control, over where the materials come from, over how everything is produced, over how it is packaged, over how it is shipped. If we have a problem anywhere we know how to take care of it."
In a warehouse behind the storefront workshop, a corner is stacked high with the raw materials the Kreismans and their workers use to make the blocks, train tables and art easels: high-piled custom-cut Wisconsin hard rock maple planks. Add a handful of fasteners for assembly and some other U.S.-made components and that's pretty much it. Everything else is designed, cut, shaped, sanded and packaged in St. Paul, by a workforce of about a dozen.
At one of the local retailers that stocks Beka blocks, Peapods Natural Toys and Baby Care in St. Paul, owners Millie Adelsheim and Dan Marshall say the lead-paint scare finally has consumers posing the same questions they've been pondering since before they opened their store in 1999.
Fewer than 20 percent of the toys they sell are made in China, stuffed animals and puzzles mostly, that aren't made anywhere else. But most of the rest of their inventory is wooden and cloth toys, many of which are made in the United States; lots of others are imported from Europe and a new wooden toy upstart, Thailand.
Marshall echoed Kreisman's concerns about loss of control in outsourcing: "I would argue that the problem with the Chinese-made toys isn't so much China; it is the idea of outsourcing production, which often gets outsourced a second or third time," he said. "Each time you outsource, you lose control over production, quality and materials."
Edible stain
One imported line Peapods stocks is HABA wood and cloth toys, made of natural and dye-stained German beechwood, almost exclusively assembled in Bavaria.
Of the toy stain, noted Lea Culliton, vice president for HABA USA, "It's edible," she said. "If they eat a part of the rattle and the stain comes off it won't hurt them."
Like Beka, HABA has declined offers from big-box retailers, instead focusing on Web-based retailers and specialty toy and children's boutiques.
Culliton noted that in recent weeks she's heard more questions about and interest in their product line.
"Everyone is wanting to know, is it safe to buy your product for my child? What kind of paint are you using?"
Only about 5 percent of Wonderment's toys are made in China, according to co-owner Zuzanne Fenner. In the store's case, the interest in natural toys came more from an environmental and aesthetic viewpoint than from safety concerns, she said.
At both Wonderment and Peapods, the owners acknowledge that while they stock lots of inexpensive playthings, some of their products do cost more than you might pay for a comparable toy at a big-box store. But Fenner notes that you often get what you pay for.
"We look more toward lasting toys and things that can be passed down," she said. "... We espouse fewer toys of a better quality rather than so many toys the children don't know what to play what with next."
Maria Elena Baca • 612-673-4409
Maria Elena Baca • mbaca@startribune.com
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