 If I told you that Nintendo was guilty of selling toxic products that warped the minds of children who played with them, you'd probably think that I'd turned into one of those parents. Believe it or not though, this actually happened. From 2004 to 2007, America's Nintendo World stores sold merchandise containing harmful levels of toxic materials that were deemed unsafe for the American public. If you visited the New York or Redmond stores within this time frame, there's a possibility that you own a rare piece of literally poisonous Nintendo merchandise. You simply wouldn't know this unless you tried stuffing it in your mouth, and given that we're talking about metal lapel pins, you probably haven't tried that, I hope. According to the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, around 71,000 toxic Nintendo pins made their way out into the wild. Their official description of the product reads, The recalled lapel pins have images depicting 12 video game characters. The lapel pins vary in size, ranging from 1 to 2 inches in height. The characters Diddy Kong, Donkey Kong, Kirby, Mario, Mario Kart, Pikachu, Princess Peach, Samus, Star Fox, Waluigi, and Wario were sold individually. Mario, Princess Peach, and Samus were also sold as a set. Shall we take a look at some of these pins? Here they are. As a big fan of pin collecting myself, I can definitely tell you that I would have bought all of these if I'd been living in New York in 2006. These pins were sold by two Nintendo World stores, the public store in the Rockefeller Center in New York City, and the less publicly accessible store at Nintendo's headquarters in Redmond, Washington. If you've never bought any pins from either of these stores, you still might have managed to get your hands on one of them. According to the CPSC, the recalled lapel pins were also distributed to employees at electronics and game stores nationwide from April 2004 through November 2007. So what makes these pins so terribly dangerous? The paint. Lead paint was used to give Pikachu his familiar yellow color. The paint has been illegal in the United States since 1977 and for good reason. The World Health Organization describes the negative effects of lead exposure thusly. Lead is a toxic material whose widespread use has caused extensive environmental contamination and health problems in many parts of the world. It is a cumulative toxicant that affects multiple body systems including the neurological, hematological, gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, and renal systems. Children are particularly vulnerable to the neurotoxin effects of lead and even relatively low levels of exposure can cause serious and, in some cases, irreversible neurological damage. The harmful effects of lead poisoning have been common knowledge now for centuries. When working at a printing press in 1724, Benjamin Franklin experienced a pain in his hands which a colleague advised him was a form of lead poisoning and warned him that if he carried on handling hot metal type pieces, he might lose the use of his hands entirely. Suffice to say, the dangers of lead poisoning are not a new discovery. This being the case, how on earth did lead paint get into a Nintendo product? The simple answer is, sadly, money. The pins were manufactured in China and in an effort to cut the cost of production and pocket extra cash, the manufacturer has used a dangerous form of paint that really shouldn't have been allowed. According to a New York Times article from 2007 about lead paint in toys, the simplest answer experts and toy companies here say is price. Paint with higher levels of lead often costs a third as much as paint with low levels of lead. So Chinese factory owners trying to eke out a profit in an intensely competitive but poorly regulated market sometimes cut corners and use the cheaper paint. But hang on, why isn't the paint illegal in China? It is. It's just that nobody cares. According to Chen Tao, the sales manager at Chenghai Guangxin Plastic Toys Factory, there is a national standard on the lead level in toys, but no one really enforces it. Factories can pick whatever paint they want. Ms. Shang of Big Tree Toys in Shantou in Guangdong explained how conversations between Western companies and Chinese manufacturers typically go. She said, It depends on the client's requirements. If the prices they offer make it impossible to use lead-free paint, we'll tell them that we might have to use leaded paint. If they agree, we'll use leaded paint. It totally depends on what the client wants. It's extremely unlikely that Nintendo actually wanted to poison anyone for a quick buck. Much less make a very embarrassing public statement regarding these toxic pins. But the mid-2000s saw a slew of similar scandals, making it clear that this was a widespread issue. Many companies were guilty of not asking the right questions about what was going on with their products. Just as many manufacturers were guilty of not being completely forthcoming about the potential danger of their materials. Nintendo probably simply picked the wrong manufacturing partner and the wrong price point for their lapel pins. And to their credit, they did release a statement and issue a full recall of the affected pins. This reads, The pins contain amounts of lead that potentially could cause health problems if ingested or swallowed. By their nature, these lapel pins are not intended for children, but Nintendo of America is voluntarily informing consumers about the issue and encouraging them to return them to Nintendo of America. As magnanimous as Nintendo might be in voluntarily informing consumers of the toxic products they might have been sold, there are likely still plenty of these pins in the wild. Just as a quick update, while editing this video, I went on a search, and hey look, here is one of these toxic pins on sale at eBay right now. Of course it's Waluigi, it just had to be Waluigi. Note the $40 price tag. The thing about something that's already a collector's item that's then subject to a recall is, naturally, it gets way more desirable among collectors. The seller probably shouldn't be handling this thing with their bare hands, though. I hope they wash them afterwards. I'd be remiss, though, not to mention how I first came across this story last year. As mentioned, this was not solely a Nintendo issue. As a public service announcement, I should let you know this issue also affected Thomas the Tank Engine toys. That's how I first learned about this. I was researching Thomas toys for my train-obsessed son when I discovered that, apparently, you have to be very careful about buying used or secondhand Thomas toys. Particularly be on the lookout for any old trains manufactured between 2007 and 2008. They should say on the bottom of them. Unlike lapel pins, kids do put toy trains in their mouths a lot. And given the continued popularity of Thomas toys, people have a habit of holding on to them and bringing them out for the grandkids or taking them to charity shops, selling them on eBay and whatnot. These things end up sticking around precisely because of the brand appeal. The same is true of Nintendo's poisonous pins. It's worth checking your collection to see if you have any of these, and if you do, do not put them in your mouth. I know that should be obvious considering that they're sharp metal pins coated in a layer of poison, but honestly, a lot of you have been licking Nintendo Switch cartridges specifically because they're unpleasant, so it's clear you're missing some key self-preservation instincts. The good news in all this is that these kinds of scandals involving Western companies have become less frequent. Even better for Chinese children who are the most at risk from this cowboy approach to manufacturing with lead. In 2020, regulations in China were tightened to try to stop companies from getting away with poor practices. According to Mao Da, the executive director of the Shenzhen-based toxic-free corpse, millions of children in China and the rest of the world will now be protected from the devastating, irreversible, and untreatable effects of lead exposure. How well these new regulations will do in stamping out poor practices remains to be seen, but things are at least looking up. Once more with feeling, the moral of the story, don't eat poison. And now a word from our sponsor, Brilliant.org. Brilliant is a service which provides interactive visually illustrated lessons on a variety of STEM topics, an excellent way for an aspiring math, science, or technology student to bolster their knowledge across a wide range of fields of study. Since today's video deals with the effects of lead, I naturally wanted to get a better understanding of chemistry and how chemical reactions occur, so I spent some time with Brilliant's course on the chemical reaction, learning about what causes chemicals to react with one another and the frequency and probability of these reactions taking place. It having been a while since I took GCSE chemistry, this was the first time in nearly two decades that I'd given much thought to neutrons, electrons, and their impact on chemical compounds. 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Thank you very much for watching, and remember, don't put lead pins in your mouth. Thank you for watching, and don't put lead pins in your mouth.