Rick Woldenberg casts a skeptical eye on the Toy Safety Certification Program (TSCP), a voluntary toy-safety program promoted by both the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and the Toy Industries Association that in some respects goes beyond even the requirements of the CPSIA. His contention: “the TSCP significantly favors mass market companies in an almost shameless way.”
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Of course it does. For Congress this law was never anything more than “Jesus is coming. Look busy!” For the big toymakers who supported the bill, it was about stomping smaller competitors who arose in large part as a reaction to a public fear that Big Toy had created.
The market was punishing Mattel and its like well enough before Congress intervened.
Of course the supreme irony I find here is that many of the BIG TOY companies that farmed manufacturing out to China are the ones guilty of violating the things that CPSIA is supposedly supposed to protect while small manufacturers closer to home probably avoided violations on a large part – the result is to punish the small companies.