Word: toying
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They weren't the first designer plush dolls, and they probably won't be the last, but a cast of 15 unattractive, ever evolving characters called Uglydolls?each accompanied by a quirky, amusing narrative?have plopped down at the forefront of the designer-toy movement. The dolls' creators, David Horvath and Sun-Min Kim, are themselves outsiders in a nearly monopolized corporate toy industry. Their first doll, a snaggle-toothed, apron-donning orange blob named Wage who, the story goes, works at a grocery store and lives for chocolate-chip-cookie dough, was born...
They line the nursery section children's toy stores like brightly colored candies: rubber duckies for bathtime, chewable rings for teething, soft-covered books for pawing and mouthing. Parents shopping for their babies can be forgiven if they assume that everything on those shelves is 100% child safe. So why did the city of San Francisco issue a ban last week on the sale of certain plastic toys aimed at children under 3? And why are activists warning holiday shoppers in the most alarming terms against buying them? "Sucking on some of these teethers and toys," says Rachel Gibson...
...issue are contaminants in plastics used to make the toys. Environmentalists have long argued that some of these chemicals can leach out and harm children, pointing to animal studies that link the substances to birth defects, cancer and developmental abnormalities. Those warnings are hotly disputed by the chemical industry and toy manufacturers, which cite stacks of scientific studies that have found the plastics to be safe at federally approved levels. But the issue has gained traction on the strength of new evidence from independent and university-sponsored studies. The European Union has banned some chemicals in toys since...
...American Chemistry Council (ACC), which represents manufacturers such as ExxonMobil and Dow Chemical, says the crackdowns on toys are not justified by the science. "The E.U. aims to ban products that show adverse effect at very high doses in rats," says the ACC's Marian Stanley. "Many essential products are made from starting materials that can be quite toxic at high doses. This does not mean that the final consumer products are toxic." As for recent phthalate studies on humans, she says, they are either preliminary or "overhyped." Meanwhile, toy companies are relying on a 2001 review by a Consumer...
...write laws, and he has been extraordinarily good at it. The walls of his Washington office are covered with framed pens that Presidents from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton used to sign the laws that Waxman helped make a reality: the Clean Air Act, generic-drug legislation, food- and toy-safety laws, and Medicare catastrophic coverage, to name a few. In 1994, as chairman of the health and environment subcommittee, he lined up the chief executives of the nation's biggest tobacco companies, had them raise their right hands and then shredded them as finely as their own products...