Toys 'R Us to stop selling drop side cribs

Toys 'R' Us has stopped ordering drop-side cribs because of safety concerns, the company's Chairman and Chief Executive Jerry Storch last week told the Wall Street Journal. The decision comes as new safety standards for cribs are being considered by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

A record number of cribs have been recalled over the past few years and five infant deaths have been associated with faulty cribs. Drop-side models figured in many of the recalls in which missing or loose hardware caused the drop-side to separate from the crib, creating a gap in which a baby can become trapped or strangle. "There are enough concerns raised about drop-side cribs that we're moving forward and we're going to phase them out," Storch said in the Wall Street Journal interview.

To help parents identify recalled cribs, the CPSC has set up a crib information center on its Web site that lists recalls made over the past two years plus other safety information.

As we've written before, although cribs are regulated by the CPSC, there are no federally mandated crib durability test requirements. In a meeting at the CPSC yesterday, crib makers and consumer safety advocates, including Don Mays, senior director of product safety for Consumer Reports, began discussions on how to improve the safety of cribs. 

Read the rest of this post on our Safety blog. And see our full cribs report.

Comments

[Alene]

And how are parents supposed to get the baby in and out of the crib?

Fix the hardware and design problems. Don't make the cribs impossible to use!