While it’s pretty much common international knowledge at this point that Americans are far more likely than someone who lives in a different country to do something really, really stupid (with the possible exception of Japan, where it seems that personal safety is compromised for entertainment value more often than not), we’ve apparently hit a new low.  For those of you who haven’t heard, recently Mattel and a few smaller, less reputed toy companies have had to recall a ridiculously high number of products (for Mattel alone this hovers around the one million mark) due to allegations of lead content and/or small choking hazards.

Okay.  Parents?  If you’re really that concerned that your kids are playing with things that have pieces small enough to get lodged in their throats (which is pretty obvious since you can see the components before you buy them half the time), perhaps you aren’t watching your brood closely enough. If you don’t want them ingesting microscopic bits of lead or getting their chubby sausage fingers caught and burned in the Easy Bake Oven, teach them not to do that shit. 

Think about what toys were like when you were a kid.  Did they have a lot of points and tiny magnets and were they made from dubious substances found only in the plastic mines of China?  Hells yes! Toys when I was a kid had the potential to be dangerous and fatal. Pull-string stuffed animals? You could choke your younger siblings with that shit.  Hell, jump ropes can be fashioned into nooses if done properly (and I know this for a fact since I was one of those disturbing children who held public executions during “wartimes”).  You could proverbially “shoot your eye out” with any number of toys from the Ninja Turtles line alone, and don’t even get me started on the hazards of angrily throwing video game controllers.

Yet somehow my generation and the ones before it have somehow miraculously survived.  How? Because our parents gave a shit about what we were doing and taught us valuable lessons like “don’t touch the stove” or “only put real food in your mouth.”

I’m not saying that child rearing is an easy job. I’m just saying that we should have some sort of exam in place to prove you’re competent enough to have offspring.