Safety Recall: Hasbro Easy Bake Oven

Hasbro has recalled 985,000 Easy Bake Ovens repair after receiving 29 reports of children getting their fingers or hands caught in the product, including five reports of burns.

Immediately take the recalled oven away from children under 8 years of age and contact the firm (at 1-800-601-8418) for a retrofit.

The recalled plastic ovens are purple and pink. They resemble a kitchen stove with four burners on top and a front-loading oven. “Easy Bake” is printed on the front of the electric toy, while “Hasbro” and model number 65805 are stamped into the plastic on the back. [The product was manufactured in China.] The recall does not include Easy-Bake Ovens sold before May 2006. Toys “R” Us, Wal-Mart, Target, KB Toys and other retailers nationwide sold the toy from May 2006 through February 2007.

After 43 years and more than 100 million miniature cakes baked by the warmth of a single 100-watt light bulb, the Easy-Bake Oven finally got its due last November when it earned a spot in the National Toy Hall of Fame in Rochester, N.Y.

Interestingly, the ages of the burned children were in the 3-5 year old range. The oven is recommended for children age 8 and older.

It’s a good reminder that minimum age recommendations are made for a reason, no matter how bright we think our children are.

Articles:
Hasbro recalls 1 million Easy-Bake Ovens 2/7/2007

Bad Break for Easy-Bake 2/8/2007

Bad Break for Easy Bake Oven 2/27/07

Teacher sets bad example. Learns valuable lesson.

According to USA Today:

“A middle school teacher trying to buy pot was arrested after she sent text messages to state trooper instead of a dealer, police said.”

“The trooper was at dinner with his wife and parents celebrating a birthday when his phone started buzzing with messages about a marijuana purchase.”

I expected a quote warning others about how foolish she was. Perhaps a comment about how stupid this teacher was for having betrayed the trust of her colleagues, students and parents. Instead, this is what we got:

“She learned her lesson. Program your dealers into your phone.”

Cyber Bullying Statistics

How common is cyber bullying?

90% of middle school students have had their feelings hurt online.

75% have visited a Web site bashing another student.

40% have had their password(s) stolen and changed by a bully who then locked them out of their own account or sent communications posing as them.

Only 15% of parents polled knew what cyberbullying was.

SOURCE: wiredsafety.org

Best advice: The moment something happens (i.e. child receives threats or you discover a negative Web site about your child), report it immediately to your local Police Department.

Don’t wait. Don’t try to talk to the school principal. Chances are the principal will tread lightly and be wishy-washy about getting involved in something that happened off school property and outside of school hours.

You need to stop this bad behavior immediately. Having a Police Officer show up at the bully’s parent’s house is a good way to get immediate attention to the seriousness of the situation.

If the bad behavior persists, don’t be afraid to take the other family to court and get a restraining order filed against them.

YOUR CHILD SHOULD NOT HAVE TO GROW UP IN FEAR.

Children bullying each other online

An interesting article appeared in the Sunday Parade magazine about how kids use technology to hurt and humiliate others.

I see articles like this from time to time and I am constantly amazed by the new ways stupid, nasty children can think of to make other kids miserable:

• Sending anonymous, threatening instant messages and emails.
• Taking secret photos of the victim in the school locker room and posting the photos online.
• Posting nasty messages, lies, etc. on MySpace and other Web sites.
• Posing as the victim to sending fake emails to teachers to get the victim in trouble.
• Stealing a victim’s password to lock him/her out of an email or online account.
• Stealing a victim’s mobile phone to make phony calls, send fake text messages and try to get the victim in trouble.
• Creating ‘hot or not’ voting polls to rank kids as ugly, overweight, unpopular, etc.
• If the aggressor has access to the victim’s home computer, she/he can attempt to infect it with a virus or malware; or do other permanent damage that can affect data the victim’s family has stored on that family computer.

Cyberbullies use e-mail, instant messages (IMs), cell phones, text messages, photos, videos and social networking sites to humiliate and threaten others.

These stupid, idiot children have no concept of the long term damage they are doing.

What makes cyberbullying so easy—and tempting—is the mask of anonymity the Web provides, along with a potentially huge audience … There’s a lack of social norms when children use technology to communicate. Because you can be anonymous, there’s no fear of detection. Even if you identify yourself, you don’t see people’s reactions and realize you have gone too far.

Once something is posted online, it’s out there forever. It gets indexed by the search engines, saved by other people, cached somewhere like Google Cache, Archive.org, etc. and will never be completely wiped out.

Take the example of “the Star Wars Kid.” In private, he was goofing around and video taped himself jumping around with a light saber. His mistake was to return the video equipment to school with the tape still in. Other nasty kids took it, posted it online to humiliate him since he’s overweight and they were jerks. Once the video was in the Internet wilderness, others edited the video to add special effects. Now it’s been viewed by millions and ‘the star’ has had to put up with all this unwanted attention and humiliation.

The Internet is like the bathroom wall. Secrets and privacy don’t exist online.

Parents, watch carefully what your children are doing. Make it clear to them what is not acceptable behavior. Do not give them the tools to create mischief and make other kids miserable.

We do need to know what our kids can do with technology and hold them accountable when they use it unethically.

If you don’t, you will eventually be held accountable. Or worse, the victim may seek revenge to the extreme.

Toddler messes up Mac Powerbook with marker

I applaud the father of this youngster for having the patience to not punt his toddler into the next room. (See video below.)

That’s why I keep my important stuff high up and locked away from my kids. Same thing with paints, permanent markers, glue, DVDs, etc. That doesn’t stop them from putting holes in my walls or coloring every surface with crayons. But at least I can pick my battles.

If this ever happens to you, some possible solutions to try (carefully):

• Clean towel and warm water
• Mr. Clean Magic Eraser (Used often in my house)
• Rubbing alcohol / isopropyl or ethyl alcohol applied with a cotton ball
• Hairspray
• Nail polish remover
• Brake or carb cleaner

Start with the simplest/lowest risk solutions and work your way up from there. Always use small amounts, starting in a inconspicuous corner to see if there is any chemical reaction or staining. This list is just a suggestion. You assume responsibility for whether or not to use this information.

Related topics:
Removing permanent marker
Removing super glue

Hey, tooth fairy? What’s the going rate per tooth?

So my wife and I have started down the long, slippery slope of lying to our children: Santa Clause, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy.

My seven year olds have been losing their baby teeth at about a rate of one every month. Thankfully, they’re falling out naturally, not being knocked out.

My little guys are very excited about losing their teeth. They come wake me up early the next morning to show me their treasure. Surprisingly no one seems disturbed by the fact some mysterious creature sneaks around at night, breaks into our house, enters their dark bedroom and reaches under their pillow.

So how much are we supposed to slip under the pillow at night? Cheap daddy (that’s me) keeps suggesting a quarter. My wife started at a buck. Now she’s upped it to two bucks. (Grrr) She says some other mom she knows gives $20 per tooth. (Yikes!)

This is going to get expensive fast:

20 “baby” teeth
x 4 kids
x $2 per lie tooth
= $160 assuming there’s no need to adjust for inflation over time.

What are your thoughts on all this? Please answer my poll or post a comment.
Thanks.
Roland

Article: How gov’t decided lunch box lead levels

I certainly never suspected that there should be a concern with lead in plastic lunch boxes…

Associated Press reports How gov’t decided lunch box lead levels.

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