Thread regarding Mattel Inc. layoffs

Is the product not called the Rock n Play SLEEPerrrrrrrttt!!!!?????

Not enough effort to inform. Plenty of effort in insular thinking.

Go ask the VP Quality for FP who coincidentally left shortly before all this unfolded to go to Lovevery before this was all announced what his thoughts are.

@jfmp+1bgTwwou I posted the second comment and I can assure you, I work for neither Mattel's legal or PR departments. So you're wrong, clearly.

All these posts defending FP and throwing the SIDS responsibility on the parents are clearly coming directly from Mattel's legal and PR departments, deflecting blame and trying to garner sympathy for a poor big company profiting from score of children's deaths. There is no excuse for them not issuing a recall after the first death. What were they thinking? What were they waiting for? 20+ dead babies wasn't enough? This is pure cringe and shows Mattel's true, desperate, profiteering colors. Horrible. Inexcusable.

As a new parent, and prior to, SIDs for a long time was this mystery thing. It seems only recently it was simple stuff like don’t have any plush or blankets or padding around the bed that the baby could accidentally roll onto and suffocate. I know soooooo many parents that still insist on leaving a blanket in the crib. Similar with this rock and play type items, in my baby training class at the hospital they specifically tell you don’t leave GIR baby sleeping unattended except for a flat open area. I know a lot of parents who are not diligent about this. As much as FP needs to own up to safety, this to me, is also a basic parental safety thing about how and where your babies sleep. Flat open areas! Not rockers not swing sweats, etc. Truthfully, the only way to avoid these things is not solved necessarily by better safety precautions, but stop making these types of items. No amount of safety testing would have changed this unless you designed it in a way no one would let a baby sleep in it. Honestly it’s an item that people naturally want to use in the wrong way.

“ Your job is to protect children from any harm your product may cause through intended or unintended use.”

Is this no longer the parents job? Anything made for infants and NB could be dangerous.

I had 4 kids use FP the rock n play and they turned out fine. Out of all that was sold you have to wonder how many of these unfortunate deaths were truly the companies fault or absent minded parents not paying attention to their children. That being said FP is not what the old girl once was. The quality and innovation are out the window and I'm not sure if Kathleen Alfano is still there (I'm in cali now) but she was a stickler for safety. We as a company are letting so many thing fall through the cracks. From being leaders in innovation, losing touch with our core market, and not being able to land the mega licenses that made us a juggernaut in the industry is truly sad. I'm skeptical about the recycled barbies and the increased cost that will come with these new toys and I think our marketing has greatly diminished over the years. We just don't have that kid dying to get the latest and greatest toy from mattel. We just have kids dying due to our products,

CEO Bob Eckert stepped up and OWNED the lead paint SNAFU in 2008, turning it around and making Mattel the industry leader in product safety. That's inspiring leadership: https://www.cnbc.com/id/20085552

Ynon is outclassed, mumbling the obvious through a House Oversight committee grilling. Cringey and pathetic: https://news.yahoo.com/house-oversight-committee-grills-mattel-155748414.html

What a difference a CEO makes.

@izn+1bgTwwou If it's an issue of communication, I can't imagine a more effective and proactive form of communication than literally putting "Risk of Injury and Death" type warning labels directly on the product.

Not deadly. But when the data kept coming in, and more parents were buying, we did not invest in precautionary communications to a level a company of FP’s reputation and promise should have motivated.

It just doesn’t synch. It was over a very long time, yet they stayed the course. One death should have triggered a different communications plan, but the thought was, it would torpedo the product. That’s a selfish thought. My opinion.

I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand I completely agree that all efforts should be taken in order that no harm is cause through intended or unintended use.

That being said, and I don't mean to minimize the tragedy here, but it was 50 deaths compared with 5,000,000 units sold. Then consider how many individual use cases, maybe the average Rock N' Play is used nightly for 6 months.

So you're talking, conservatively, upwards of a billion or more times a baby slept in a Rock N Play and 50 of those times resulted in a death.
That's a practically immeasurable 0.000005% of cases.

Does that mean the product is unsafe? That's really subjective, but keep in mind, no product is 100% safe. People have been ki---d by a plastic straw. And the truth is, improper use exacerbates the risk, so if a manufacturer provides a safety harness and slaps a bunch of big warning labels on it and make it very clear that the product is unsafe to use without that safety harness, and you, as the caregiver of the child choose to ignore all that, well then I feel like at least some of the responsibility must be put on the adult.

It's all a very sad subject, but personally I feel like FP did not produce an especially deadly product here.

Inexcusable.