See You Later Alligator

Yesterday I lovingly packed up two Elmo toys that I had to return due to the Fisher-Price recall. I was a little saddened at the thought that Elmo was probably going to meet his fate in an incinerator somewhere. The Little One has no idea (yet) that I took those two toys away and I'm glad they disappeared while she was sleeping. I'm not going to say anything about them unless she asks and then I'll probably have to make something up. I had received a postage paid label that I had to attach to the box and when I was at the post office the calculated price for shipping was $8. Wow, let's say the average consumer only has one item to return so make that an average shipping price of $4, with nine million affected toys but let's assume only eight million get returned, that comes out to $32 million for shipping alone.

My two items will require a voucher for $33 to be issued to me for replacement toys. On average most of the recalled toys were running around $13 in value, so that comes out to $104 million in vouchers if most consumers return one item. Total price for these recalls is around $136 million. I wonder if that's pocket change for Mattel or is this going to seriously hurt their bottom line? Unbelievable. Ok, sure this wasn't as exciting as figuring out the many possible combinations of Arby's 5 for $5.95 deal but it is an eye opener. I wonder where they get their Fancy Catsup from?