Watch out: Tiny plastic toy freebies may be dangerous for your child

Offering ‘freebies’ to promote a product is an old marketing gimmick

Offering ‘freebies’ to promote a product is an old marketing gimmick. But when such freebies in food packets turn into serious safety hazards for children, there is need to put stop to such practice.

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I am referring to the tiny plastic toys in packets of savouries that have taken away precious lives in different parts of the country in the last four years. About four months ago, an 18-month old girl –Mounika- in Chinagudaba village in Vizianagaram district of Andhra Pradesh became a victim of the dangerous marketing practice. Believing the tiny toy in the packet to be a snack, she tried to eat it and choked on it. By the time her parents rushed her to the hospital, it was too late-she had already breathed her last.

Months before that –in the last week of June, 2020, a six year old boy in Dehradun had a lucky escape. Doctors managed to take out a miniature toy stuck in his airway through an emergency procedure. Here too, the boy had mistakenly eaten the toy that came in a packet of chips.

Three year old Rohit, a resident of Neemuch district of Madhya Pradesh was however not so lucky. In November 2019, the toy that came in a packet of savoury suffocated him to death.. Before that a child in Nagpur had fallen ill after swallowing one such toy found in a packet of fryums. Prior to that, 12-month old Suchitra from Keonjhar district of Odisha died in similar tragic circumstances.

A look at the content of some of these packets explain why children end up eating them.. The fryums and such other savouries in these packets are in such different shapes, designs and colours that it is easy for a child to mistake the tiny plastic toys inside too to be part of them-even if they are packed in a separate, smaller pouch. In fact some of the plastic toys resemble the fryums! Besides, most of the reported cases are from villages, where the parents may also not be able to read the package label in English, even if they proclaim in large letters that it contains a free gift.

These toys are also not appropriate for very young children who may eat the snack and therefore are a safety hazard, but obviously, the manufacturers have never taken into consideration this aspect. Priced at ₹5- ₹10 a packet, these savouries are popular and parents buy them even for very young children. Probably they are also not aware that they are not healthy eats..

In response to these deaths, the food safety regulator issued on July 22, 2019, an advisory to all state food safety commissioners to ‘discourage’ food business operators (FBO) from providing any toy or gift item inside the food package, especially those foods likely to be ingested directly by infants and small children. “Such promotional free toys or gift items may be provided separately or packed separately”, the regulator said.

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI ) also said it is ‘desirable’ that the colour, texture and nature of such toy or gift item should not at all resemble the food product inside the package.

Subsequently on August 29, the regulator issued a clarification saying the advisory was “non-binding in nature and therefore no coercive action against the food business operators can be initiated solely on the basis of the advisory, unless the acts of FBOS are in contravention of relevant law”. The regulator also advised food safety officers to assist the FBOs to improve on their production processes to address the issue of packing toys and gift items.

Obviously, the steps taken by the food safety regulator so far on the issue are not adequate because children continue to choke on toys in such packets. What is needed is a strict prohibition of such dangerous promotions and practices and recall of all packets containing such a food hazard. Every life is precious and the effort should be to completely stop such avoidable tragedies in every part of the country.