Baby Shark is a cultural phenomenon. The company, Pinkfong, which started with the simple song, has grown into an empire worth $1.1 billion. The original music video alone still earns the creators nearly $300,000 a month and the brand has been merchandised heavily, you can find a Baby Shark version of pretty much every toy category available.
Well, today the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a recall of 7.5 million Robo Alive Baby Shark toys due to a risk of impalement, laceration and puncture injuries in children. The problem has been specifically traced to small fins on bath and swim toys. When kids are playing with the toys in a bathtub or wading pool, they slip, fall and sometimes just sit on the shark's hard plastic fin and have suffered impalement, laceration and puncture wounds.
The toys were made in China and imported by Zuru of El Segundo, California to be sold at multiple major retailers, including Walmart, Target and Amazon. Zuru issued the recall after receiving a dozen reports of kids suffering pretty serious injuries, including to the face and much, much more sensitive areas. So far, nine children have required stitches and other medical attention.
The products were sold over the last four years and customers are instructed to stop using the singing and swimming Baby Sharks immediately and contact Zuru for a full refund, which works out to $14 for the full-size bath toy and $6 for the mini version. Refunds will be issued with a prepaid virtual Mastercard.
To receive the refund, consumers must disable the fin, either by cutting it off or bending it, marking the body with the word "recalled" and a unique recall code and then uploading a photo.
The recalled full-size bath toys have tracking label information on the bottom, including raised lettering that states model number “#25282” and a date code beginning with the letters “DG” followed by “YYYY/MM/DD” in the date range DG20190501 through DG20220619. Only full-size Baby Shark toys with a hard plastic top fin are included in this recall.
The recalled mini-size bath toys have tracking label information on the bottom, including raised lettering that states model numbers “#7163,” "#7175,” “#7166,” or “#25291” and a date code beginning with the letters “DG” followed by “YYYY/MM/DD” in the date range DG2020615 through DG2023525.
