A world of dangerous toys
Rob Price

Are you the parent of a small child? If so, you have my sympathy.

This is the time of year when such parents are braving hordes of holiday shoppers - most of them other parents - in search of the perfect holiday toy.

Shopping for toys used to be simple. When our own daughter was of the Christmas toy age, my wife and I enjoyed an annual stop at the Disney store, where we had fun playing with all the plush toys in the big bin at the back of the room. It's possible we had more fun that all the children were having, because each toy we picked up would trigger a fond memory from our childhoods. Memories of "Fantasia" and "The Sorcerer's Apprentice."

But plush toys aren't what they used to be. A Curious George plush doll has been recalled by its manufacturer, Marvel Toys, because of "excessive" amounts of lead paint on the doll's plastic face. J. C. Penney recently recalled a Winnie the Pooh toy set, also because of high levels of lead paint.

Both toys were manufactured in China, a country where lead paint apparently flows from the kitchen spigot. Hundreds of other toys manufactured in China also have been recalled, and you can find out for yourself which toys have been declared hazardous to your child's health by visiting the following website: www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/category/ toy.html.

A visit to this website, which is maintained by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, may scare you into wondering whether there will be any safe toys this Christmas season. Why, even the Dizzy Duck Music Box has been recalled! (Violation of lead paint standard; manufactured in China.)

You may also wonder whether it would be a good idea to simply buy a children's book and teach your child how to read.

My advice is not to do anything rash. Let me share the perspective of a child who grew up in Pittsburgh, surrounded by foul chemical substances. When I was about 10, my parents gave me a lead soldier kit. It consisted of a small electric stove, a pan with a long hand, and a mold for casting toy soldiers.

I kept the stove in the basement, where my friends, and I spent hours melting down chunks of lead my father would bring home from a junkyard. The melting temperature of lead is more than 600 degrees fahrenheit, so we were dealing with some hot metal. We also dealt with lead fumes, which I recall smell faintly sweet.

Once the lead was melted, we scraped off the carbon slag with wooden paint stirrers, then carefully lifted the pan by its long handle and poured the molten lead into the soldier molds. A few minutes later, the metal would have cooled, and we'd break open the molds. Presto! A new set of lead soldiers.

Did we ever try to eat the lead soldiers? I don't think so. Much of the concern surrounding the recently recalled toys is that small children might chew off the lead paint and swallow it, which is probably a bad thing. On the other hand, inhaling all those lead vapors couldn't have been good for us 40 years ago.

Still, the lead soldier kit made us familiar with some of the basics of a metal -working culture, a culture that was part of our history as residents of the Steel City. In contrast, the recalled toys on the CPSC website strike me as somewhat ... junky. They look like something you could give a child to distract it while you take a nap.

Obviously no one is going to manufacture a lead smelting kit for today's toy market, but aren't there any games for small children this holiday season?

Aren't there any books?

Perhaps not, in which case it may be time for our toy companies to find another place to manufacture their products. I have a suggestion: Steuben County!

I know. I can hear you saying, This sounds like another one of your crazy ideas for economic development, Price. And my response is this: What ideas for economic development have you had recently?

I see an economic future of toy factories lining Interstate 86, cranking out plush toy after plush toy. Mickey Mouses. Curious Georges. Winnie the Poohs. All free of lead-based paint! Jobs for everyone!

There may even be a company that makes a lead soldier kit. For the older children among us.