Barbie is banking on nostalgia, as moms and young adults who grew up playing with the dolls are reliving part of their childhood by watching Ken and Barbie’s daily life.
So here’s a Barbie flashback Mattel won't like as much: It's the time Barbie’s dog and cat were covered in overly-leaded paint, triggering a recall, a China scare, and eventually an infamous episode of big business-big government collusion in which Mattel used its insider position to try and crush competitors.
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The story started in “The Year of the Recall”: 2007. Mattel recalled a million toys that were made in China, including various Barbie accessories. For instance, Barbie’s dog and cat were both covered in paint that contained excess levels of lead.
There were no reported cases of harm or sickness from any of these recalled Mattel toys, but still, it sparked a freakout in the media and in politics.
As “parents rush to doctors’ offices to test their toddlers,” one article in Slate reported in light of the Mattel recalls, “many are bound to discover their children possess small amounts of lead.”
The writer warned, “recent medical evidence shows even trace amount of lead — at amounts now considered acceptable by the CDC — can damage a child’s IQ.”
Presidential candidate Barack Obama had a response that rose to the perceived occasion. He would double the funding for the Consumer Product Safety Commission, saying the leaded toys revealed a “dereliction of duty on the part of the president and the administration.”
Then Obama went further: “I would stop the import of all toys from China. Now I have to say, that’s about 80% of toys that are being imported right now.”
This fit into Obama’s crafted self-image as the guy who would stand up to big business and use big government to protect the little guy. The next year, Obama and other congressional Democrats acted, but they hardly stuck it to Mattel.
Mattel had spent a steady $120,000 per year on lobbying, but in the Year of the Recall, its lobbying spending exploded to $540,000. Then in 2008, it jumped again to $730,000.
In the summer of 2007, Mattel hired as lobbyists Sean Richardson and Sheila Murphy, who months earlier had been chief of staff and legislative director to Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN). Shortly after her ex-aides went to work for Mattel, Klobuchar co-sponsored the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act.
You see, Mattel and Hasbro, the two largest toymakers in the U.S., supported this bill, which passed in August 2008.
Journalist Joe Weisenthal aptly described CPSIA as “the most Draconian consumer safety bill you could imagine, requiring so much testing for toxic elements that even libraries are protesting, because it could require them to dispose of old books.”
The law required every manufacturer of children’s goods — toys, books, furniture — to submit every line of products to a third party for testing before selling them. The law also threatened massive penalties on any reseller if it resold a toy that didn’t meet all safety standards.
“You could wipe out a whole industry,” said Adele Meyer, head of the National Association of Resale and Thrift Shops.
The law was crafted to favor mass-producing large manufacturers and crush smaller ones. Mattel could make 10,000 Barbie dogs and submit one sample for testing, while an artisan making custom children’s chairs would have to get each item tested.
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It got even better for Mattel in the Obama years. The CPSC in 2009 voted to allow seven manufacturing facilities to conduct their own in-house testing. All seven were Mattel factories or Mattel subcontractors.
In short, Mattel triggered a toy scare by selling toys that had overly-leaded paint on them. Then they helped pass a Draconian set of regulations that would crush smaller competitors by requiring third-party testing. Then they got an exemption from regulators, and were allowed to test their own toys.
Talk about a happy ending.