Well, this is just lovely. Just under 700,000 more toys have been recalled by Mattel due to (you guessed it) excessive toxic lead paint. Again made in China. Seriously, what is the deal? We’ve got birthday and Christmas season coming up in our household, and maybe I should just skip the middleman entirely and buy the girls a can of lead paint for their enjoyment.

On one hand, I suppose it’s somewhat reassuring to know that systems are working properly to catch these problems, although in reality they should be caught before they even hit the shelves. Actually, in reality, these problems shouldn’t even exist in the first place.

Watchdogs from organizations such as the Consumer Product Safety Commission are calling for products exported from China to the US to be lead-free. So, umm, they’re OK for the rest of the world? Once again, I am left wondering how on earth anyone thinks paint with any amount of lead in it is OK for use in toys (or anything else, for that matter). And I’ll be strengthening my resolve to try to stay away from products made in China (it’s difficult, though).

As for the birthday and Christmas gifts, books are a pretty safe bet, I suppose. Aside from potentially nasty paper-cuts, I can’t see them doing too much harm. Plus, instilling a life-long love of reading is certainly something they’ll appreciate more than cheap plastic lead-saturated toys.