I am not sure how many parents are still purchasing ‘Thomas The Train’ products, but today brings yet another recall of more than 200,000 pieces.

Add this number to the previous recall and you have approximately 1.7 million toys in total.

Here is the release:

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with the firm named below, today announced a voluntary recall of the following consumer product. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed.

CPSC states that surface paints on the toys can contain excessive levels of lead, violating the federal lead paint standard. No injuries have been reported.

The recall involves five toys from the Thomas and Friends Wooden Railway product line: the all-black cargo car, toad vehicle, olive green sodor cargo box and all-green maple tree top and signal base accessories. The front of the packaging has the logo “Thomas & Friends Wooden Railway” in the upper left-hand corner. A tracking code may be located on the bottom of some of the products. Toys marked with codes containing “WJ” and “AZ” are not included in the recall.

Recalled Product Name & Tracking Codes

Sold at: Toy stores and various retailers nationwide from March 2003 through September 2007 for between $10 and $40.

Remedy: Consumers should take the recalled toys away from young children immediately and contact RC2 Corp. for a replacement toy.

Consumer Contact: For additional information, contact RC2 toll-free at (866) 725-4407 between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. CT Monday through Friday or visit the firm’s Web site at http://recalls.rc2.com

Earlier this month 1.5 million ‘Thomas The Train’ pieces were recalled due to lead exposure hazard.

One would think that once such a massive recall is issued, stores would pull all of the product off of the shelves so that no child can be further harmed by the lead in the paint. This, I guess, is not true.

MANY stores in the U.S. still have Thomas products, that have been recalled, on their shelves and some of the product that was not included in the recall may not be safe either.

A spot check of more than 100 retailers by state investigators showed that the toys still were on sale in a handful of stores and that numerous other stores had failed to post recall notices, the Illinois attorney general’s office announced Wednesday.

Further, the investigators turned up packages of the toys that at first glance appeared not to be included in the recall but on closer examination were found to have a second wooden toy train piece inside that is part of the recall. Company officials later told state authorities that some toys subject to recall may be packaged with toys not covered by the recall.

As a result, the attorney general’s office said the scope of the wooden train recall could be much larger than originally thought and that its investigators likely will conduct another statewide sweep to check whether those train sets are being pulled from store shelves.

The attorney general’s office, prompted by a Tribune report Sunday of lead paint being found on a metal Take Along Thomas railway toy, also obtained about 20 samples and plans to have them tested. The story detailed how a Kansas City public health nurse complained to the Consumer Product Safety Commission last year after a check at the home of a child who had an elevated level of lead poisoning showed the train car was covered with paint containing lead. The nurse said she had never been contacted by the safety commission.

Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan on Wednesday expressed her frustration over what her investigation has discovered and lashed out at the safety commission.

“What we have found is that it is a disaster,” Madigan said. “The entire process designed to protect our children from unsafe products is a disaster. The Consumer Product Safety Commission is understaffed and underfunded and uninterested. They don’t do any testing. As a parent, what are we supposed to do, become amateur scientists?”

On June 13, the CPSC announced the recall of the Thomas & Friends wooden railway toys. None of the company’s metal trains were included.

But when state investigators began purchasing packages of the Red James Engine & Red James’ #5 Coal Tender that listed the toys as metal, they found that the coal tender was made of wood and subject to the recall.

Investigators purchased about 20 of the toys, and they will be sent to an environmental testing laboratory. Results are expected by next week, Madigan’s office said.

“The fact that these mixed products would be overlooked is a problem,” said Cara Smith, Madigan’s deputy chief of staff for policy and communication. “I’m a lawyer and I can’t figure this out. We may have a much larger recall problem than anyone thought in Illinois and across the nation.”

Smith said information from the company indicates that the popular train toys in various combinations have been manufactured at three factories in China. Because of the confusion over the sets that contain both wooden and metal toys, she believes the state’s survey may have missed recalled toys on the shelves, and that the investigators likely will be sent back to stores that reported they had none of the recalled toys.

“We only asked about the wooden sets, not any mixed sets,” she said.

The investigators visited 138 retail outlets throughout the state and found 55 stores that carried the Thomas & Friends railway toys. Just under half of the stores, 24, had pulled the toy and posted the notice of the recall, Smith said.

Eight stores — three Target outlets, two Kohl’s, a Wal-Mart, a Kmart and the Chicago Children’s Museum gift shop — had failed to take the recalled items from the shelves or post the recall notices, she said. Three Toys “R” Us stores had posted the notice but left the recalled toys on the shelves.

Twenty other stores had removed the toys from their shelves but did not post the notice of the recall, Smith said.

The recall is one of the largest in recent years for toys containing lead, a toxic metal linked to brain damage in children. The company has said it discovered the problem but has declined do discuss how, when or where the discovery was made.

China, where the toy trains were made, is the source of more than eight out of 10 toy recalls since 2004 and the source of 72 percent of all recalls since 2004 for children’s products, including toys, according to a Tribune analysis of CPSC recall data.

Just To be safe, it may be a good idea to put away ALL of your child’s Thomas Trains until it is determined which are really safe and which ones are not.

SOURCE

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with the firm named below, today announced a voluntary recall of the following consumer product. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed.

Name of Products: Various Thomas & Friends™ Wooden Railway Toys

Units: About 1.5 million

Importer/Distributor: RC2 Corp., of Oak Brook, Ill.

Hazard: Surface paints on the recalled products contain lead. Lead is toxic if ingested by young children and can cause adverse health effects.

Incidents/Injuries: None.

Description: The recall involves wooden vehicles, buildings and other train set components for young children listed in the chart below. The front of the packaging has the logo “Thomas & Friends Wooden Railway” on the upper left-hand corner. A manufacturing code may be located on the bottom of the product or inside the battery cover. Toys marked with codes containing “WJ” or “AZ” are not included in this recall.

Sold at: Toy stores and various retailers nationwide from January 2005 through June 2007 for between $10 and $70.

Manufactured in: China

Remedy: Consumers should take the recalled toys away from young children immediately and contact RC2 Corp. for a replacement toy.

Consumer Contact: For additional information, contact RC2 Corp. toll-free at (866) 725-4407 between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. CT Monday through Thursday and between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. CT Friday, or visit the firm’s Web site at recalls.rc2.com