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Goodbye to Bob
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Hundemer has not been formally replaced, though his duties have been assumed by others at the lab, Vallese said.
"Bob Hundemer the man is irreplaceable," she said, but the job will be posted and his position filled. The agency plans to use its growing budget to fill other jobs as well.
Hundemer got an inkling of how big Bob was in mid-December when Kitty Pilarz, the director of worldwide product safety for Fisher-Price, came up to him at a toy safety meeting and asked for his autograph.
Pilarz, who has known Hundemer for years, said that during her last trip to a Fisher-Price testing lab, she noticed all the employees were wearing Bob name tags.
"In the testing world, you've become like Madonna," he recalled Pilarz telling him. "You don't need a last name."
Not surprisingly, Hundemer has already been approached by toy companies interested in hiring his "expert eyeballs," as he puts it. He hopes his work in the private sector will help keep dangerous products from reaching consumers.
"You don't spend most of your life trying to make a difference and walk away," he said. "That's not me."
