Consumer Protection WA’s warning over Halloween toys
A ‘test’ of Halloween products has produced worrying results as WA revealed that only three of the 49 products they reviewed met safety requirements.
Business minister Tony Buti and Consumer Protection Commissioner Trish Blake spoke out on Saturday about the dangerous problem of button batteries, revealing that three children across the country have died from swallowing them in recent years, leading to changes to the regulations in 2022.
As Halloween approaches, button batteries warn.Credit: Consumer Protection WA
But ahead of Halloween, Consumer Protection decided to look at a randomly selected number of products sold on the six major online shopping platforms for children and found the majority were not of the desired quality.
Almost 80 percent of items inspected failed to meet safety standards, including unsecured battery compartments that made button batteries easily accessible, posing a serious risk to young children.
This security bug was detected on a number of product types, including costume accessories, skeleton candlesticks, spider candles, pumpkin tote bags, and flashing finger rings.
In one case, button batteries had been removed from the Halloween light during shipping and were found loose in packaging upon delivery.
Nearly all products were missing mandatory warning labels alerting consumers to the presence of button batteries, which could be life-threatening if swallowed.
“Halloween becomes a very important calendar event every year for retailers and also people, so the department decided to do some testing to see the safety of Halloween products, especially button batteries,” Buti said.
“So they purchased 49 button batteries from Sits’ online platforms and what they found was quite alarming; only three of the 49 products met the safety requirements that have become mandatory since 2022, namely safety and information standards, only three of the 49 products purchased met these standards.”
