Play and pay: the hazards of play yards

Those portable playpens designed to keep toddlers safe and secure perhaps aren’t so safe after all. On July 8, 2009, Kolcraft Enterprises issued a recall of some one million play yards due to a potentially hazardous latch mechanism. The play yards were sold from 2000-2009 under the brands Kolcraft, Carter’s, Sesame Street, Jeep, Contours, Care Bear, and Eric Carle and included such play yards as the Kolcraft Travelin’ Tot, Jeep Sahara Limited Play Yard, and Eric Carle Play Yard with Activity Gym.

Kolcraft received about 350 complaints about a defective latch that caused some children to fall out of the play yards. About 21 injuries were reported.

This wasn’t Kolcraft’s first experience with a recall: in September 2007 Kolcraft recalled some 425,000 play yards when an infant was accidentally strangled by a strap on a play yard’s changing table.

A law passed by Congress last year calls for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to enact stronger manufacturing standards for children’s products, something child safety advocates have long been lobbying for. Since fall of 2007 somewhere around 7 million cribs and play yards and the like have been recalled because of defects.

This was posted on Friday, July 10th, 2009 and is filed in the Legal, Public Safety categories.