New Amendment to EU Toy Standard EN 71-1:2014+A1:2018

SAFEGUARDS | Toys & Juvenile Products NO. 100/18

The EN 71-1 toy safety standard has not been changed since 2014. The reason for this is that the CEN standardisation committee has adopted a new process that allows to combine projects. For the 2018 amendments, three projects have been combined:

1 Cords

Cords and drawstrings requirements for toy disguise costumes as regulated in standard EN 14682 had to be included in EN 71-1. These requirements apply to clothing which can get entrapped when the child is in motion. Examples are: entrapment of hood cords when children run down a slide or parts of garment that can get entrapped in moving vehicles like bus doors, ski lifts or bicycles. The requirements of EN 14682 have been adopted with the exception of cords that can easily break under a force of 25N.

In addition, clarity was provided for many interpretation issues regarding cords, like:

• How to define a strangulation hazard when there are two cords attached to a toy?
• What is the difference between a cord, ribbon, strap or a rope?

As a result, clause 5.4 for cords has been completely rewritten by grouping the general requirements by age: 'under 18 months' and '18-36 months' and by addressing some specific toys like pull along toys, electrical cables and a new warning for cords on sledges.

2 Projectiles

The start of the projectiles revision was a projectile amendment in ISO 8124-1, published in 2014. The aim was to achieve harmonised requirements for the 3 main toy safety standards, EN 71-1, ASTM F963 and ISO 8124. Although the basic principles have remained the same, there are many differences in requirements. The changes in EN 71-1 include:

• Kinetic energy density which allows higher speed for projectiles that have a larger impact area.
• Exclusion of objects that fly less than 300 mm
• Adopting ASTM improvised projectiles requirements

In addition, requirements have been defined for projectiles propelled by an elastic band. These projectiles were previously outside the scope of the standard. Also, new requirements have been included for rotors and propellers on flying toys like toy helicopters and toy drones.

3 Various

Various changes were made due to several interpretation requests, like:

• Clarification of stoppers requirements for aquatic toys and inflatable toys
• Specification of impact test equipment for harmonising test performance
• Clarification of the hinge line requirements

The revised standard has been published by CEN and is available at some national standards institutions bodies.

In order to show compliance to the Toy Directive, the standard must be accepted by the EU commission and Member States. This step still needs to be taken. For this a second publication in the OJEU is to be awaited. The publication in the OJEU will also set the transitional period during which both the current and the new version of the standard may be used to show compliance.

SGS is committed to providing information about development in regulations for consumer products as complimentary services. Through a global network of laboratories, SGS provides a wide range of services including physical/mechanical testing, analytical testing and consultancy work for technical and non-technical parameters applicable to a comprehensive range of consumer products. Please do not hesitate to contact us for further information.

For enquiries, please contact:

Sanda StefanovicToy expert
t: +31 6 51542190

Stay on top of regulatory changes within your industry: subscribe to SafeGuardS!

Read more articles for the Consumer Goods and Retail industry