CPSIA - Extinct Toys, Thanks Congress!

In the latest effort to make the deaf hear and perhaps even to raise the dead, a member of the HTA has reconfigured its website to highlight "Endangered Toys" and "Extinct Toys", all courtesy of your Federal Government. Thanks, Congress!

There are seemingly buckets of Endangered Toys (currently in stock but can't be reordered) and Extinct Toys (out of inventory and can't be reordered) on this website. Ooooh, they're so dangerous, like "Grandfather Lorenzo" from darkest Germany (endangered) or the "Post Express Van" also from the rogue state of Germany (extinct). Can't allow children to play with toys from Germany, that's for sure. . . .

Oddly, there's no sign that anyone anywhere was ever injured by these toys. They're just gone now because of the "unintended consequences" of the CPSIA. [Btw that expression, "unintended consequences", makes me want to throw up. Unintended, my ear. This is exactly what was intended, and Dem staffers have repeatedly admitted it.]

The zealots who brought this plague on you have practically grown callouses patting themselves on the back for making your businesses so darned safe. Niggling details like testing costs, loss of valued products, layoffs are all sloughed off as a "necessary" expense in making everyone safer. This flawed assertion is based on the self-evident conclusion that their law made us safer. Obvious, so obvious. I understand their point since I know they can't comprehend numbers or data. That's why they're politicians, after all. WERE they able to tote up a number or two, they might not be so quick to assert that we actually are safer, given that a few tedious hours of analysis would reveal that there are only THREE known (asserted) lead injuries in the last 11 years in this country, and only ONE documented death. That's it, barely a day's worth of death and maiming from pools. Hard to reduce injuries from nothing to less than nothing.

It hardly matters, because they cast the die for us, and have no intention to listen to our little problems. This explains why they blandly put out a rule for comment last week which states that our business will have to pay $15 million a year in testing costs. Gotta be safe, ergo if we don't test the way they say we should, our customers won't be safe.

In fact, if we DO test as they want us to, I GUARANTEE everyone will be safer than ever. That's because we will be out of business and they won't be able to buy any of our products.

Try not to forget to say "thank you" on November 2 to all those people who have stood between the CPSIA and its repair. You should have plenty of time to figure out how to thank the people who are committed to putting you out of business. You sure won't be selling toys.