The Unsuitablog

A few days ago I was watching the TV trying to see which companies were plying their seasonal wares to small children. It was the usual plastic crap which I don’t need to explain in detail, but one thing caught my eye: the Playmobile Recycling Truck, with an awful voice over saying, “Do your bit for the environment” to which I mentally appended, “by purchasing this chunk of unrecycled plastic.” Browsing this morning for similar products — and to give Playmobile their due, they don’t actually say anything more on their web site except that its a Recycling Truck toy — and I inevitably came across the Fisher Price range of toys.

Fisher Price are big, and getting bigger. Part of the behemoth toy corporation, Mattel since 1993, they are now worth over $2 billion, over a third of Mattel’s earnings. Not surprisingly they have a huge range of products, but two of them struck me as being particularly interesting: the Rainforest Range and the Precious Planet range. In the UK, these are given top billing on the “Baby Gear” page, as you can see here.

It’s a bit difficult to get too stroppy about the Rainforest range, even though they say in their Infant section:

Bring the natural beauty of a rainforest to your baby’s nursery … with lush greenery, playful animal friends, serene backgrounds, even calming motion and sounds. The Fisher-Price Rainforest toys and accessories line: designed to soothe and entertain your very special baby in very special ways.

They don’t make any claims about preservation, and it’s not as though rainforest means anything special when it comes to toys except monkeys and trees.

On the other hand, Precious Planet is altogether more pointed: if you saw a range of toys called “Precious Planet”, what would you think? Three cute animals smiling at the shopper, with a bird appearing to walk across a blue and green globe, partially masked by the bubbly blue writing. You can’t honestly say that Fisher Price are not trying to make some Eco-point here, can you?

So I called the UK office up, ready to ask questions about the chemicals in the toys, where they are made and whether they contained any renewable or recycled materials. What I didn’t expect was what I was told at 4′ 44″…

Fisher Price UK Recording – Precious Planet

Sorry about the bad quality, but you can clearly hear the words: “but it’s not environmentally friendly”

So why the hell is it called Precious Planet?! As I said in the call, there is no information, just the heavily suggestive range name along with an equally suggestive graphic: people are going to believe the products are environmentally friendly, when they may just be the least environmentally and socially (Mattel have a terrible record on sweatshop labour) ethical products you can buy for your child.

Actually, there is a link, which has grabbed Fisher Price by the balls, and isn’t going to let go. At the bottom of the page is the logo of the Wildlife Conservation Society. It only appears at the bottom of the Precious Planet pages for both Baby and Infant, so they are clearly trying to greenwash the public about their environmental credentials, by virtue of presentation: just because it doesn’t explicitly claim to be ethical doesn’t mean it isn’t saying so.

Go to the WCS web site, and you find that Fisher Price are one of their key corporate sponsors, and have their logo all over the place should you happen to visit the Bronz Zoo Animal Prison. What is particularly interesting is the company that Fisher Price keep in this roll-call of elite greenwashers:

ConEdison — Energy supplier to New York City, using oil, coal and gas
Bank Of America — Financial giant who will invest in just about anything that makes money
Delta Airlines — Yes, an airline, how very sustainable
Hess — A major oil company working everywhere, including Borneo
PepsiCo — Junk food behemoth, getting their logo everywhere they can

Quite where that leaves the reputation of the Wildlife Conservation Society depends on whether you think wildlife conservation mixes happily with coal, oil, airlines, global finance and junk food. I would say it’s in tatters, which is pretty well the state of Fisher Price’s greenwashing reputation as well. They deserve each other.