Editing For safety reasons

The United States is a very litigious society.  If a child is injured, or heaven forbid, killed by use or abuse of a toy, that child's parents are very likely to sue the toy manufacturer.  As such, [[Hasbro]] puts its toys through rigorous safety testing.  Sometimes, a toy has to be altered from the original design in order to maintain safety standards, which vary from country to country. 

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==Safety testing==
Hasbro has several tests that come up frequently.  One of the more famous ones is the "drop test."  As its name implies, this involves dropping a toy from great heights in order to ascertain whether or not said toy will break, and if any of the parts which may have broken loose could potentially injure a child (sharp edges, swallowable/chokeable bits, etc.).  This is often cited as the reason [[Fortress Maximus (RID)|Fortress Maximus]] has not been reissued in the United States, as well as the shortened smokestacks on the shoulders of various [[Optimus Prime (G1)|Optimus Prime]] toys (which statred back in 1988 with [[Powermaster]] Optimus, in actuality).

Other tests have similar goals, generally concerned with breakage issues.  Hence, the Japanese version of [[Vector Prime]] has hard plastic wings, but the U.S. version uses a rubbery material less likely to accidentally gouge out an eye.  Even as early as 1985, [[Jetfire]] was altered to have a blunted nosecone, and the [[Seeker]] jets had rubber nosecones instead of hard plastic.  Again, this was likely to prevent trauma from a thrown or jabbed toy.

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==Safety standards==
Besides the safety testing, Hasbro (and other toy manufacturers) try to make sure their products conform to certain standards.  Some of these standards are self-imposed, while others are mandated at the state or national level.  Most notably, these laws include choke laws, which are designed to prevent small parts (''especially'' projectiles) from being lodged in a child's windpipe; the use of toxic materials like lead-based paints; and toy gun laws, which are designed to prevent scenarios where law enforcement officials accidentally shoot children or adults who are not armed, but carrying "realistic" toy guns (like say, [[Megatron (G1)|G1 Megatron]].  U.S. law requires that toy guns have either an orange plug in the barrel, or a coat of orange paint on the barrel.  Some states have even more stringent laws, which requires that toy guns must be brightly colored and must not resemble real-world firearms.  (Some retailers won't ''carry'' realistic toy guns anyway, so that's a double-whammy some places.)

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==Trivia==
* According to Hasbro, toys that represent flying characters are given more stringent drop tests and rounded/collapsable bits, as children are more prone to throwing these figures around or ramming them into things (or people).

* In Italy's ''Transformers'' line, the missile launchers didn't have their springs removed, but the missiles ''did'' have comically-huge giant rubber balls attached to the tips.  Makes those [[Comemmorative Series]] missiles not seem so bad, huh?

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==External links==
* [http://theswca.com/textf/toydeath.html Page featuring articles on the genesis of the choke-gate test, due to a missile-firing ''Battlestar Galactica'' toy.]
* [http://www.washingtonwatchdog.org/documents/cfr/title15/part1150.html CFR Title 15, Part 1150, the official federal law on "realistic" toy guns and the markings thereof.]
* [www.cpsc.gov/businfo/toypremguid04.pdf Pages five and six of this article give a brief summary of the federal safety guidelines regarding breakability testing. .PDF format.]
* [http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28331 The Onion's slightly snarkier take on the subject, for those who like their snarky snark snarkiness.]

[[Category:Toys]]<div id="wikia-credits"><br /><br /><small>From [http://transformers.wikia.com Teletraan I: The Transformers Wiki], a [http://www.wikia.com Wikia] wiki.</small></div>