Chuck E. Cheese's Recalls Light-Up Rings And Eyeglasses
Batteries inside light-up glasses like these pose a risk if swallowed by kids. CPSC hide caption
As soon as I pulled up the picture of these goofy light-up spectacles on my screen, a colleague with a young kid stopped and said, "Hey, I think we have some of those. What's up?"
Well, what's up is 120,000 pairs of the glasses and 1.1 million light-up rings from Chuck E. Cheese's restaurants are a potential health hazard.
If a kid smashes them or pulls the plastic housing apart, the fragments can do some damage. But the bigger danger is from the small batteries inside, which can be hazardous inside the body.
The Consumer Products Safety Commission says two kids have had problems with batteries from the light-up rings. In one case, a child swallowed a battery. In the other, the kid stuck a battery up his nose. No reports of trouble with the glasses, the CPSC says.
For more details on the recall, you can see this round-up from the CPSC. Chuck E. Cheese's also has more info here, including instructions on how to get a refund.
Even if the toys look OK, and despite the fact they have "passed applicable consumer product safety standards," Chuck E. Cheese's says kids shouldn't play with them anymore.
Tiny batteries are an increasingly common hazard for children. Thin button batteries can cause serious burns. A recently published analysis of more than 8,600 calls to a national hotline since 1990 found that 94 percent of ingestion incidents reported involved button batteries.
Here's an example of the recalled ring. They come in a bunch of colors: blue, green, purple, yellow, and pink. CPSC hide caption