More toy recalls in the news today, continuing on with a summer full of toy recalls in the toy industry. The big news today is that Kolcraft Enterprises issued a recall of 425,000 Play Yard brand playpens, after the tragic strangulation death of a child in one of the playpens in conjunction with the changing table restraining strap. The recall includes 12 different models of the Play Yard playpen. Customers are urged to remove the changing table and cradle before placing children in the playpens.

This new Kolcraft toy recall comes on the heals of the Mattel toy recalls over the summer and is also joined today with more Thomas the Train recalls from RC2, which is recalling almost 300,000 Thomas & Friends Wooden Railway items due to levels of lead in the paint.

When will the recalls stop? I’m very glad that these companies are taking the proper responsibility and actions to get unsafe products off the market via a recall—this is comforting to parents everywhere—yet how are so many toy products making it out on the US market with these problems in the first place? Surely that does not inspire much confidence in the original product safety testing and regulations. Unfortunately for China, most of these toys are made in China, so this isn’t helping China’s global product safety reputation right now.

But I dare say things will start to improve, if they haven’t already. With so many toy recalls in the last few months, people are taking notice, and the public is outraged  and demanding accountability and action from the toy companies and their manufacturers, wonderfully exposing the quality control problems and quality standard expectation problems that are obviously occurring.

I believe this is causing changes. No toy company wants to become an enemy of the people. They will change their operations and quality control to keep their customers safe, happy, and buying more. I’d be surprised to see more toy recalls from Mattel, for example. Ultimately the toy companies are the ones responsible for the safety of their products, and if they want to stay in business—which I’m pretty sure most do—they’ll pay attention to the public and do more to tighten up and assure their quality standards.