To beg you not to buy cheap rubbish from Temu for party bags?

[Nescafeneeded]

They’re toxic and horrible, end up in the bin, total waste and the parts are a danger around toddler siblings.

Oh you'll hate me then, im part of amazon vine and i get to order 3 items a day for absolutely free.

A lot of it is pure tat and shit.

Yes, Temu, unbranded Amazon products, Ebay and AliExpress are all the same - unbranded, untested and unsafe. Don't buy from them, especially not for children.

Who knows what you'd get if you ordered the books - different books, fake books, badly printed copies, a photo of the books...

If you cared about your clothes being safe you wouldn't buy them from Shein though?
I doubt anyone buying from there cares enough to check if they've been recalled.
You only need to check if you are bothered about unsafe chemicals.

We once bought a bundle of Schleich toys and buried them in the sandpit for the kids to find, as a "party bag". It was great fun. By the end, the adults were searching too.

I don't buy unbranded though.
I check what the brand is first.
The information is there in the websites I use.
(can't say for Temu because I haven't bought from them)

Really?
I’m 58 and we had party bags.
Usually a piece of birthday cake, a few sweets, a balloon and party blower (forgot what they are called) plus some random little puzzle toys or bouncy balls.

We had party bags in the 80s (not all parties though). I think it was usually a slice of cake, some bubbles, and some kind of plastic toy. It was all about the cake 🍰 for me (still is)

You can't just trust that something is genuine because the website tells you or uses a photo from another website.
Amazon hopefully is on top of fakes but Temu is all fakes.

Like I've said I personally haven't bought from Temu.
I have bought from AliExpress and they weren't fakes. Genuine products that are also sold in "real shops".
Amazon lately is awful because if you type in something like "Lego sets" you get dozens of alternative brands (some perfectly fine, some dreadful) come up first.
They aren't fakes just alternative brands...but it's not what I asked for Amazon 😂

If I can't trust a website (or shop) I don't buy from them.

Now Amazon have started their own version of Temu. Also cheap tat.

But how do you know they weren't fakes?

What brands are you buying from AliExpress?

Yeah a sticker sheet is what I’m doing this year :)

I always find the hate towards Temu verges slightly on a feeling of superiority/ racism towards China disguised as ‘concern’.

I've bought a brand that's a toy building block brand.
The brand is sold in mainstream retailers in various countries in Asia but not in the UK.
I have had some products bought by a friend in one of those countries. I ordered more from AliExpress.
The packaging is the exactly the same.
It's the same products.
It's not a fake.

chemtrust.org/news/toxic-chemicals-temu/

My lot had a piece of cake, a balloon, small packet of Haribo and a pencil or similar

We did a paint your own plant pot with a packet of seeds. Went down well (especially with parents!)

I won’t give my kids anything from Temu, mainly due to the lack of safety testing (the appalling human rights record and the data mining and copying other people’s work issues are also factors, obviously). They may look the same as other products in shops, but they’re often made with inferior materials (which may look and feel the same, but have high lead content etc). In practice, if they come home with party bag tat, I bin a lot of it because I don’t know where it’s come from - unless it has a CE label or whatever, it’s just not worth it (and I find my kids don’t really care if it gets binned - they enjoy receiving it, but then lose interest pretty much straight away). I do party bags with cake, sweets and stickers (in fact at most of the parties we go to, that seems to have become the standard).

Wtf?
Everyone knows Chinese companies can produce normal valid legal stuff, they are doing it every day.

The issue here is accountability.

If official brand/shop imports and sells the goods under UK/EU law, they are responsible for it, they can be heavily fined and their reputation and business would suffer. State institutions are testing random samples, the brands are testing samples and checking the manufacturing processes. Safety costs money, but it's mostly seen as worth it to establish a reasonable level.

These online marketplaces are partially outside of this system of controls, and even if the issues are found, there are little to no consequences for the seller.

It's not racism to compare a regulated environment with an unregulated environment.

What the actual fuck.

A plastic toy is now worse than child labour? This is actually a comparison you find it sane and normal to make?

Not to mention - no, poverty, destitution and enslavement don’t ‘just’ affect one generation. Even if the bizarre scale of human awfulness you’ve decided to adopt were reasonable. Which, of course, it is not.

I’m surprised by the number of parents on this thread who don’t seem to care about the environmental impact on the world their children are going to grow up in!

I am sure I would have been delighted as a child to be given a party bag with a packet of seeds in it! Seriously, do you not remember being a kid? Receiving the bag of cheap plastic tat that would be lost within hours was a cherished part of the party experience! In my opinion, if you are spending hours on individual, hand-crafted, artisan party bags for kids at a birthday party you are making a martyr of yourself for no reason. You can't honestly believe that kids would prefer that to a bag of fun, if disposable tat. I imagine most parents also don't want to spend £20 on every party bag so the plastic option is their best alternative!

Whenever I'm in the shops I keep a look out for sales in the toy department, when there are little toys (toy cars, fidget toys, that kind of thing) on a good sale I buy a bunch and save them for the next party for the party bags. One small toy, some sweets, some stickers, maybe a carton of juice or a party blower to bulk up and the bag is done for cheap and no need to order from anywhere.