{"id":12786,"date":"2026-05-08T08:05:56","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T08:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/12786\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T08:05:56","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T08:05:56","slug":"fury-in-france-as-national-toy-revealed-to-be-secretly-made-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/12786\/","title":{"rendered":"Fury in France as national toy revealed to be secretly made in China"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As the world held its breath over the <a target=\"_self\" class=\"e1yy41x40 ef9u0v01 css-1ankfgb ecgc78b0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/news\/world\/middle-east\/article\/3352823\/us-military-says-it-carried-out-retaliatory-strikes-over-unprovoked-hostilities-iran?module=top_story&amp;pgtype=homepage?module=inline&amp;pgtype=article\" title=\"\" data-qa=\"BaseLink-renderAnchor-StyledAnchor\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">fate of the Middle East<\/a> this week, France has been gripped by a very different story: a scandal over a chewy rubber giraffe.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Sophie la Girafe, the country\u2019s national toy, has long been a symbol of \u201cmade in France\u201d craftsmanship, sold as a gift to newborns across the country. But this week, it was revealed the beloved toy has secretly been manufactured in China for the past decade.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Vulli, the company behind the toy, quietly began moving production to China as far back as 2013, according to an investigation by French outlet Mediapart. By 2019, manufacturing in France had effectively ceased \u2013 the factory in Rumilly, a small town in the French Alps, was kept running only to package toys already made in China.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Current and former workers told Mediapart they saw no one working in the factory and the production line would only spring to life when clients or journalists came to visit.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cWe\u2019d place four or five people in the workshop, the raw materials were expired. Everything was fake,\u201d one manager said.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">French authorities launched an investigation into the company \u2013 including on suspicion of deceptive commercial practices \u2013 after an inspection in 2025 found the brand was still selling toys with the \u201cmade in France\u201d label, according to the French outlet.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the company quietly switched the tags on its French packaging to read \u201cborn in Paris\u201d \u2013 a subtler claim that stops short of asserting where the toy is produced. Yet in China, the old story persisted: on Tmall, a <a target=\"_self\" class=\"e1yy41x40 ef9u0v01 css-1ankfgb ecgc78b0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/tech\/big-tech\/article\/3324924\/alibaba-mobilises-merchants-premium-tmall-site-join-instant-commerce-drive?module=inline&amp;pgtype=article\" title=\"\" data-qa=\"BaseLink-renderAnchor-StyledAnchor\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">leading Chinese e-commerce platform<\/a>, the brand\u2019s flagship store still listed France as the country of production.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the world held its breath over the fate of the Middle East this week, France has been&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9578,1165,36,5,9576,9574,9575,72,9581,30,8961,9579,9580,9577,9582],"class_list":{"0":"post-12786","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-alain-thirion","9":"tag-china","10":"tag-emmanuel-macron","11":"tag-france","12":"tag-french-alps","13":"tag-institut-jacques-delors","14":"tag-mediapart","15":"tag-middle-east","16":"tag-nicolas-baumann-fischer","17":"tag-paris","18":"tag-radio-france","19":"tag-rumilly","20":"tag-sacha-courtial","21":"tag-sophie-la-girafe","22":"tag-vulli"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}