What To Do About Those Pit Dolls

• Share

WASHINGTON, D.C.: For parents whose kids can't seem to do without their ravenous Cabbage Patch dolls, the Consumer Product Safety Commission offers this advice: pull off the toy's backpack. Removing the pack will deactivate the lever that operates the doll's teeth. Although it has not issued a recall, the commission says it will continue to investigate some three dozen complaints that the dolls have chewed on little girls’ hair and fingers, mistaking children for the fake carrots and french fries they were designed to chomp. No serious injuries have been reported -- yet. Most surprising are mothers like Diane McMasters of Campbell, Ohio, who is allowing her four-year-old daughter Ariana to keep the doll that started chewing on her a few weeks ago, and stopped only when Mrs. McMasters chopped off a hank of Ariana’s hair. "She still plays with it," Campbell said. "We just make sure her hair is pulled back."