(no subject)

Pony! (er, ok, and his forequarters are *tiny* but what can you do...)

some things just make me want to cry

In an attempt to keep kids from getting poisoned by mass-produced chinese-manufacture toys, the government is effectively making it impossible for children to have non-mass-produced toys. As of February, all products intended for children under 12 that are sold in the US must now have extensive (read: expensive) lab testing to prove that they are made of safe materials. Which is fine if you've got a batch of several thousand or several million that you only have to test once. However, the problems they are reacting to were in Chinese manufacture toys, and the people who won't be able to afford the requirements are the individual doll-makers, and people who sell wooden cars or little walking ducks on sticks at craft fairs, and about whose products there have been no complaints. My teddy bear, who has propped my shoulder up when I sleep for most of the last twenty-six years, is one-of-a-kind. And I can personally guarantee she's been perfectly safe the entire time.

And according to the article in the Post from over the weekend, a lot of the large companies are having their testing done in China, which rather seems to miss the point...

Please write to your congresspeople. Seriously. This is not ok.