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.

Sticker book, sweets, one item of tat. Job done.

If my daughter got fucking seeds in a party bag they’d be going straight in the bin.

I wonder if the children whose forced labour produces goods for Temu get an opportunity for fun?

When DS was younger I did party bags and had great fun making them. Usually sweets, stickers, an eraser/pencil, bouncy ball. Tried not to include too much plastic. Then for a few years they got a sweet cone and a cupcake. Last year they all got an Easter egg (birthday in March) which went down a treat!

Temu don't make products.

I'm 67. I never attended parties when I was a child where I received a party bag full of tat. I was sent home with a small slice of birthday cake wrapped in a serviette. I honestly haven't been traumatised by the lack of tat.

Which is why I wrote "produces goods FOR Temu". Are you seriously blithely glossing over child labour? To what purpose? So you can fill your life with more cheap tat without having to be concerned about its origins, who suffered in its creation, the malign ambitions of the country it came from and the production of ever more soon-to-be-landfill at what cost to the environment? Well, bravo, pet. Bravo.

Agree OP. Give a book instead.

Temu is just the seller.
The factories that produce the products will be the same ones that produce products for other online sellers (Amazon) and mainstream retailers all over the world.
I am not going to believe these factories are all sunshine and rainbows but I am also not going to believe they employ 6 year olds (party bag age children) either.
I also don't put unwanted/broken toys in "landfill".

@Nescafeneeded you worded this thread badly.
Is it one specific online seller you're against or small novelty toys you're against?
Is it ok if people buy their party bag toys from John Lewis or a nice independent toy shop?

Which Temu sell 😂😂
Although they could be fakes?
A lot of effort to produce fake completely identical box sets of the Famous Five though.

Why don't you keep the part bags hidden away and only dish them out when the kid is leaving.?
I'm afraid if an uninvited guest 'snatched' a bag.id snatch it right back

Why wouldn't you believe they employ six year olds? Child labour is well documented. As is the use of unsafe designs and materials.
The factories might be the same, but you would have no idea if they are or not. And even if they are the same there is no guarantee that the products are being made to the same standard or under the same working conditions.
It's just wishful thinking to assume it's the same stuff. There's plenty of evidence to the contrary. UK and EU retailers are so heavily regulated precisely because we can't trust manufacturers to produce safe products ethically on their own.

It's not a lot of effort though. The manufacturing line already exists. Easy as piss to make some extra books. And without the supply chain checks, you can cut corners on salaries, working conditions and materials and sell (the essentially stolen) product much cheaper.

No, this is a misunderstanding.

Temu isn't a manufacturer itself. What you're thinking of is that companies who produce for big brands have access to the machines at off hours so they continue to produce but often using cheaper or lower grade materials, higher tolerances for error etc. The big brand with a reputation will have strict tolerances and high standards for the materials used in order to meet Western countries regulations for safety and their brand's reputation for quality. The stuff produced the rest of the time doesn't need that.

That means an inferior product. Electricals might not have the required safety clearance, toys might use materials containing higher amounts of toxic substances etc. Items might be flimsy and break more easily.

This manufacturer then sells that lower quality product through avenues like Temu, AliExpress, Ebay and Amazon. Or they sell in bulk to smaller sellers (who in turn sell through the above sites or direct advertise a Shopify type shop front on social media) sometimes in Asia, sometimes based in Western countries, trying to make a quick buck via dropshipping. There are loads of books and courses that claim to show you how to make loads doing this. In some ways (not structurally) it's similar to a pyramid scheme because the market for it is oversaturated, so hardly anyone actually gets rich doing it.

There used to be websites just selling cheap books. Mumsnet raved about them. It will be the ones that used to be sold from them.

Maybe I am naive. Maybe they do employ 6 year olds. I really don't know.
As I said I personally have never bought from Temu.
I just find it ironic when people say "give some seeds with a little paint your own pot".
Where was the pot made..... China !!!

It isn't made in China that is the issue. All sorts of things are made reasonably safely and ethically in China.
You can buy a plant pot in China from a UK based retailer and be relatively sure it won't leach harmful chemicals into the soil. You could buy a similar plant pot from Temu and have no idea what it is made of because nobody is asking or checking.

The issue isn't manufacturing in China, this is where you seem to be confused.
High quality, safe products for big brands are manufactured in China and sold in Sainsburys or Argos.
But also, Temu, Amazon, ebay, Aliexpress sell cheap, unregulated and untested products that are dangerous to children. Even if they look like branded products or they use a photo from a big brands website.

Maybe we could just do away with party bags as a concept, except for some cake to take home.

No-one really needs them, they're never exactly full of stuff that will last any length of time, it won't in any way impact the enjoyment of the party. What's the point of them beyond generating more stuff to clutter our houses and drown the planet in?

As I've said I personally haven't bought from Temu.
I have bought from AliExpress and it was definitely a legit product. Not a fake.
I cannot believe out of all the gazillion products you can buy via Temu they will all be fake dangerous products.
Some might be. But not all.
The OPs issue seemed to be "cheap plastic tat" - not really the distributor/wholesaler they are bought from.
It's not what you buy...but where you buy from.

Up to age 8/9 I made up a small bag of sweets OR pre cut cake to send away.

I don’t think this is a new problem OP. Plastic tat has been around and sent home in bags for years.

I do agree that Temu is shite though. Ordered some Xmas stuff last year because I was stupidly influenced on instagram. It was all plastic tat that went in the bin. Cheap and awful.

Up to age 8/9 I made up a small bag of sweets OR pre cut cake to send away.

I don’t think this is a new problem OP. Plastic tat has been around and sent home in bags for years.

I do agree that Temu is shite though. Ordered some Xmas stuff last year because I was stupidly influenced on instagram. It was all plastic tat that went in the bin. Cheap and awful.

No books, no seeds, no plastic

My son is football mad so we did a piece of birthday cake, football pencil, sweets, and pair of socks (got a really good deal on those)

Yes, that's where I originally saw it too. Like the idea of decorating a box to keep stuff in. We do a lot of caravan holidays where there's an arcade where they can win tat like this too, so between that, party bags and magazines like you say we build up quite a collection. The key for us is to have a few different collections and hide them away for a time to break out again in emergencies!