Mr. Squiggles is clean, accusers sorry

By Sheilah Downey

Mr. Squiggles, the robotic Zhu Zhu Pet, has been vindicated by his accusers who had claimed the wildly popular hamster was toxic.

Consumer watchdog group Good Guide, who claimed last week the toy hamster was unsafe, said today they regretted their error and acknowledged they did not test the toy hamsters properly.

"While we accurately reported the chemical levels in the toys that we measured using our testing method, we should not have compared our results to federal standards," read the press release.

A spokeswoman for Zhu Zhu Pets said the company was overjoyed about Good Guide's retraction.

"We could not be happier," said Natalie Hornsby, spokeswoman for Zhu Zhu Pets manufacturer Cepia LLC in an interview with Food Consumer. "The truth always comes out and we are hoping we can erase the damage to the American psyche from this allegation."

Hornsby said the company had been battling the allegations made by Good Guide all weekend and had released the test results of the hamsters to the public to prove Mr. Squiggle's innocence.

"We are a fully transparent company," said Hornsby.

Mr. Squiggles was accused by the consumer group of having toxic levels of tin and antimony.

Cepia on Saturday released the company's test results on all of the their robotic Zhu Zhu hamsters which was performed by the Bureau Veritas Consumer Products Services.

The test results, as reported by Bureau Veritas, found no toxins in any of the toy hamsters.