About 100 infants have died in Fisher Price Rock ‘n Play infant sleepers. And, unfortunately, kids are continuing to die because the deadly sleepers are still being used and sold second hand.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is upset with Mattel and Meta for not doing enough to keep the dangerous infant sleepers away from consumers.

“At best, CPSC is catching these unlawful products after they have been listed for sale and made available to the public,” CPSC Chair Alexander Hoehn-Saric said in a letter to Meta. “Facebook is uniquely positioned to identify Recalled and violative products like the Rock ‘n Play and stop their sale before they are listed. This would guarantee that these dangerous products are not sold, and further tragedies are averted.”

Hoehn-Saric said it’s Meta’s job to stop the illegal offerings of life-threatening products.

“Your company has the resources and the technology to prevent these listings from appearing in the first place,” he said. “I urge you to do more to stop the illegal sale of recalled consumer products on your marketplace to prevent additional infant deaths and injuries.” 

The CPSC and Mattel-subsidiary, Fisher Price, announced the recall of 4.7 million Rock ‘n Play sleepers in April 2019 and reannounced it in January 2023. CPSC’s surveillance team continues to find hundreds of recalled Rock ‘n Plays being sold by consumers on secondary marketplaces, including Facebook Marketplace every month – about 10 a day.

In August 2022, Hoehn-Saric also called on Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to stop the listing of recalled products on Meta’s Facebook Marketplace. Meta assured the CPSC that it prohibits the sale of recalled products on its platform and described steps that it takes to prevent the posting of these products, the CPSC said in a statement. However, listing for recalled products continued.

Hoehn-Saric also urged Mattel to do more to raise awareness of and incentivize consumers to take advantage of the Rock ‘n Play recall, in a letter to the company. He said the average list price of a Rock ‘n Play sleeper in online marketplaces is about $25. 

Hoehn-Saric called on Fisher Price to renew the recall of the product, this time with a more robust remedy that creates a strong incentive for consumers to destroy the products and a marketing budget to ensure that consumers are aware of the recall incentive.  

“Fisher Price clearly has not done enough to incentivize consumers to act upon the recall,” he said. “Nor have the company’s actions deterred a secondary market for this product.”

It’s incumbent on Fisher Price to motivate consumers to stop using the Rock ‘n Play and to destroy any of the unused sleepers that may be in their homes, Hoehn-Saric said, adding a refund of the full purchase price of the Rock ‘n Play would be a good start in achieving this.