Dexter's 'food-grade' children's lip balm triggered a regulator case

Dexter (戴可思) is a Chinese baby-care brand whose children's products are fronted by two faces built for parental trust: Olympic diving champion Guo Jingjing (郭晶晶) and actress Liu Tao (刘涛). In January 2026 its children's lip balm was being sold on e-commerce platforms as '食品级' — food-grade, the implication being that it was safe if a child licked it. That claim has been explicitly banned in children's cosmetics since the supervision regulations that took effect on 1 January 2022.

On 22 January 2026, the Wuxi Xinwu District Market Supervision Administration filed a case against Wuxi Dexter Biotechnology Co., Ltd. for suspected illegal advertising. The same day the brand apologised across its social channels and withdrew the promotion, attributing the claim to promotional staff who misread an oral-toxicity test result and published it without internal review. Founder Zhang Xiaojun insisted the problem was wording, not the product.

The endorsement strategy magnified the fall. The celebrity faces that converted parental anxiety into sales also guaranteed the regulator's case made national news, dragging both endorsers' credibility into a claim they never wrote. For the brand, an open investigation now sits on top of withdrawn campaigns, a public apology and a pledge to rebuild ad review.