Mattel Will Place Warning Label on Doll

Mattel Inc. agreed Tuesday to place warning labels on all Cabbage Patch Snacktime Kids in the wake of complaints that the doll’s mechanical mouth can catch a child’s hair or fingers.

In at least 35 incidents, the dolls--designed to munch on plastic foods--have snagged the hair or fingers of children and kept on chomping, federal consumer protection officials say. None of the children has been seriously injured.

The warning labels will appear on the boxes of all the dolls, including those now on store shelves, the Consumer Product Safety Commission said.

Mattel plans to start putting labels on the dolls in stores across the country by the end of this week, company spokesman Glenn Bozarth said. The company has distributed about 700,000 of the dolls since August.

The labels will warn consumers to keep their hair and fingers out of the mouth and explain how to turn off the doll. The chewing stops when the backpack is removed, and the doll can be permanently disabled by removing the batteries located in the toy’s body.

The Cabbage Patch Snacktime Kids doll is the latest example of toys that have been reported to catch small children’s hair in their moving parts.

Like the Cabbage Patch dolls, many of these toys lack an on/off switch, leaving parents helpless to release a screaming child from the grips of the toys’ mechanisms, said Pam Pressley, a consumer advocate at the California Public Interest Research Group.

“The parent is often frantically trying to get the toy to stop while it is ripping out their kids’ hair,” Pressley said, adding that parents have had to unscrew battery casings to get some of these toys to stop moving.

In the past, CALPIRG has received reports about Milton Bradley’s Maniac Mouse. Although the mouse had an on/off switch, in one incident the wheels didn’t stop moving when the switch was turned off, leaving a child’s hair stuck in the wheels, Pressley said.

CALPIRG listed Tyco Toys Inc.’s Elmo Express toy train on its 1995 “Trouble in Toyland” survey warning parents that a child’s hair could get caught in the train’s wheels.

These toys are not considered nearly as dangerous as playthings with small parts or balloons, both of which present choking hazards--the leading cause of toy-related death. Federal law requires that any toys with small parts manufactured for children ages 3 to 6 contain a warning label.

Meanwhile, the federal consumer agency still is investigating the Cabbage Patch doll and could take further action if appropriate, said agency spokesman Rick Frost. A group of engineers will evaluate the toy and study any risks of injury.

“A recall is still a possibility,” Frost said. “But I wouldn’t draw any conclusions as yet.”

Marcia Kerr, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles area Consumer Product Safety Commission, encouraged parents to watch their children when they are playing with a toy that could present a hazard.

“It’s always good to supervise. The rest is common sense,” she said. “Sometimes it just doesn’t dawn on you that hair can catch in these moving parts.”

Times wire services contributed to this report.