People, not surprisingly, choose immediate over delayed gratification. Faced with lower prices today vs. eroded tax base at some point in the future... Pretty simple choice, which is why Wal-Mart is as big as it is. And if you ask people to pay for a nebulous benefits that might go to others, they won't pay.
It's also why medium-end stereo stores died, why most computers are plastic pieces of crap and I can't get a belt that doesn't delaminate in a few months.
"But if a few did, they might all start doing it?"
But if a few don't do it, they slaughter the rest.
Note that toys are a particularly bad example after http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Product_Safety_Improve...
WRT to 1978, that was while Deng Xiaoping was still engineering his rehabilitation and before "socialism with Chinese characteristics" got going (I think; the timing on the latter was not clear after a few minutes with Wikipedia).
One of the reasons it hadn't happened before is well described in this essential book, "The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger" http://www.amazon.com/Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller-Economy...
Now the bottom line is that it would take major government intervention, e.g. tariffs and probably industrial policy, which is a "cure" that's almost certainly worse than the disease (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice_theory). It is argued by many that this and not slavery was the primary cause of the US Civil War.
It would probably be better to work at chipping away at many of the things that made manufacturing labor so expensive in the US (in terms of real value or products US manufacturing is doing OK and still exceeds the PRC although the latter might change soon). Some things are stark raving mad like the previously mentioned law that's trashing toys. Some things would appear to be luxuries we can ill afford, either now or in the long run.
E.g. just how strongly do you believe in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model for all toxins? It's been the law of the land since 1958: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaney_clause and this is why today's root beer in the US sucks. If this book doesn't gain any traction upon reading it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Skeptical_Environmentalist you'd perhaps better find another cause.
Don't expect change any time soon, e.g. see the above link to public choice theory and note that "a recession is when your neighbor loses his job, a depression is when you lose yours". The country at large didn't care that much when manufacturing labor was squeezed into construction and now it's only so concerned that those men are not out of work due to the real estate bubble popping (especially notice the unemployment rates broken down by gender).