Much to McDonald's desire to please the enthusiastic kids over the Hello Kitty-inspired whistle in Happy Meals, the company somehow overlooked the importance of ensuring safety measures for kids' toys before they made the product available to customers in October. Said toy is a red whistle attached to a Hello Kitty figure with a heart-shaped lollipop.
Fox revealed that there were allegations over the two children who nearly got choked by pieces of a 3-inch tall toy whistle and the other one necessitated medical attention, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Hence, it must bear product warnings if not suitable for small children. It added further that McDonald's Happy Meals and Mighty Kids Meals distributed around 2.5 Million Hello Kitty whistles in the U.S. and about 200,000 in Canada in the recent month. In the light of the incident, McDonald's immediately acted on it and offers free replacement toy. Consumers will just have to return the Hello Kitty-inspired whistle in any McDonald's Branch and have it replaced.
Replacement could be a pouch of sliced apples or a yogurt tube of your choice and another toy, Daily Finance reported. To avoid further damaged to children, the giveaway was immediately recalled in less than two months, having started only in October. Daily Finance added that CPSC Chairman Elliot Kaye said that, "We urge all parents and other caregivers who believe they might have received one of these Hello Kitty whistles from McDonald's to act on this recall immediately."
CPSC and McDonald's acted together to get the attention of parents, caregivers and wards of children to avoid similar incidents and further injuries. Incentives were offered as a consolation to the inconvenience it has caused to the consumers.
On the other hand, ABC News reported that most of the manufactured toy whistles have not yet reached the restaurants and McDonald's have already recovered approximately 1.6 Million Hello Kitty whistles.
