‘Toy King’ in the spotlight amid Mattel toy recall

HONG KONG: US toy maker Mattel’s recent recalls have swung a spotlight on Francis Choi, the Hong Kong tycoon whose factories made hundreds of thousands of recalled lead-tainted toy cars. Widely known locally as Hong Kong’s ‘Toy King’, the 61-year-old billionaire has been one of the city’s most successful manufacturers. Born in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, Choi started out as a toy salesman. He founded toy maker Early Light Industrial Company at age 25. Choi successfully negotiated a deal to make Snoopy products in his company’s early days before becoming a regular supplier to Mattel, now a client for nearly 20 years.

Early Light, a private Hong Kong-based company, now employs more than 50,000 people working in plants in Hong Kong and the neighbouring southern Chinese boomtown of Shenzhen. Choi’s wealth is estimated at $1 billion (euro740 million). Local media reports say much of his fortune goes to his large collection of sports cars. His mansion’s parking lot reportedly houses more than 30 luxury cars worth more than HK$26 million ($3.3 million; euro2.5 million).

But much of Choi’s money came not from his toy business but from the real-estate market. Choi bought into the property market when prices plunged after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. In recent years the market has bounced back, and he has raked in a fortune from an expansive portfolio of Hong Kong properties — including luxury residential flats and a hotel. The tycoon has also branched out into the health business. He recently bought into Town Health International Holdings Co, a health service provider that he hopes to use to buy mainland Chinese hospitals, while his elder daughter manages his toy empire.

Choi is well-connected with Hong Kong’s rich and famous and sits on the Chinese legislature’s top non-communist advisory body. Still, Choi’s claim to fame is toys and Mattel’s recall threatens to tarnish his reputation. For now, however, Mattel hasn’t blamed Choi for its recall of 436,000 tainted die-cast ‘Sarge’ cars based on the character from the animated movie ‘Cars’.

One of Early Light’s subcontractors, not Early Light itself, used the lead paint that showed up on the cars. Mattel said in a statement on Thursday that Early Light followed procedures and supplied subcontractor Hong Li Da with safe paint but Hong Li Da chose to use cheaper, unapproved paint from an unknown party. “We believe Early Light was let down just like we were,” Mattel spokesman Jules Andres said in an email. Choi was not available for comment, his secretary said Thursday, but Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao Daily News quoted him as saying that he’d acted responsibly by reporting the problem with the paint to Mattel when he found out about it.

“We discovered (Hong Li Da) didn’t turn up to fetch the paint in April and May, so we did a lab test on the toy cars. We reported to Mattel when we saw there were problems,” he was quoted as saying. Choi reportedly said Mattel’s recall cost Early Light about HK$1 million ($128,000) and that it has terminated its contract with Hong Li Da. Choi’s company is one of about 100 Hong Kong toy manufacturers contracted to make Mattel toys, according to the Hong Kong Trade Development Council. Early Light is the second Hong Kong toy maker to be singled out by recent Mattel recalls. Earlier, the head of another Hong Kong-based Chinese manufacturer reportedly killed himself when Mattel recalled nearly 1 million lead-tainted Sesame Street toys his factory made.