NASHUA, N.H. (AP) – A stuffed toy sold to help improve children’s health sent a Nashua toddler to the hospital, and is sending store clerks to shelves nationwide in a safety recall.

Seventeen-month-old Michael Starks choked on plastic filler pellets when a seam split on a stuffed frog sold at Kohl’s department stores. Kohl’s sold the $5 toy as part of its charitable “Kohl’s Cares for Kids” program to raise money for children’s hospitals.

Now, the store and the toy maker, Determined Productions of Larkspur, Calif., are voluntarily removing the frogs from shelves and advising anyone who bought one to return it for a credit or refund.

The boy’s mother, Christiane Starks, said she bought the purple stuffed frog for Michael on July 12 and put him down for a nap with the toy after returning home from the store.

Several minutes later, she heard a strange noise on her baby monitor.

“It was almost like the sound a child makes before vomiting,” she told The Telegraph.

She found the youngster was blue around the mouth, his lips were gray, and his back was arched, she said. Little pellets surrounded his mouth.

With an ambulance on the way, the boy spit up more pellets and finally began coughing and screaming.

At Southern New Hampshire Medical Center, a doctor was concerned there might be pellets in Michaels lungs that would cause pneumonia, so the boy was taken to Childrens Hospital in Boston.

There, under anesthesia, doctors searched his lungs with a tiny camera. No pellets were found, although the airways showed traces of five beads that he had coughed up, Starks said.

Determined Productions retested the toys after receiving a report of the Nashua incident and decided on the voluntary recall. It was being announced nationally on Friday.

“We think its the right thing to do,” said company president Bob Cappelloni. He called the incident “alarming.”

The Consumer Product Safety Commission said the company made 90,000 of the frogs.

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Information from: The Telegraph, http://www.nashuatelegraph.com

AP-ES-08-06-04 1049EDT