If you sell through Amazon FBA, Walmart Fulfillment Services or most large retailers, any polybagged unit whose bag opening measures 5 inches or more must carry a printed suffocation warning. Missing or undersized warnings are one of the most common inbound-prep violations — and repeated violations can strand inventory or suspend listings. The fix is cheap: bags printed with compliant wording at manufacture.
The standard warning and print-size rules
The commonly required wording is: “WARNING: To avoid danger of suffocation, keep this plastic bag away from babies and children. Do not use this bag in cribs, beds, carriages or playpens. This bag is not a toy.” Marketplaces scale the minimum print size to the bag: the bigger the bag, the larger the type must be, and the warning must be in a prominent location and legible font. Several U.S. states also legislate thin-film bag warnings, so printing compliant bags by default protects every channel at once.
Bake compliance into the bag, not the pack-out
Teams that sticker warnings on at pack-out pay three times: label cost, labor, and the misses that slip through. Printing the warning into the bag at the plant removes the failure mode entirely. We manufacture suffocation-warning bags with the standard or your custom-approved wording, with optional vent holes, and can combine the warning with your branding in one multi-color print — and for very high-volume printed poly programs, our sister plant Synergy Packaging in Tijuana runs dedicated lines.
Quick answers
When does a poly bag need a suffocation warning?
Under marketplace rules such as Amazon's, when the bag opening is 5 inches or larger. Print requirements scale with bag size.
Can the warning be on a sticker instead of printed?
Stickers are generally accepted if legible and correctly sized, but printed-in warnings are cheaper at volume and can't be forgotten at pack-out.
Do vent holes replace the warning?
No. Venting addresses trapped air; the printed warning is still required on qualifying bag sizes.
