Standards Impact

Playing It Safe: ASTM’s Toy Safety Standard

• ASTM International • Season 2 • Episode 11

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Favorite childhood toys. Unexpected hazards. The future of the toy industry. Learn about ASTM’s premier toy safety standard (F963) and the people who build safety into the toys we love.

Join ASTM's content director Dave Walsh and his guests Joan Lawrence, senior vice president of Standards and Regulatory Affairs with the Toy Association, and Heather Bramble, vice president of Product Safety and Regulatory Compliance with Mattel, for a lively discussion about standards and toy safety.

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Carla:

Oh, favorite toy growing up? That's a tough one. I had so many. I would say it was probably Kerplunk.

Kevin:

My favorite toy as the youngest in the family was Hot Wheels. I loved Hot Wheels building the tracks and having 'em do the Loopty loops. That was my favorite thing.

Cecilia:

My favorite toy or toys growing up were called Littliest Pet Shop. They were little almost bobblehead toys or figurines of different animals. All of different colors and different variety. And my favorite part about them was you could get different little houses or shops for them to play in.

Tessa:

My favorite toys growing up were Beanie Babies, and I know there was a huge Beanie Baby craze back in the nineties I believe. But they were just amazing. They were so fun to play with. There was all different kinds. They had names you could personalize them and I still have them and it's amazing to see. Now I have a daughter who's almost two. She loves them.

Rich:

So growing up in the mid 1970s, I'd have to say that my favorite toy was probably my Steve Austin action figure. And this was uh, Steve Austin, a man barely alive. He was known as the $6 million man, bionic man. And he came with two little pieces of bionics in his arm and you could look through his bionic eye and it was awesome.

Mary:

I remember and recall one of my favorite toys is my mom made me a Cabbage Patch doll for Christmas and decorated it to look like myself. And that was a special gift that I had gotten from my mom. She made it for me so it was extra special,

Travis:

Hands down, all time. Favorite toy top toy in my book is Hot Wheels. It's been a dollar ever since I was a kid. I get it for my kids now. I get to pick out the cars that I like. I'm not relying on Santa or anyone else picking up for me. They hang right on the Christmas tree. They go on stocking, they're just the coolest.

Gavin:

Uh, see when I was about eight years old and the Star Wars prequels were coming out, I was obsessed with the ultra cheap telescoping lightsabers. The ones I was obsessed with were about five bucks each with different handles and colors. They were hollow plastic things but they were perfectly to scale for a kid. Light enough to twirl around like in the movies and so durable that I never broke a single one.

Dave:

That was a great list of favorite toys. But personally I'd have to say my favorite was the Atari 2600. I'm a Gen X right in the middle of that generation. And anyone who's around my age remembers that was the beginning of the video game era. Before that it was black and white televisions and after that we could all play asteroids and space invaders. So it was just a dream come true for me.

Welcome to Standards Impact ASTM's Official podcast. As the holidays approach, the year's hottest and most sought after toys are making the news as usual. However, the standards that underpin the toy industry and help make those toys safer don't always get as much attention yet they're vitally important. I'm your host Dave Walsh, Editor-in-Chief of Standardization News, and I'm joined today by two leading experts in the toy industry. Joan Lawrence, senior Vice President Standards and Regulatory Affairs with the Toy Association and Heather Bramble, vice President, product Safety and Regulatory Compliance with Mattel. Joan and Heather, thanks for being with us today. We really appreciate it.

Heather:

Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you so much.

Dave:

Well in the opening of this podcast, we just heard from numerous staff members at ASTM about their favorite toys as well as my own. So before we dive into this podcast, maybe you could each tell us what was your personal favorite toy growing up? We'll start with Joan.

Joan:

Well, I'm actually one of a large family. I have a lot of siblings and so most of our toys were shared toys. I think though the favorites become the ones that you're gifted first that become yours only. And so for me, that was this doll that had short hair, but you could press a button and make her hair along or magically turn a knob and her hair became short again. And so the hairstyling and fashion possibilities of that toy just had me intrigued.

Dave:

I think I remember that doll with the hair. Uh, for real. I have a sister

Heather:

So I totally remember that doll. And I think I cut all the hair off that doll pretty quickly and then there was like no hair to grow back. That's like a whole other story. Um, but I definitely loved my Barbies as a kid and it is like sort of a dream come true for me that I work at Mattel now and I have to say this last summer with the Barbie movie, it just brought back all those memories. I will say I was really a weird Barbie kind of girl in the sense that I would, again running theme here, cut the doll's hair and color on them and then I would like make my own clothes or cut up the clothes that I bought. So I don't know what that says about me, but I definitely was into like manipulating the toy that I was given into all these different configurations.

Dave:

So those are your favorite toys and we heard from a lot of people about their favorite toys. But now we should get into the subject of standards for toys and you are both longtime members of the committee on Consumer Products F 15, which is where ASTMs well-Known Toy Standard resides and that's F 9 63, 1 of the few standards that I think everyone knows just by the number in our building. Can you talk about your experience with the committee more generally and maybe share some of the history of F 15?

Heather:

Sure. I, I can start off here and, and maybe it, it helps a little bit to talk about just sort of my history on how I got here 'cause it sort of maps how I got involved with A STM for a long time. I was a practicing lawyer and I was in the financial services area and I knew nothing about toys or product safety. But then I ended up at a job at the Consumer Product Safety Commission working for one of the commissioners. And that's when I learned about consensus standards and of course A STM and really got a crash course on how this whole process works, especially the consumer products F 15. And I had the ability to start attending the meetings and really sort of dove into how important these standards are, especially when it comes to toys and how the mechanism of standards making works and and how each different party that comes to the table is so important.

At the time when I was learning about this, as I said, I was working for the government and the government has a very specific role in what they can and cannot do as part of the standards. And at that time I was an observer 'cause I was there on behalf of the commissioner and wasn't in a staff role by any means. So it was really there in terms to learn and it was a really eye-opening experience. Later I left the commission, I was a private attorney working for different companies when they engaged with the CPSC or even when they had issues around standards and different standards and many of those were toy companies. But then I went to Amazon and I was a lawyer for Amazon and that was really interesting because when I was there we were sort of doing an entire overhaul of how Amazon as a retailer approached having sellers sell toys on the platform. And actually that meant I went back to my roots, so to speak, with this A STM process and really focused in on the A STM toy standard itself and worked with a lot of the stakeholders at the time on the toy standard to ensure that Amazon was doing the right thing in terms of requiring their toy sellers to have the A-S-T-M-F 9 63 certification. And now I'm no longer a lawyer but a product safety compliance and regulatory person at Mattel. I think

Joan:

What we heard from Heather, how her varied career has led her to the work in the toy subcommittee and that's reflects a lot of the subcommittee because you know we have the F 15 main committee on consumer products and there are, I think it's close to a thousand members on that. And then there are nearly 300 members on the subcommittee on toy safety. And it's really a multi-stakeholder group as it's supposed to be. It includes industry, it includes governments and consumer representatives, it has medical and child development experts 'cause we're talking about children's products. We have engineers, we have material specialists, we have toy safety testing labs, we have academics, we have others. And my role, my involvement dates back to the late nineties. Um, so it's a long time <laugh>, but I think what what we hear is that it's so important that we have this multi-stakeholder group because everybody brings a different view, a different perspective, a different experience when it comes to toys and children's behavior and how children interact with their environments. All of those perspectives need to be heard and the subcommittee allows that to be done.

Dave:

Well that was a, uh, some good background in F 15 and the process and the stakeholders involved. But uh, as I kind of alluded to in the first question that F 9 63 or the standard consumer safety specification for toy safety may be ASTMs most well-known standard. It covers many of the, the various hazards presented by different kinds of toys. So uh, Joan we can start with you. Why do you think the standard is significant and what are some of the specific hazards it covers so that people get an idea of what this standard does?

Joan:

Well I think the toy standard is well recognized first off because lots of people can relate to toys. You know, we remember fondly playing with toys. We may have children that we care for and have to keep them safe while playing with toys. Lots of us have a relationship with toys, even indoor adulthood. So it's something that everybody can relate to. But also the toy standard, the A SM toy standard is well recognized around the world. It's the one of the world's premier toy safety standards and its requirements are comprehensive and it's sometimes emulated by other governments for other toy standards as well as for other product categories. For other children's products for example. And I think its credibility goes back to in large part the consensus process that multi-stakeholders are contributing but also the facts that the toy standard is risk-based and data-driven and really tries to respond to hazards that are identified in the real world, emerging issues that may crop up in a new product well ahead of other standards.

And so it kind of sets the standard for all those global standards. You asked some of the things that covers, it covers things you would think about that could be hazards to children and things you would never think about. It always amazes me sitting in a committee meeting that kinds of issues that come up and that we talk through that children do the darnedest things, don't they? But some of the requirements include things like small parts and sharp points and edges and material safety, things you would imagine should be in a toy standard. But also things like flammability and projectiles and ride on toys and stuffed toys and crib toys and squeeze toys, magnets used in toys, the sound level of toys. You know, there are standards to prevent entrapment of fingers and and toes and hair things most people wouldn't think about but kids put everything in their mouths and their fingers everywhere.

And so these are the kinds of things we talk through and make sure are incorporated in the toy standard. We talk about that F 9 63 has over a hundred different safety standards and tests. We say that all the time. And in there there are 50 different types of requirements plus more than 30 different types of tests to ensure that a toy is safe and then it can withstand the rigors of kids play. And under those categories there's multiple additional requirements based on the age of the child and things in the child's environment, those kinds of things. So it's, it's kind of staggering how many requirements there are and the depth that the experts have gone to to make sure that toys are safe.

Heather:

First of all, I agree with everything Joan said and I love the by the numbers that she gave because it is, it is staggering the types of requirements and the amounts of requirements and in the US it's not only a standard but the government agency that has jurisdiction over toys has adopted it and made it mandatory because if you are a retailer, a manufacturer, or even a parent when I was at the government and later and now what I like to say is, you know, in the US we know toys are safe because there is a consensus voluntary standard that has been made mandatory and everybody needs to meet that requirement.

Dave:

So we have F 9 63 and the bulk of the standard and it was, you know, written years ago, but uh, like all A STM standards, it needs to be revised every four years. And the most recent revision took place just recently. So we've already talked about the kinds of hazards and the things that F 9 63 covers, but what were some of the things that the revision addressed and can you let us know what you think future revisions may address as the field continues to evolve?

Joan:

Yeah, I'll talk about some of the things that the most recent edition included. We had existing requirements for a number of things and in for areas mainly we added requirements, we enhanced the existing requirements and those touched on things like acoustics, which is the sound level of toys on battery accessibility, on expanding materials on projectiles. And in all of these cases there were existing requirements but we looked at new products that are emerging and in some cases ways kids are interacting with products to enhance their existing requirements and you know, add new requirements under each of those categories.

Heather:

You mentioned sort of thinking about the future and maybe, maybe I'll take that since I know most of my toy makers are some of the greatest innovators around at Mattel and part of what we think about is what is, you know, what is the future of play? What does the future of toys look like? And I think the ideas that come to mind are new and more sustainable materials as well as utilizing technology, whether it's AI or connected to the internet, like the internet of things, types of products. And I know both of those areas are things that industry stakeholders and consumer advocates and the government are watching to see what types of new materials, recycled materials, recyclable materials are on the horizon and how they will be used in toys. 'cause obviously these are products for a vulnerable population for children and so we have to ensure that they are safe.

And then on the other side, like how will A STM handle a lot of these new types of technology? And I know there are sort of all different types of standards organizations and different groups including the government looking at artificial intelligence and how it plays out. But from a product safety perspective or any other perspective for that matter, like what will the requirements be and how will that be encapsulated going forward? I think we're all waiting to see that. And I know for a while now internet of things and interconnected and connected products has been something that different companies have tried to integrate into different products, whether it's toys or household appliances, all these things. And that's also something that the different standards groups have been looking at. What kind of requirements should you put into, right? And so for the toy standard, it's really centered on performance requirements and how do you interpret these new technologies into something that you can test and have a repeatable and reliable test protocol that is a performance standard that will continue to ensure that the product is safe. So I think these are all things that we're watching as an industry.

Joan:

And I would add additionally the, the A STM subcommittee on Toy safety has a standing working group. It's a technical working group whose responsibility is emerging hazards and they're supposed to consider and identify potential new safety issues that may occur in toys, whether it's related to new designs or new features and new materials, new technologies, some of the things that have their mentioned or even new ways kids are interacting with products and their world. And so that technical working group is always looking at what's out there and what's getting invented.

Heather:

And I wanna just pick up on one thing that Joan said, 'cause I think it is so important, especially in our current like digital age. I don't, I think that's what they call it now with TikTok and all this Facebook and all these, these reels and YouTube things. I only know because my own kids are constantly on them and I can't stand it. But she made a comment that, and the standing working group is critically important for this reason, is that you could have a toy that's been around forever, but then a TikTok goes viral on some new way to use that toy that no one has ever thought of. And all of a sudden you have millions of people doing it and maybe it's not safe. I feel like that's the world we live in today because unlike, you know, previously you couldn't infiltrate basically the global toy market with one tweet or one, you know, TikTok video or one Facebook reel. But now you can. And I think that's why it's so important for the standard to be responsive to what's happening in the world today. And you know, as I know at our company, we're constantly monitoring all the social media, all companies are to just in like, to make sure like what is going on with our product, right? And we've got influencers and things like that. And so I think the fact that we have like a standing emerging hazards group with the toy standard is really important.

Dave:

That's really interesting. I'm not sure a, a many people in our audience would've thought of that, that you know, you can have a toy that's 40 years old and you think it's perfectly safe and then a TikTok video just throws everything upside down. So in the discussion just now, you, you both talked about safety first and foremost, that's really one of the primary purposes of standards, but standards can also help industries in other ways and the toy industry is no exception. So what are some of the other positive effects of standards on the toy industry? I mean is it efficiency, productivity, uh, what kind of of effects in addition to safety do you see?

Heather:

I mean, I'll say for someone who's had a couple of different stakeholder roles in the industry, one of the things that we always go back to is that the standards create this minimum floor for everyone to operate on. And so big companies and small companies, global companies, local companies all want to have a standard, right? Because you wanna know what the rules are to the game. And you know, smaller companies a lot harder to have an entire research design and development group that's analyzing data from an industry point of view, right? If you're a small manufacturer. Whereas that the A STM can do that, they can look at anonymized data, they work with the government and we know what the emerging hazards are. And for big companies you want everybody on the same playing field. But knowing that everybody's gonna be required to have the same types of testing and the same type of even the testing protocol and that we're all looking at the same types of hazards from a safety perspective really makes the ability to operate in the industry a lot easier. And then it leads to the things that you mentioned like having better standardized internal procedures and protocols when everybody's working off of the same playbook, literally it makes things a lot easier.

Joan:

I would add that when you're talking about consumer products and specifically consumer product safety standards, it has an all important impact on all of the stakeholders and of course consumers. If we're talking about manufacturers and you think about why a toy company or an inventor goes into that line of work, it's for the love of the job, they wanna create the next new thing, they want something fun for kids and families. Protecting your consumer is a huge part of that. It has to be. So for manufacturers of toys, the intel they can bring to a standards discussion. They have experience on how products are made, on how materials work and how they're, what they're capable of, what kids are into these days and how they play. So that puts a manufacturer in a place of having an important voice in standards development as well. And for products sold in the US Heather mentioned it's mandatory you have to comply with the A STM toy standard if you're gonna sell your products in the US and you have to have been tested and certified compliant with the standard. So it makes sense for toy companies to want to be part of that standards conversation all along to know what standards may be coming down the pike so that they can comply.

Dave:

Well I think I'll go back to Heather with this one because we were talking about emerging technologies and things that may impact the toy market in the future, you know, and as our introduction pointed out, we're in the midst of the holiday season right now that the news cycle full of some of the most high tech toys we've ever seen. You mentioned AI and IOT specifically, how do you see standards applying to those areas? What types of standards would be needed and and how would they address some of the issues that are emerging with those technologies?

Heather:

Yeah, I mean I think it's something that, that we're looking at every day to see how it's gonna be affected. So it's a big discussion. How does AI and or IOT affect or not affect like the actual product safety of it, right? And so there's been lots of scenarios. I know when I was at the CPSC and this was way back like, you know, over 10 years ago internet of things was coming out as as a big thing. And one of the examples people would use, it's not a toy example, but it's, it, it sort of shows the, the issue is, okay, so what if you have like a smart oven and somebody like hacks the oven and turns the oven on when nobody's there and it's a gas oven and they don't like the pilot. And so the big debate would be is that a product safety hazard when there's a bug in the software and it does something to the product, the physical product that be makes the product hurt a consumer or is that, you know, more of a software problem and not a product safety problem where you have to have internet security and what does that look like and what is the testing required for the internet security?

And is that its own specific standard to ensure the safety of internet security or software security or internet of things security, right? And you could add to that now ai, right? 'cause that's the biggest one right now. Does there need to be their own specific standards? Because within the toy safety standard itself, it may reference other standards, right? Like maybe a battery standard or an electrical standard or something like that. And so there is this cross-referencing that happens among standards where not everything has to be all inclusive in one standard itself. In addition to technology. There's also materials which I mentioned before and I know right now like A STM is doing A-P-F-A-S review, right? And so to me that's another one like, that's like right now understanding the context of PFAS, how it affects products, how it works, you know, especially with children's products, A STM is like at the forefront of that. Like they're one of the first groups that decided they were gonna do something like that. And so I see it all very similar. Like we have to keep track of all these new and emerging technologies and materials and then the sort of second step is to figure out how it may or may not fit into any particular standard or if it needs its own standard that then could be referenced later on.

Joan:

Yeah, and I, I think that Heather is right about all of that. There are activities going on about ai. There's already an A STM standard on connected products and those are standards that the toy standard can refer to, you know, just because it's not written in the toy standard, it doesn't mean it doesn't necessarily apply. We have lots of reference documents and references to other standards that should be incorporated. So those are two examples of where it's been done that way, where an emerging technology finds its way into applications that are non toy first then make their way to toys, they become feasible and affordable to incorporate in a toy for example. And you know, then it follows that they get incorporated in toys and the standards follow from there as well. There are also some examples where it's worked the other way where a technology has been incorporated in lots of products including toys, but toys was the first to create a safety standard for it.

And you know, some of the examples of that are the fact that everything in our world today runs on batteries, right? And there is this continuing problem with children's access to batteries. Every remote control for a TV for example, has a battery compartment. And I think everybody has theirs taped closed because the, you know, little hook has broken. And the problem is that children are, are accessing batteries from lots of products for decades. However, the toy standard has had requirements, but you had to have a locking mechanism on the battery compartment and other product categories didn't have such a standard. So in that regard, the toy standard led the way in terms of creating a safety requirement that was kid focused and understood how kids interact with products. And it was other products categories that followed suit later on.

Dave:

So we've been talking about emerging technologies like AI and the internet of things, but Joan, you kind of just touched on batteries and something that may not sound like an emerging technology, but something that may have to be addressed further in the future. So my question was going to be where do you see the future of the toy industry going in the next 20 or 30 years? What types of standards will need to be developed? Maybe it's something that that sounds mundane but is very important, like batteries, where do you see the future in the next 20 or 30 years?

Joan:

The two questions I get most often are, what's gonna be the next new hot toy and do you just play with toys all day? And unfortunately the answer to the second one is no. And the answer to the first one is, boy, if anyone new it, it really is anyone's guess. I mean, how to predict what the next new innovation would be if I knew the answer to that writing standards would be really easy. But, uh, what I can say is that the way the A STM toy standard is designed is it's really intended to be flexible and adaptable regardless of what gets invented. So it's written in a way that's mostly hazard specific as opposed to product specific as opposed to being specific to a type of category of toy. So what does that mean? If, if you're a toy inventor and you open the standard, you're not gonna look up a list of requirements for dolls or a toy truck or a block or the next new hot thing that I wanna invent tomorrow.

You're not gonna find it categorized that way. Instead it's the approach that is taken in the toy standard is it identifies hazards, it takes known features that may present a hazard in a child's product and addresses those in order to mitigate them and eliminate those hazards that might be incorporated in future designs regardless of what the type of toy is that gets invented. And in that approach that started going back decades to the beginning of the A STM standard allows the standard to be nimble and flexible. And even as toys are continually invented, the standards remain relevant to those new products.

Heather:

I would say that that is exactly on point and the part that sometimes I think about is how does this all translate when we start to think about the metasphere, all this digital stuff that we're talking about, right? Because then you don't actually have the product anymore and what is the hazard that you're trying to protect against? And so I think about like these real life digital gaming, the VR headsets, but not like the headset itself. Like what are doing when you're in the world, the vr, the virtual reality world. And in 20 years, I mean, I just see, you know, I've got two teenagers, they literally don't look up from their phone ever. And so I'm like, is, you know, in 10 years is it just gonna, you're just gonna have a chip in your head and that's gonna be the phone. Like I, I don't know, like what's coming, right? I think that's part of what your question is. And I think when we innovate the physical products, whatever it might be, the materials or the approaches, I think there, the, the way that we deal with that in A STM will is flexible and will be able to account for innovation, just has, just as it has done and it is the right framework.

Dave:

This has been a great discussion. We've talked about emerging technologies, safety issues, future revisions, future standards, but we are coming to the end of our time. So with this last question, I just wanted to ask each of you a question that we typically use at the end of our podcast. What would you say to a student or early career professional considering joining A STM and possibly becoming part of F 15? You've both talked about your career journeys and how you got into the world of standards. So what would you say to that person?

Heather:

Well, I, I would say, and I will say, I do say all the time, <laugh>, that, um, one of the best ways to sort of learn about the industry and the requirements and how standards work is to join a committee, like join the consumer products committee. And if you're gonna be in the toy business, pick the toy standard and go to the meetings and really experience it. We've had a number of interns at the company that I've encouraged to get involved because it really does give a great perspective and a great experience, but also it helps the standards, right? Because new people and young people, like I said, all this new technology, they know all about it, right? And when they come and bring a diverse viewpoint, it's really helpful for everybody.

Joan:

I would agree. And I would say that there are standards for more things than you can imagine. There's product types, there's things we all have in our homes. There's high and low tech, there's services, there's materials, all kinds of things. And by the way, we're all consumers. And so something has to apply. You have to have some product in your home, I'm, I'm assuming, and even if you're an inventor or an engineer or a teacher or psychologist or just a consumer, you have a perspective worth bringing to these conversations. You have experience with a product and have intel that can make a product better, make a product safer. So it impacts all of us. And so everybody has a role.

Dave:

Well, Heather and Joan, thanks again for being with us today. We really appreciate your time and I think this was a really interesting discussion. So thank you very much.

Joan:

Thanks so much for having us.

Heather:

Thanks so much and have fun. Going to buy your toys this holiday season, <laugh>.

Dave:

If you wanna learn more about any of the standards discussed in this episode, visit.org for all the latest. And if you enjoyed the show, remember to like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. I'm Dave Walsh and this has been Standards Impact presented by A STM International.