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NBC and ABC both followed up on Mattel's recalled toys. Yesterday, NBC's Ian Williams and CBS' Barry Petersen both reported from Beijing on the quality of China's exports. Now ABC's Mark Litke (subscription required) traveled to the toymaking center of Foshan where he met with former Big Bird and Elmo assembly line workers, now out of work because of the sins of their employer's supplier. "It was not our fault," a worker told Litke. "The paint with the lead came from another factory but we are paying the price." Working 60 hours a week for no more than the equivalent of 50c an hour, Litke calculated that a Barbie doll, $20 retail, costs 35c to make in Foshan. So ABC sent Barbara Pinto (at the tail of the Litke videostream) to the Whittle Shortline Railroad factory in Missouri where workers earn an $18 hourly wage: one of its wooden trains costs $10 to manufacture, with $3 being the Chinese price for manufacture plus shipping. No wonder, as Pinto pointed out, that China boasts 10,000 toy factories; the United States "fewer than 50." On NBC, Kerry Sanders noted that the Consumer Product Safety Commission tests "only a fraction" of imported toys. He was told by the CPSC's Julie Vallese that to expect universal testing would be "quite naïve."
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