SHEIN recalls a teething toy whose silicone strings can lodge in a child’s throat

About 644 Pull & Chew Montessori Teething Toys sold by SHEIN are being recalled because their silicone strings are longer and thinner than federal toy rules allow, creating a hazard the Consumer Product Safety Commission says can reach the back of a child’s throat. The commission classified the toys, which sold for about $10 apiece between December 2025 and April 2026, as a violation of the mandatory federal standard for toys rather than a voluntary safety upgrade.

No injuries or incidents have been reported so far. SHEIN Distribution Corporation, the Los Angeles-based importer of the toys, is offering a full refund to anyone who bought one, on the condition that the owner destroys it first.

Strings sized outside the mandatory toy standard

The teething toys came in green, pink, yellow or blue silicone bodies with four colored strings attached, packaged in clear-and-white pouches marked “Baby Products” and “Crafted in Gentle Care.” According to the recall notice, the strings on the recalled units are both longer and smaller in diameter than the federal toy standard permits, a combination that lets a string reach further into a child’s mouth than intended.

Federal toy rules do not leave dimensions like these to a manufacturer’s judgment. The commission’s small-parts standard for children’s products works alongside the industry-written ASTM F963 toy standard CPSC has made mandatory for third-party lab testing, and it requires importers to certify compliance with a signed Children’s Product Certificate before a toy for children under three ever reaches a checkout page.

A hazard the commission calls a choking and respiratory risk

The commission’s own language on the hazard is blunt: the silicone strings “can reach the back of the throat and become lodged, posing a risk of respiratory distress and a deadly choking hazard.” That wording sits in the recall notice itself, not in a summary written afterward, and it is the same standard the agency applies whenever a component’s dimensions put it inside the danger zone the small-parts cylinder is built to catch.

A teething toy occupies an unusual place in that framework. It is designed to go into a child’s mouth for extended stretches, unlike a toy meant only for hands, which raises the stakes on any dimension that falls outside the standard. Strings attached to a chewable body add a second failure mode beyond the body itself: even if the silicone bulb is too large to swallow, a string long enough to reach the throat does not need to be swallowed whole to cause harm. A rigid teether that a child cannot get past the back teeth is not automatically safe once a soft, flexible cord is added to it for pulling or grip, because the cord bends and travels in ways the bulb itself cannot.

A refund process built around proof of destruction

SHEIN’s remedy is not a simple mail-back. Owners are told to cut the silicone strings themselves, photograph the destroyed toy, and email that photo to the company’s product-recall inbox before a refund is issued, according to the same CPSC filing. The company lists a dedicated recall phone line, open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Pacific time, alongside the email option.

That destroy-first structure is standard practice for recalls involving a physical hazard, since a returned toy sitting in a shipping warehouse carries the same risk it did in a nursery. SHEIN has not disclosed how many of the 644 recalled units have been returned or destroyed since the notice went out on Sept. 17.

Manufactured in China, sold only through SHEIN.com

The toys were manufactured in China and imported and sold exclusively through SHEIN.com between December 2025 and April 2026, without any listed retail-store presence, which narrows the recall’s reach compared with a toy carried on shelves nationwide. That online-only distribution also means the company can identify and email affected buyers directly, something a brick-and-mortar retailer selling the same item under a private label typically cannot manage at all.

The commission has not said whether it found the string-length violation through routine import screening, a complaint, or an unrelated inspection. Regulators lean on a physical test rather than a judgment call for exactly this reason: federal rule 16 CFR Part 1501 sets out a small-parts test cylinder with fixed dimensions, and a toy’s components either fit inside it or they do not.

ASTM F963, the industry-developed toy standard CPSC has adopted as mandatory, gets revised periodically as new injury patterns surface — a 2016 update added length rules for parts children were found chewing on even when they already passed the standard cylinder test. A string sized outside the current standard is the kind of gap that revision process exists to close before it produces an injury report rather than after.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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