ROCHESTER, N.Y. – This Consumer Alert concerns the safety of your child. Two days before Christmas, New York State’s Division of Consumer Protection urgently called for the Consumer Product Safety Commission to recall a toy. More than a week later, the commission still hasn’t issued a recall.

When I asked the agency why a representative told me, “We’re working to obtain samples of the product for assessment.”

So, I wanted to know if anyone has taken action. The manufacturer? The retailer? I went to Dollar General to check for myself. The warning from New York State’s Division of Consumer Protection is clear. It’s urging the Consumer Product Safety Commission, CPSC to issue a recall of the MAXX Action Helicopter toy sold at Dollar General.

The problem? State leaders say testing found the black window coating contains almost 1.7 times the lead level allowed in paint. And young children often put toys in their mouths. Lead exposure can cause permanent damage to a child’s brain and nervous system causing learning delays and behavioral problems.

To see if the toy is still on shelves, I first stopped at Dollar General in East Rochester. My daughter came along to help me with the search, a search I soon learned would be a challenge. I found toys not just in one section or one aisle. Instead, I found toys on various shelves throughout the store.

Finally, a toy helicopter caught my eye. It was a MAXX Action chopper, but it didn’t have windows with black coating.

My next stop was a Dollar General store in Brighton. Again, the search was far from easy. Few things are where you would expect. There among home goods and dinnerware were Encanto and Barbie toys. And one would think only food would be on the chip aisle. But no! I found more toys there as well, but not the chopper.

My next stop was a Dollar General on Monroe Avenue in Rochester. And there among the boxes and paper goods was the toy the state is calling a health hazard. There were three MAXX Action Helicopter toys still on a shelf selling for $5.

And so I took the toy to checkout to see if Dollar General was still selling it. And then I got a surprise. The clerk put it in a bag and handed it to me without taking my money. She told me that the toy was supposed to have been pulled from their shelves.

Was that true? Had Dollar General voluntarily recalled the toy? After all, I found it still being sold on the website more than a week after New York’s Consumer Protection Division called for a recall.

I emailed leaders at Dollar General repeatedly to confirm that it has indeed recalled the toy and mandated that it be removed from store shelves. While I found that the toy has now been removed from their website, I had not received a response from the discount chain’s leaders as of the writing of this article.

I also alerted the CPSC that I had found the toys on the shelves of a store in our area. What’s the agency’s reaction to the fact that perhaps the toy is still being sold as we wait for some response from the CPSC?

A spokesman refused to answer the question writing, “We have nothing further to add to our original comment.”