Washington - The Easy Bake oven, an iconic toy with a four-decade history, has been recalled for the second time in less than a year, government safety advocates announced on Thursday.
In February Easy Bake's parent company, Hasbro Inc., recalled 985,000 of the toys because children were getting their hands and fingers trapped in the front opening, and some were burned. At that time, Hasbro offered a free repair kit to improve the oven's safety.
Since the February announcement, the company has received an additional 249 reports of children getting their hands or fingers caught in the ovens, including 16 reports of second- and third-degree burns. One burn required partial amputation of a 5-year-old girl's finger.
As a result, Hasbro is recalling all front-loading Easy Bake ovens sold since May 2006, even those that were repaired with the free kit distributed after the February recall.
CPSC spokeswoman Julie Vallese said they do not know how many, if any, of the additional 249 injuries occurred in repaired ovens.
The ovens were removed from store shelves after the February recall, according to Hasbro spokesman Wayne Charness. Stores were alerted Wednesday night to pull any ovens that might have found their way back onto shelves since then.
The company is urging all owners to contact Easy Bake and exchange their ovens for a Hasbro product voucher. For more information, oven owners can call 800-601-8418 or visit http://www.easybake.com or http://www.cpsc.gov.
But this isn't the end of the Easy Bake oven, Charness insisted.
"It does have a 40-year history, so we're trying to get it back out there," he said. "We are working on bringing a new model into the marketplace as soon as we can."
(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
