Baby furniture maker Kolcraft recalls playpens over design defect

Baby furnishings maker Kolcraft Enterprises has recalled about 425,000 playpens after it received a report of a boy strangled by a looped restraining strap hanging from a changing table on the company''s Sesame Beginnings Travel Play Yard, the Consumer Product Safety Commission said on Thursday 27 September.

The voluntary recall by Kolcraft, based in Chicago, covers 12 different play yards made in China. The products were sold from January 2001 till September 2007, and cost from $50 to $130, the company said in a statement.

"This is not a made-in-China issue," a safety commission representative said, "it is a defect in the design of the product by the US company." A Kolcraft representative said the incident involved misuse of the product, which carries a warning against leaving a child in the playpen with the changing table on top.

Just a day earlier, on Wednesday, the RC2 Corporation and five other companies recalled about 670,000 Chinese-made toys, children''s chairs and gardening tools because they had paint that contained lead, as well as other safety issues. On 21 September, the maker of Graco and Simplicity products recalled one million Chinese-manufactured cribs.

Toy maker Mattel, which has recalled around 21 million toys since August, apologised to China last week for design problems that led to the recall, because around 18 million of them contained small magnets that could be a swallowing hazard for small children.

The US Congress has expressed concern about the massive recalls, and said it is considering legislation to increase the safety of products from China, which manufactures about 80 per cent of the toys sold in the United States.