A quick google search for “plastic eye choking hazard” comes up with over 7 million google results. That’s because by now people should know that plastic eyes are not appropriate for stuffed animals when they are just glued on, because they pose a choking hazard! Safety always has to come first when making a promotional toy and because of that we do rigorous product safety testing and partner with the best vendors in the world to manufacture our promotional items.
In the news yesterday I saw an article that Disney has voluntarily recalled over 80,000 stuffed toys for this exact issue.
Click here to read it.
I took a quick walk through our showroom and in it we have a selection of 7 different stuffed animals promo items. We have some custom stuffies and we have some stock ones that feature logo’d t-shirts. In every instance the eyes are either embroidered (safest option) or they use child safe buttons that have a washer on the back that cannot be pulled through the surface fabric of the toy.
I’m not here to lecture Disney on how to make a toy, but as a small promotional products distributor recalls can be not only deadly but also very costly. We do carry insurance, but it’s so much easier to have everything tested up front to make sure it is child safe before it even lands in Canada. We recently undertook the launch of our new mascot ‘Swag’ the dog as an opportunity to design our own stuffed animal, take a look at some of the photos below to see how we did to represent this cute, cuddly mascot as a plush toy.
