We just watched an expose about phthalates in toys on the PBS show NOW. It's a very well done story, and it highlights the way the Bush Administration has continued to ignore its own studies and failed to take actions to promote public safety because of industry objections.
We do not, by the way, belong to the Toy Industry Association (TIA), which has been unwisely speaking out in favor of phthalates. We continue to ask our manufacturers about what their toys are made with. Several, including Schylling and Crocodile Creek, have led the way in removing phthalates from their toys.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Sunday, March 16, 2008
The Story of Stuff
We came across this 20 minute webinar called The Story of Stuff which, although simplistic, seems like a great way to teach kids about the impacts of our consumer-driven global economy. It breaks things down into small bits that make a lot of sense.
Horton Hears a Slur
From Dan: I took Riley and Abby and Duncan to see Horton Hears a Who last night. Riley was excited to see it because his homeschool co-op had made a play out to the story last year.
It was ironic and somewhat painful, then, to be confronted in the first scene with an insult. Basically, the bad guy in the movie is the "sour kangaroo", who disdainfully declares "That's why we're Pouchschoolers!", after witnessing Horton with his speck. She then proceeds to torment Horton throughout the rest of the movie.
Now, I do have an issue here with Dr. Seuss placing an elephant and a kangaroo on the same continent in the first place. But one thing that can be said about Suess is that he never singled out any cultural group for derision, except maybe Oncelers.
Hollywood, however, saw fit to add flavor to the kangaroo's malice by making her a homeschooler. It was sad to see that this kind of dig was thought acceptable.
As a secular homeschooler, er...unschooler, I hope that this isn't the beginning of a trend. It would be sad if the groupthink that Dr. Suess' original story speaks against so well suddenly turned upon such a diverse and vibrant subculture as homeschoolers.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Update on Christopher Dodd's Christmas Presents
From Dan: I spoke with the folks at Scale Model Toys at the New York Toy Fair. They reported that Christopher Dodd, the former Democratic candidate for President, did not contact them about buying Christmas presents from them. Dodd had quipped at a debate in Iowa in December that he would only buy toys made in Iowa for Christmas. Scale Model Toys is, by my reckoning, the only company still making toys in Iowa. So what did Dodd give his children for Christmas? Luckily he's not going to be the nominee and we won't have to worry about the Drudge Report bringing this scandal to light!
Saturday, February 23, 2008
The New York International Toy Fair
From Dan: Millie and I just returned from two days at the NY Toy Fair, America's largest gathering of toy people, with about 35,000 attendees.
Walking Toy Fair, which takes place in Manhattan's Javits Center, takes all day. There's booth after booth of toys: new, old, weird, and familiar. As always, we were on the lookout for great new toys. This year, however, we also made a point of talking to our existing suppliers about toy safety. It was certainly a hot topic. Unlike years past, this Toy Fair had many booths of toy testing laboratories and XRF device manufacturers. We were impressed by several of the toymakers we talked to, including Dave Schylling at Schylling Toys, who has enhanced their testing and quality assurance processes. The responses we got from each company will definitely be guiding our buying decisions this year.
Also on the positive side, we saw many toy companies developing "green" toys, which is now apparently a new category. Quite a few amounted to little more than greenwashing, including one company that called its toys fair trade, but admitted upon being pressed that they have no Fair Trade certification but treated their Asian employees very well. A couple of other companies had organic stuffed animals that looked kind of like oatmeal-colored Happy Meal toys.
Several companies, however, were doing some cool stuff, including making toys in Canada or the US from recycled materials. We hope to have some of these to show you later in the year. Plan Toys and Haba have expanded their lines with some nice new stuff and we found a new source for some of the wooden toys we used to buy from Small World Toys before they crashed and burned last year.
We also observed a mushrooming trend of web-enabled toys similar to Webkins (which are, in our son Riley's opinion, dumb.) Look for a barrage of these to hit toy stores very soon. All of them offer your children the opportunity to connect with virtual friends via interactive websites and get a jump start on the Facebook generation. Go play outside!
All in all, it was a great trip. Millie and I had fun in New York--we even got to see Wicked on Broadway. (It turns out the wicked witch isn't so wicked after all!)
Walking Toy Fair, which takes place in Manhattan's Javits Center, takes all day. There's booth after booth of toys: new, old, weird, and familiar. As always, we were on the lookout for great new toys. This year, however, we also made a point of talking to our existing suppliers about toy safety. It was certainly a hot topic. Unlike years past, this Toy Fair had many booths of toy testing laboratories and XRF device manufacturers. We were impressed by several of the toymakers we talked to, including Dave Schylling at Schylling Toys, who has enhanced their testing and quality assurance processes. The responses we got from each company will definitely be guiding our buying decisions this year.
Also on the positive side, we saw many toy companies developing "green" toys, which is now apparently a new category. Quite a few amounted to little more than greenwashing, including one company that called its toys fair trade, but admitted upon being pressed that they have no Fair Trade certification but treated their Asian employees very well. A couple of other companies had organic stuffed animals that looked kind of like oatmeal-colored Happy Meal toys.
Several companies, however, were doing some cool stuff, including making toys in Canada or the US from recycled materials. We hope to have some of these to show you later in the year. Plan Toys and Haba have expanded their lines with some nice new stuff and we found a new source for some of the wooden toys we used to buy from Small World Toys before they crashed and burned last year.
We also observed a mushrooming trend of web-enabled toys similar to Webkins (which are, in our son Riley's opinion, dumb.) Look for a barrage of these to hit toy stores very soon. All of them offer your children the opportunity to connect with virtual friends via interactive websites and get a jump start on the Facebook generation. Go play outside!
All in all, it was a great trip. Millie and I had fun in New York--we even got to see Wicked on Broadway. (It turns out the wicked witch isn't so wicked after all!)
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
The Floating Plastic Inevitable
From Dan: I just finished reading The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. Although it wasn't the best choice from a mental health perspective during the coldest days of this Minnesota winter, it was a very thought-provoking mind experiment. Perhaps I should have read it on the beach in Mexico.
A chapter in the middle about the longevity of all things plastic did remind me of Mexico, though. We saw all manner of floating plastic trash washes up on the beach daily, to be cleaned up by hotel and resort employees, or, in the case of a nature preserve we visited, by nobody. It turns out that all the world's oceans are swimming with a growing miasma of bottle tops, plastic bags, toys, nets, bottles, and flip flops in various stages of disintegration as their polymers are broken down by UV radiation. It turns out that the swirling currents in the centers of the oceans concentrate this garbage into a colossal vortex of floating plastic.
Another article, Moby Duck, from the January 2007 issue of Harper's Magazine, recorded how a container of PVC toy ducks spilled in the Pacific seeded beaches on 5 continents with globetrotting tub toys. Here in Minnesota, at the headwaters of the Mississippi, we don't really think about how our yogurt cup or Sponge Bob figure might find its way to a Yucatan beach or how our grass fertilizer may be contributing to the dead zone, an area the size of New Jersey where no fish lives off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico.
The World Without Us reaffirmed for me that the world is a lot more interconnected than we generally perceive. It also made the point that much of what we value most is the most impermanent and much of what we value least, like plastic junk, is the most enduring.
A chapter in the middle about the longevity of all things plastic did remind me of Mexico, though. We saw all manner of floating plastic trash washes up on the beach daily, to be cleaned up by hotel and resort employees, or, in the case of a nature preserve we visited, by nobody. It turns out that all the world's oceans are swimming with a growing miasma of bottle tops, plastic bags, toys, nets, bottles, and flip flops in various stages of disintegration as their polymers are broken down by UV radiation. It turns out that the swirling currents in the centers of the oceans concentrate this garbage into a colossal vortex of floating plastic.
Another article, Moby Duck, from the January 2007 issue of Harper's Magazine, recorded how a container of PVC toy ducks spilled in the Pacific seeded beaches on 5 continents with globetrotting tub toys. Here in Minnesota, at the headwaters of the Mississippi, we don't really think about how our yogurt cup or Sponge Bob figure might find its way to a Yucatan beach or how our grass fertilizer may be contributing to the dead zone, an area the size of New Jersey where no fish lives off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico.
The World Without Us reaffirmed for me that the world is a lot more interconnected than we generally perceive. It also made the point that much of what we value most is the most impermanent and much of what we value least, like plastic junk, is the most enduring.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Yikes! Democracy in action!
From Dan: We just returned from our local caucus with our three kids. Although it'll probably telegraph exactly which party we're with, we have to say that it was a crazy and exhilarating experience. Our neighborhood community center was PACKED with people and they were still pouring in as we left. It felt like the democratic process was reawakening after a decade or so on hiatus. It was the first time in a long time that I felt truly excited about our system of government.
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