Nearly 44,000 light-up glasses, headbands and ties, 43,674 by the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s count, were sold for about $1 apiece over almost a decade before the agency recalled them on September 24, 2026. The importer, ABC Trading Inc. of Vernon, California, sold them from September 2016 through May 2026, and the commission says a child can easily open the compartments that hold their button cell batteries. No incidents or injuries have been reported.
The recalled line includes light-up glasses, crown headbands, sparkle headbands and ties, the sort of dollar-store novelty that ends up in party bags and costume boxes. The toys carry three identifiers printed on their outer bag labels: 6502 for the light-up tie, HD-10 for the headbands and L-508 for the glasses. All three were made in China, and the individual bags are marked “MADE IN CHINA, Importer: ABC TRADING, INC.”
Violating the mandatory toy standard
The commission’s recall notice, number 26-799, does not describe a defect that appeared in use. It says the toys violate the mandatory toy safety standard because their battery compartments “can be easily accessed by children,” which means a child who gets a battery out of a toy can swallow it. The remedy is a full refund, paid after the owner emails ABC Trading a photograph showing the product being discarded.
That framing matters for how the recall should be read. A zero in the incident column does not mean the toys were safe; it means the products failed a design requirement that exists to prevent harm that is hard to undo. The notice describes button cell and coin batteries as capable of causing internal chemical burns and fatal injuries when swallowed, and leaves the question of how many children handled the toys, or how many compartments opened in a child’s hands, unanswered. The notice identifies the covered products through the model numbers on the outer bag labels.
The mandatory standard is the yardstick, and these toys did not meet it.
Reese’s Law and the two-motion test
The standard behind the recall came from Congress. The commission’s 2023 announcement says Reese’s Law, enacted August 16, 2022, led to the ANSI/UL 4200A-2023 requirement adopted September 11, 2023. Under it, a battery compartment must either need a tool, such as a screwdriver or a coin, to open or require “at least two independent and simultaneous movements” by hand. Products must also pass performance tests that simulate foreseeable use and misuse, and carry warnings.
Separate rules for the batteries themselves took effect earlier, on February 12, 2023, when child-resistant packaging became required.
The agency’s reason for acting is in its injury data. Between 2011 and 2021 it documented 27 deaths and about 54,300 emergency room injuries linked to ingested or inserted button batteries, and it warned that “these tiny batteries can burn through a child’s throat or esophagus in as little as two hours if swallowed.” Dr. Ian N. Jacobs, a pediatric otolaryngologist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, made the same point about timing, telling Medical Daily that serious damage can occur within two hours of ingesting a battery.
A repeat pattern among low-price importers
ABC Trading has been through this before. On May 21, 2026, the commission recalled about 2,900 WSDZ light-up glasses that the same company imported. Those were sold at Starzzone, Igiftsinc and other gift stores from March 2024 through October 2025 for $6 to $10, with no incidents, and the notice cited both the mandatory button-cell standard and the Reese’s Law warning requirements. The September recall is roughly fifteen times larger and the products cost a fraction as much.
The importer is not alone in the category. An August 28, 2025 recall covered about 10,100 party-favor torches and laser pointers imported by MTC Trading Company of San Francisco and sold for about $1 from June 2024 through May 2025 at stores in Brooklyn, San Francisco, Houston and Puerto Rico, among others. It also reported no incidents and cited the toy and consumer-product button-cell standards, along with missing Reese’s Law warnings on the laser pointers.
The ABC Trading notice lists sales through ABC Trading stores in Los Angeles, specialty stores nationwide and abctradinginc.com, and it prices each item at about $1. At that price the entire 43,674-unit run represents roughly $44,000 in retail sales, a small sum next to the remedy the notice requires: a full refund for every owner who documents that the toy has been thrown away. Nothing in the notice says how many of the nearly 44,000 products were still in circulation at the time of the notice, and no one is quoted from ABC Trading in the commission’s summary. The record the recall leaves is a unit count, a price, ten years of sales dates and a zero for injuries, which together mark 43,674 as the number the commission can document rather than the number of children who handled them.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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