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ALERT SYDNEY, Australia - The Australian company behind a popular Chinese-made toy found to contain a chemical that converts into a potentially fatal drug when ingested said Friday it was investigating how the toxin ended up in its product. An 18-month-old boy became the fourth child hospitalized in Australia in recent weeks when he collapsed after eating the toy. Retailers have pulled millions of the toys, known as Bindeez in Australia and Aqua Dots in the United States, from their shelves this week after scientists found the products contain a chemical that converts into the so-called "date rape" drug gamma...

Some Toy Makers Shun the China Label By MARK LANDLER and IVAR EKMAN FRANKFURT, Sept. 17 — Playmobil of Germany has long promoted its colorful plastic pirates, firefighters and farm animals as better-than-your-average plaything — toys to be handed down rather than chewed up. Now it can add another selling point: they are made in Europe, not China. The same goes for Lego, the Danish maker of toy bricks, and for Ravensburger, a German puzzle and game manufacturer, though it does produce small quantities of nonpaper toys in Chinese factories. With Mattel and the American toy industry reeling from recalls...

China toy boss kills self after recall By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer 28 minutes ago BEIJING - The head of a Chinese toy manufacturing company at the center of a huge U.S. recall has committed suicide, a state-run newspaper said Monday. ADVERTISEMENT Zhang Shuhong, who ran the Lee Der Industrial Co. Ltd., killed himself at a warehouse over the weekend, days after China announced it had temporarily banned exports by the company, the Southern Metropolis Daily said. Lee Der made 967,000 toys recalled earlier this month by Mattel Inc. because they were made with paint found to have excessive...

11-Year-Old Arrested For Using Rubber Band Gun OCOEE (Florida), June 7: An 11-year-old Ocoee boy was arrested for playing with a toy gun. Police said the arrest was necessary, because it was a safety issue. The boy was using a rubber band gun and his father said the kid did nothing wrong, but police said they take it as a serious threat and the 11-year-old is facing felony charges. The crime isn't very common, but Ocoee police said it is serious. It centers on an 11-year0old boy and his toy short-barreled shotgun. The incident started Sunday afternoon, when the 11-year-old...

TOY soldiers, model war planes and wrestling figurines have been banned in schools across the state in a politically correct crackdown. Primary schools and kindergartens have declared themselves "war toy free zones" and outlawed traditional toys and playground games that have even a tenuous link to war. All schools contacted by the Sunday Herald Sun said they had a policy banning war toys. Principals said schools feared they could be sued by litigious parents if they allowed plastic weapons and war toys in the school ground. Children at primary schools and kindergartens are also forbidden from playing "war-like games" such...

Click here for a video demo of what apparently is going to be this Christmas's big toy: (Warning: Excessive Cuteness Ahead) TMX Elmo

Since Hurricane Katrina hit, New Orleans and its leaders have been in the national spotlight. But, a new toy pokes fun at Mayor Ray Nagin and his response during the Katrina crisis. News Channel 5's Larry Collins finds out if people think it's too soon to joke or if laughter really is the best medicine. video

8/4/2006 - BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq (AFPN) -- Two Airmen deployed here are trying to further Iraqis' understanding of Americans through the simplest objects: children's toys. Staff Sgts. Scott Klobucher and Samantha Ross are volunteers at the Air Force Theater Hospital. The sergeants are two of about 600 people who volunteer at the hospital, providing services such as changing bed linens, answering phones and helping patients write letters home. They started volunteering shortly after their arrival, but soon discovered that helping at the hospital on their days off wasn't enough for them. Each experienced an epiphany when they saw an...

July 28, 2006 Chinese Workers Protest at Factory Making Toys for McDonald’s By JIM YARDLEY BEIJING, July 27 — A violent protest erupted last weekend at a factory in southern China that makes toys for McDonald’s and other international companies, a rights group said Thursday, and the local police were called to the scene to restore order. China Labor Watch, a New York-based labor rights group, described in a news release a riot by more than 1,000 workers protesting low pay and poor living conditions at the factory in the industrial city of Dongguan. However, a distributor for the factory...

Two more families filed civil lawsuits Wednesday against the maker of a popular toy that doctors say caused the death of a 22-month-old Redmond boy. The lawsuits allege that Magnetix, the construction toy blamed for the death of Redmond toddler Kenny Sweet, caused a 4-year-old Oak Harbor boy and a 3-year-old boy in Tacoma to be hospitalized. Both boys -- Kyle Booke of Oak Harbor and Marcell McNeil of Tacoma -- survived serious bowel obstructions caused by magnets that fell out of their Magnetix building pieces, but only after undergoing emergency surgery to remove the magnets and repair their intestines,...

NEW YORK - When he was a boy, Hiram Stewart took a bus to Virginia, put a puppy in a paper bag and cradled it all the way home to New Orleans.For more than three decades, he’s cared for dogs in the Big Easy. Usually champion dogs, the kind that will reach the Best in Show ring this week at Westminster.Still, nothing prepared him for what he saw happening to pets around town after Hurricane Katrina hit. Like that pair of little beagles with the pleading eyes, chained inside a garage.“Every time a car would drive by, they’d come out,...

...The 20th century saw the invention of dozens of much-loved toys as well. Still-popular board games like Tripoley, Sorry and Monopoly have been around since the 1930s, and Crayola Crayons are more than 100 years old! Twister, made by a division of Hasbro, sold more than 3 million games within a year of its release in 1966. With the help of our friends at the Toy Industry Association, we've put together a slideshow of some of the best-selling and best-loved toys of the past 100 years. Click here for some fun facts about these fabulous toys.

12 Ways of Christmas Toy Reuses Science author reveals ways to turn broken or discarded toys into innovative devices LOS ANGELES, CA -- Science writer Cy Tymony reveals simple methods to reuse damaged or discarded Christmas toys. After Christmas tons of damaged toys and packaging materials inevitably find their way into our already overflowing waste dumps. It's tempting to discard seemingly useless items but if you do, you'll miss out on some great adaptation opportunities, as well as a chance to help the environment. How? Convert them into other useful items in a "sneaky" way. Cy Tymony, author of "Sneakier...

<p>A 10-year-old boy was in critical condition Sunday after three toy poodles escaped from a home and went on a rampage, attacking six people before police shot and killed dogs, authorities said.....</p>

ELLINGTON FIELD, Texas -- The Texas Air National Guard stood up Task Force Compassion here to provide Hurricane Rita evacuees medical support and to evacuate non-critical patients from overburdened local hospitals. Task force Airmen and Soldiers began setting up a 10-bed medical treatment facility overnight in Ellington’s abandoned base exchange and opened for business Sept. 26. The treatment facility has 47 medics from the 147th Medical Group here, the 149th MG at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, the 136th MG at Naval Air Station-Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth and the Army National Guard Support Medical Battalion in San Antonio. “If...

PAWTUCKET, R.I., Feb. 3 (UPI) -- Mr. Potato Head seems poised to become a permanent part of Rhode Island's license plate lore, the Pawtucket (R.I.) Times said Thursday. The toy tuber with the changeable face, born at Pawtucket's Hasbro Inc., made what was supposed to be a cameo appearance on Rhode Island license plates two years ago as a fundraiser for the Rhode Island Food Bank. For each of the 1,364 plates sold, the food bank received $20 of the $40 charged, for a total of $29,280. The law authorizing the production of the Potato Head plates mandated they cease...

Euro scum!

10. "If the UN does not immediately withdraw support for the US occupation of Iraq, the Jihad Brotherhood will cut off one of Papa Smurf's three fingers" 9. "We have captured Rainbow Brite, and we will hang her as an infidel at dawn" 8. "Al-Zarqawi is pleased to announce new reinforcements in his jihad-- COBRA Commander and Megatron of the Decepticons (also, we may get that completely useless robot who can turn into a freaking tape-recorder)" 7. "If the American infidels do not depart Iraq immediately, the streets will run black with the ink of a thousand Etch-a-Sketches" 6. "I...

Just hours after Islamic militants in Iraq threatened to behead a kidnapped U.S. soldier doll, the camouflaged action figure was rescued in a daring nighttime operation by a toy George W. Bush action figure. The nine-inch-tall replica of the president left Andrews Air Force Base in a scale model of Air Force One within minutes after the Pentagon learned of the kidnapping from a picture on an Islamic website. The top-secret flight was reminiscent of the life-size president's Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad in 2003. During the long trip, the presidential doll was programmed to say intimidating things in Arabic, and...

19 January 2005: The Slinky betrayed us. I should have known. I never trusted him. He was an unstable character, always going back and forth, back and forth, never showing a shred of backbone. "Come, senor, I know the way to the insurgents' headquarters," he rasped. The fact that he was an Arab toy speaking with a stereotypical Spanish accent should have tipped me off. But hindsight is always 20/20. Literally. I can turn my head 360 degrees I only knew my men by their code names, but even in that short space of time we shared a bond...