On Tuesday, I was checking my email via my google account. A title of an email caught my attention: Dangerous Recalls You Need to Know About. It was a weekly newsletter I signed up via parenting.com.

I opened the email; the first paragraph went like this:

You’ve probably heard about the 82,000 cribs that were just pulled from the shelves, and now the CPSC is proposing new rules that will ban drop-side cribs altogether. Read up on this important recall, and browse our recall archive to make sure your house is a safe zone for your kids.

82000 cribs were recalled?!

DD was sleeping in a crib. Maybe hers was one of them!

I immediately opened a link attached to this email, and went through all the listed recalls in baby cribs, car seats, strollers, food, medicine, toys, baby clothing, appliances and more.

One title caught my attention: Infant Death Prompts Recall of Simplicity Cribs, published on April 30, 2010.

Simplicity cribs?! The name sounded familiar.

I immediately went to check the manufacturer and product name of DD’s crib.  

Yes! Simplicity for Children was exactly the company which manufactured DD’s crib! And DD’s crib, Ellis Deluxe 4-in-1 Convertible Sleep System with the model number 8676C, fell into the recall list.

I was astonished to find out this recall. I registered right after I bought the crib in Feb, 2008. But I NEVER receive any feedback from the crib manufacturer, Simplicity Inc, concerning any recall information about their product.

I went to the official website of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to find out more details about this recall.

According to CPSC, all Simplicity full-size cribs with tubular metal mattress-support frames were recalled on April 29, 2010. This recall includes fixed-side and drop-side cribs. These cribs pose a risk of serious injury or death due to entrapment, strangulation, suffocation and fall hazards to infants and toddlers.

The crib’s tubular metal mattress-support frame can bend or detach and cause part of the mattress to collapse, creating a space into which an infant or toddler can roll and become wedged, entrapped or fall out of the crib.

CPSC has received a report of a one-year-old child from North Attleboro, Mass. who suffocated when he became entrapped between the crib mattress and the crib frame in April 2008.

CPSC is aware of 13 additional incidents involving the recalled cribs collapsing due to the metal mattress- support frame bending or detaching, including one child entrapment that did not result in injury, and one child who suffered minor cuts to his head when his mattress collapsed and he fell out of the crib.

This recall involves ALL Simplicity cribs with tubular metal mattress-support frames regardless of model number.

By searching on the Internet, I further found out Simplicity products, including drop-side cribs, portable cribs, play yards and bassinets, were recalled several times during the past three years.

“Brand for brand, Simplicity cribs are probably the deadliest cribs on the market…They’re certainly the most-recalled”, said Greg Allen, publisher of daddytypes.com, a web blog for new dads.

According to Greg Allen’s post on daddytypes.com (Simplicity/SFCA Out Of Business, Into Trouble), Simplicity Inc and its successor, SFCA Inc. were quite reluctant to take the responsibility for its faulty products and to cooperate with the recall.

In August 2008, CPSC had to take the extraordinary measure of ordering several hundred thousand Simplicity convertible bassinet/co-sleepers off the market and issuing its own warning after two reports of strangulation deaths.

The CPSC was compelled to take this unusual step because Simplicity, then operating under a new corporate shell, SFCA, Inc., had refused to cooperate with the recall, claiming the “new” company had no responsibility for products the “old” company had sold.

Ironically, even as SFCA claimed to be an entirely new, unrelated company, it was being run by exactly the same people, and SFCA went to market with the products Simplicity had (read more details in Simplicity/SFCA Out Of Business, Into Trouble at daddytypes.com).

This is completely unacceptable!! How can a company do business and make profits without any consideration for its customers? And I don’t believe, by just claiming being out of business, they can simply step away from the disaster they have created and wash their hands!!

The owners and managers of Simplicity Inc and its successor should be held personal responsible for death and injuries caused by their faulty products, and their failure to cooperate with the recall. 

I certainly hope the Justice Department will get involved for an investigation!

P.S. After finishing this article, I put the keyword “simplicity cribs” into Google. About 228,000 results came up. I was shocked to find there were still advertisements online on selling Simplicity cribs and other Simplicity products.

Parents, for the sake of your child’s safety, please stop buying the “deadly” Simplicity products.

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Mommy’s saving tips: diapers
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Looking for a car seat

Tags: Simplicity crib recall | Baby's Growth, From Lina, Third Year | Lina | July 16, 2010 7:10 pm | Comments (8)