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Warnings we might not need

#121
4748817616_155da7d41b_b.jpg
 
#136
A few years ago, there was a rash of kid's toys made in China that were illegally painted with lead paint. Knowing that it was in their best intetest, the Chinese government cracked down extremely hard on the guilty companies and instituted very strict standards of compliance.

Not satisfied, the State of California passed legislation that mandated any product sold there that was a children's toy or might plausibly be found by a child and put in their mouth must be certified by the manufacturer to be free of lead paint. The cost of certification testing would be covered by the manufacturer.

The company I work for makes HO scale train cars for the hobby modelists. These people tend to be older men with lots of disposable cash. Our models are not toys for kids and no one is buying them to give to children. Still, The State of California classified our products as children's toys and we were required to become certified compliant by the beginning of the next year.

Being a very small business with fewer than 8 employees, we would have taken a critical financial beating with having to eat the cost of certification, and we were starting to panic as our California distributors began cancelling orders 6 months before the deadline because they didn't want to be stuck with "illegal" products on their shelves.

So our company joined with a handful of other similar companies and petitioned the California government for some other solution. We ended up with a compromise, which was to put a warning label on the outside of the kit box and also include the warning in the instructions that said:

WARNING: not intended for use by anyone 17 or younger.

We could live with this but it did require us to open up several thousand kits one by one to include the new labels and instructions.

So, now, everything we sell has this warning on it - for no real reason.
 
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#140
hbarcat said:
A few years ago, there was a rash of kid's toys made in China that were illegally painted with lead paint. Knowing that it was in their best intetest, the Chinese government cracked down extremely hard on the guilty companies and instituted very strict standards of compliance.

Not satisfied, the State of California passed legislation that mandated any product sold there that was a children's toy or might plausibly be found by a child and put in their mouth must be certified by the manufacturer to be free of lead paint. The cost of certification testing would be covered by the manufacturer.

The company I work for makes HO scale train cars for the hobby modelists. These people tend to be older men with lots of disposable cash. Our models are not toys for kids and no one is buying them to give to children. Still, The State of California classified our products as children's toys and we were required to become certified compliant by the beginning of the next year.

Being a very small business with fewer than 8 employees, we would have taken a critical financial beating with having to eat the cost of certification, and we were starting to panic as our California distributors began cancelling orders 6 months before the deadline because they didn't want to be stuck with "illegal" products on their shelves.

So our company joined with a handful of other similar companies and petitioned the California government for some other solution. We ended up with a compromise, which was to put a warning label on the outside of the kit box and also include the warning in the instructions that said:

WARNING: not intended for use by anyone 17 or younger.

We could live with this but it did require us to open up several thousand kits one by one to include the new labels and instructions.

So, now, everything we sell has this warning on it - for no real reason.
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Oh, I’m gonna hear about this from Dennis..
 

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