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More than £500,000 worth of fake toys and smart phones have been seized in a raid in Salford.
Hundreds of boxes of top brand name toys including Disney’s Frozen, Peppa Pig, Avengers and Angry Birds – along with boxes of fake Samsung and Galaxy phones have been recovered.
In one business unit Salford City Council trading standards officers and police recovered over 7000 counterfeit Super Mario toys, over 350 counterfeit mobile phones and 2000 counterfeit Disney Frozen loom band sets.
In another they came across a further 3,700 counterfeit toys, including 21 boxes of Frozen items, 20 boxes of Disney toys, 12 boxes of Spiderman toys and 10 of Toy Story.
Some of the fake items were barely distinguishable from their real counterparts – yet had no warnings or safety advice on the packets and the materials used had clearly not been tested for use in toys which is required by law.
“It took officers eight transit van journeys, two combi van journeys and two trips in a people carrier just to remove all the items. Those not needed for court evidence will be crushed and recycled.”
“This is a fantastic start to our campaign. These counterfeit goods were targeted at children as young as four but contained sharp points, small parts which a child could choke on and lead in the paint used. They were unsafe as well as ‘ripping off’ legitimate brands and I’m delighted we have been able to take them out of circulation.”
– Salford’s Deputy City Mayor, Councillor David Lancaster
