Toys

Toys are a hard issue to deal with – we want to please our children and they in turn want us to buy them everything under the sun that their friends have. Toys are big business – the demands of children are growing ever more as children become more media and tech savvy – they are no longer happy with simple things like rocking horses and conkers, they want video games, personal computers, personal music systems and things that we as adults are still thinking about investing in for our own consumption! The biggest threat that we have to deal with in considering the toys to buy for our children is that posed by advertising – it is ubiquitous. Children are hit from all sides, television, friends, and the outside world is layered in content intended to get them to get YOU to buy something that they may not actually need or want. How many times have parents bought little Johnny or messy Jane the latest and greatest toy for Christmas, only for it to be sat there in the middle of the living room a week or two later, discarded and unloved?

There are of course other issues to consider. Where was the toy made? An ECRA (Ethical Consumer Research Association) survey found that nine out of ten toys it looked at had been manufactured in China. 9 out of 10! The production of toys like most things these days has been moved to China where labour and associated costs are cheaper. The problem with this lowering of manufacturing costs is that labour laws in China and other such countries are nowhere near as protective of workers as can be found in developed nations; furthermore those flimsy laws which are already in place to protect the worker are seldom enforced. Chinese workers are paid a pittance to work in squalid conditions for longer hours than we would be prepared to do a decent job, and we should not be ignorant in our purchasing choices as to the human effect of our decisions.