Are Zhu Zhu Pets Hamster Toys Safe For Your Child?

October 18th, 2009 by Laura Robbinson

From a parent’s perspective, knowing whether a new toy that you are intending to buy for your kid is safe or dangerous, is a constant worry. Fortunately, the US provides a great deal more protection in this regard for our children than so many other countries. The complex US toy standard laws and regulations should ensure that any new toy that is available meets stringent standards, but as we all know, recalls are an everyday occurrence, so as responsible parents we don’t seem to leave it to the ’system’, but it is a great base standard to go from. So are Zhu Zhu Pets hamsters (pronounced as Zoo Zoo Pets hamsters or Zu Zu Pets hamsters) toys safe for your children to play with, or are they just a cheap accident waiting to happen?

Cepia are the manufacturer of Zhu Zhu Pets, including the hamsters which are currently sweeping the nation. Cepia is a responsible toy company from what can be seen, with its own self implemented internal safety standards imposed as well as adhering to the legal and regulatory standards. Cepia advises that their hamster toys are only suitable for children of four years and older. After all they do have smaller moving parts.

Parents may or may not realize, but these kids hamster toys scurry around on battery powered revolving wheels. As interactive electronic toys, the outer hamster structure obviously shields the necessary electronics inside. Once again, regulations and Cepia’s own internal quality standards ensure that the design is at a standard to ensure maximum safety.

The toy hamster itself moves from place to place on a set of wheels that when on a new set of batteries and placed in open space in explore mode, can actually move pretty fast. This is part of the fun of these hamster toys for kids that love to chase them around, but it does mean that the wheels do rotate at the required fast speed. Common sense should dictate here, which would be the same for any toy that you purchase for your child that has external moving parts, don’t let your child stick their fingers in or let anything get caught in the spinning wheels, such as hair. A parent has commented that her daughter’s skin was pinched and her hair got caught up, but the incident seems to be isolated incident and not voiced as a common issue. Can this happen? I’m sure it can. You child could also get their hair caught in their normal bicycle wheel, but unless the bicycle had been designed with the spinning wheel at head height, I don’t think it would be a warranted reason to ban it. There is always risk, it is up to you to assess how great a risk it is in making your decision to buy or not.

Another complaint that one parent had, was that when her son dropped his new pet hamster toy in a bucket of water, it started to act funnily and now it doesn’t work. I don’t think that there is much that needs to be said about this point, except perhaps to make sure that your kids realize that hamsters are land creatures and not designed for swimming.

Every parent is different and it would be shrugging your responsibility to allow others to determine what is safe and not safe for your children to play with. On the whole, from the huge number of Zhu Zhu Pets hamsters sold, there are few comments to suggest that they have specific safety issues or are sub standard in any way.

Original article source published under: Zhu Zhu Hamster Toys, Zhu Zhu Hamster Toy

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