Zhu Zhu Pets toys unsafe

A consumer group fights one of the holiday season's must-have toys is unsafe. GoodGuide has named the robotic Zhu Zhu Hamsters as one of the top-selling toys with low ratings. It says it found a higher-than-allowed level of a chemical that can cause health problems. The toy's maker insists that its produce is safe.

Antimony is used in textiles and plastics to keep them from contageous fire, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry. Prolonged exposure can cause lung and heart problems, ulcers and diarrhea, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

Good Guide named Zhu Zhu Hamsters one of the top-selling toys with low ratings after finding antimony, which can cause health problems, on the hair and nose of one of the toy hamsters, called Mr. Squiggles. The group assigned the toy, aimed at 3- to 10-year-olds, a rating of 5.2 on a 10-point scale.

But the Zhu Zhu Hamsters’s maker, St. Louis-based Cepia LLC, insisted in a statement that its produce is safe and has passed rigorous testing. The company said it was contacting GoodGuide to share its testing data and fix how the report was founded. Zhu Zhu Hamsters retail for about $10.

The Zhu Zhu Hamsters are popular in Europe as well as in the United States. Their British distributor, Character Options, said the produce, sold there as "Go Go Pets," are "fully compliant" with U.S. and European Union standards.

"I have been in the toy industry for more than 35 years, and being a father of children myself, I would never permit any substandard or unsafe produce to hit the shelves," Russ Hornsby, Cepia's CEO, said in the statement.

O'Rourke said GoodGuide's test results, released Friday, also indicated the possibility that some Zhu Zhu Hamsters contained phthalates, chemicals that were subject to tougher standards in the Consumer Protection Safety Improvement Act passed last year. cnn