Hamleys pulls slime toy as kids craze gets hit by EU safety warnings

Hamleys has pulled a toy slime product off its shelves, after a wider test by consumer group Which found several products had failed safety tests for containing high levels of boron.

Frootiputti slime, made by Goobands and sold by Hamleys, contained more than four times the EU limit for boron levels. The group said exposure to excessive levels of boron could cause infertility and cause harm to pregnant women.

Other UK retailers were also named in the study for selling products with unsafe levels of boron, including Argos, Ebay and Amazon.

"Parents should have confidence that the products that they buy for their children will be safe, but our latest investigation has uncovered harmful products being sold even by big retailers," said Which director of research and publishing Nikki Stopford.

"Again, we're calling on manufacturers to stop making unsafe products, and for the government and retailers to step up and do a much better job of ensuring only safe products get into people's homes and into the hands of children."

Hamleys said it has removed all Goobands Frootiputti products from its stores as a precautionary measure, while it investigates the matter further.

"Ensuring the safety and trust of our customers is one of our core values as a business, and we will never compromise on the safety of our products. We work closely with our suppliers and manufacturers to ensure all products meet the legal standards for toy safety," the store added.

Keycraft Global, which owns the makers of Frootiputti, have disagreed with Which's categorisation of the product as slime. It is instead a putty, it argued, which is permitted to contain significantly higher levels of boron.

"This product has been tested at two separate independent globally accredited testing houses and deemed to be a ‘putty’ not a slime, and therefore compliant with the relevant standards," it said in a statement to Which.

Slime has been one of this year's biggest toy crazes among kids, which uses the mineral chemical borax which contains boron, to create its stickiness.

Which also warned that all of the slime and putty products it tested had carried the CE safety certification, indicating that many products were being labelled as safe despite infringing EU safety laws.

Amazon told the consumer group it has also stopped selling the products investigated by Which, while Argos said it would be exploring the matter further.