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Analizy · 2026-10-03

Toy safety rules, market by market

Toy requirements rarely sit in one place. The EU pairs a regulation with a list of harmonised standards, the US writes an industry standard into federal law, and Japan spreads the rules across three statutes. This walks the ten markets one by one, keeping every number as written.

Toys are the most heavily standardised category

On a shelf, toys look like the least defended kind of product. They are in fact among the most heavily standardised: mechanical and physical properties, flammability, chemical migration, electrical safety, small parts, age warnings. Every market has its own set, and the past few years have brought more revisions than most categories see in a decade.

What makes it awkward is that these requirements rarely sit in one place, and are rarely proved the same way. The EU lets you declare it yourself, the US wants someone else's report, and the Gulf and Brazil accept only designated bodies. Here are the ten markets, one at a time.

EU: a directive becomes a regulation

The EU currently runs on the Toy Safety Directive 2009/48/EC, supported by the EN 71 series of harmonised standards (EN 71-1 for mechanical and physical properties, EN 71-2 for flammability, EN 71-3 for migration of certain elements, EN 71-4 for experimental chemical sets) and EN 62115 for electric toys.

The new Toy Safety Regulation (EU) 2025/2509, adopted on 26 November 2025, was published on 12 December 2025, entered into force on 1 January 2026 and applies from 1 August 2030, replacing 2009/48/EC. Some of its articles (Articles 28 to 44 and 49 to 55) apply earlier, from 1 January 2026. EC type-examination certificates issued under 2009/48/EC remain valid until 1 February 2031. The new regulation also turns a digital product passport into a requirement for every toy.

On conformity, most toys can be self-declared against the harmonised standards and carry the CE mark; categories classed as high risk, such as chemical toys, still need a Notified Body. The mark is CE, alongside manufacturer information and age warnings.

UK: UKCA and CE side by side

The UK applies the Toys (Safety) Regulations 2011 (SI 2011/1881), amended in 2024 by the Product Safety and Metrology etc. (Amendment) Regulations 2024. Great Britain uses the UKCA mark; Northern Ireland uses CE with UK(NI). The UK currently recognises CE indefinitely, so the same shipment can take either route into GB.

One point is easy to miss: the UK list of designated standards is not identical, item for item, to the EU list of harmonised standards, and version numbers and withdrawal dates can differ. Whichever edition of EN 71-1 a test was run against, check it against the UK list as well.

US: ASTM F963 written into federal law

The US mandatory toy standard is not a government-written document. It incorporates an industry standard: ASTM F963 became a mandatory consumer product safety standard through 16 CFR part 1250, and 16 CFR 1250.2 identifies the version currently accepted. The mandatory version in force is ASTM F963-23, applying to toys manufactured on or after 20 April 2024.

Beyond F963, several hard federal limits stack on top: lead (for surface coatings, see 16 CFR 1303), eight phthalates at 0.1 percent (16 CFR 1307), small parts (16 CFR 1501), and sharp points and edges (16 CFR 1500).

Conformity here runs the opposite way from the EU. Toys are children's products, so they must be tested by a CPSC-accepted third-party laboratory, with a CPC (Children's Product Certificate) issued. There is no unified mark equivalent to CE; the test report and certificate are the evidence of compliance. California adds warnings for specific substances under Prop 65.

Asia: scattered, centralised, and being rewritten

Japan has no single mandatory toy statute. The requirements are scattered across three: electric toys fall under the Electrical Appliance and Material Safety Act (DENAN) and its PSE mark; material limits for toys mouthed by children under six fall under the Food Sanitation Act; hazardous substances fall under the Act on the Control of Household Products Containing Harmful Substances. Note in particular that the familiar ST mark is voluntary. It is not a condition of access to the Japanese market.

South Korea takes the other approach and manages children's products centrally. Under the Special Act on the Safety of Products for Children, toys are split into three tiers of conformity assessment: safety certification (product testing plus factory inspection), safety confirmation (testing), and a supplier's declaration of conformity. The KC mark is mandatory.

China is in the middle of a revision. The mandatory GB 6675 series on toy safety was published on 5 October 2025 and takes effect on 1 November 2026 (GB 6675.1-2025 through .4-2025, replacing the 2014 editions). The transition rule is that from the 13th month after that date, products manufactured or imported under the old editions must also meet the new ones. Toys and children's cycles are additionally inside the CCC mandatory certification catalogue, which means a designated certification body and a factory inspection.

Canada and Australia-NZ: two different routes

Canada regulates toys through the CCPSA (Canada Consumer Product Safety Act) plus the Toys Regulations, SOR/2011-17. The route is one of requirements set directly in regulation, with the operator responsible for meeting them. There is no unified mandatory certificate comparable to a CPC.

Australia and New Zealand use a mandatory standard with a choice of proofs. Toys for children up to and including 36 months of age fall under the Consumer Goods (Toys for Children up to and including 36 Months of Age) Safety Standard 2023, which allows compliance to be shown through AS/NZS ISO 8124.1:2023, ISO 8124.1, EN 71-1 or ASTM F963. A correctly done EU or US test report is useful here. Products containing button and coin batteries fall under a separate mandatory standard (Consumer Goods (Products Containing Button/Coin Batteries) Safety Standard 2020), and a toy's battery compartment must require a tool to open.

Gulf and Brazil: G-Mark and INMETRO

The Gulf states regulate toys under the GSO technical regulation on toys (second edition), requiring assessment by a designated body and the G-Mark; Saudi Arabia additionally routes through conformity certificates on the SABER platform. There is no self-declaration route here. A third party is a hard requirement.

Brazil applies mandatory INMETRO certification to toys for children under 14, carried out by INMETRO-accredited certification bodies, with the INMETRO mark on the product. Certification is normally led by the Brazilian importer, which makes this a question of who files rather than whether to file.

Ten markets side by side

Set the mandatory bases, the conformity routes and the marks next to each other, and the difference worth noticing is who has to do the proving. The EU and the US sit at opposite ends of self-declaration versus third-party testing, the Gulf and Brazil leave no room for self-declaration, and Australia and New Zealand accept someone else's report.

Reading the table, one thing remains: the same toy has to clear a different set of gates and hand over different evidence in every market. A self-declaration built on the EU harmonised standards still needs a third-party report in the US; a US CPC still needs a designated body in the Gulf.

What to ask before you order

Toy compliance evidence can be asked for, and it is hard to replace with smooth talk. A few questions tell you more than sample photos: which standard was this batch tested to, which laboratory issued the report, which test items it covers, when it was issued, and whether the model numbers on the report match the models actually shipping.

The last one is the most easily overlooked. When a toy changes colour, packaging or accessories, whether the original report still covers it depends on how the laboratory defines the same model, and that is usually where buyers get caught. To work through the questions in order, start with the free verification checklist. Label language is a separate constraint, covered in label language requirements; to see how certifications and export markets are recorded in a report, look at a report sample, or get in touch.