Baby biting a giraffe Sophie
While the world held its breath at the fate of the Middle East this week, France was distracted by a very different story: a scandal surrounding a chewing rubber giraffe.
The popular , the country’s national toy, has long been a symbol of “made in France” crafts, being presented as “the best companion during teething” and sold as gifts to newborns across the country.
Since their launch 65 years ago, they have been sold more than 70 million of copies, in 85 countries around the world, of this “French” toy.
This week, however, a scandal broke out among the Gauls: it was made public that the beloved rubber animal, which marks it as “the toy for celebrity babies“, has been, for some years now, secretly made in Chinatells .
According to an investigation by the French publication, in 2013, Vulli, manufacturer of the toyquietly began moving production to China. In 2019, the production in France had practically ceased — the factory in Rumilly, a small town in the French Alps, was kept in operation just to pack toys already manufactured in China.
Current and former Vulli workers told Mediapart they no longer saw no one working in the factorysome time ago, and that the production line only came to life when clients or journalists visited it.
“We put four or five people in the workshop, the raw materials were out of date. Everything was a farce“, said a former company official.
After an inspection carried out in 2025 concluded that the brand was selling toys with the “made in France” label, French authorities opened an investigation into the companyincluding on suspicion of deceptive commercial practices, says Mediapart.
However, the company discreetly changed the labels of its packaging on the French market for “born in Paris” — a more subtle statement that avoids declaring where the toy is actually produced.
Around here, we are more accustomed: there is no shortage of “Barcelos roosters” made in Shanghai out there, and there are already people who celebrate São João with lanterns instead of balloons. But after walking around with Portuguese flags with pagodas instead of castles celebrating the team’s victories at Euro 2004…
