Consumer Confidential: Toys, tricks and trash

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Here’s your make-my-Monday roundup of consumer news from around the Web:

--Toys R Us is making it easier to buy big stuff. The company has unveiled an interest-free layaway plan for larger items such as bikes and cribs ahead of the holiday season. Effective immediately, customers can place such items on hold and make a series of payments until the item is paid for in full. Then you can have your thing. This has been a popular ploy among retailers at times in the past and is now making a recessionary return with some major chains, including Sears and Kmart. Toys R Us said it decided to climb aboar the layaway express after being asked to do so by customers.

--Be careful buying any product online that purports to diagnose, prevent, treat or cure H1N1 flu. That’s the word from our friends at the Food and Drug Administration, which recently sampled some of the offerings available on the Net and found questionable ingredients from questionable places. Moreover, the FDA says the websites it purchased the samples from vanished shortly after the transaction was completed. Want to protect yourself from swine flu? Get a flu shot.

--In other FDA news, the agency has put up a website to help people dispose of outdated and potentially dangerous drugs. Certain meds should be flushed down the toilet to prevent them from being taken by others (although what this will do to the alligators in the sewer, the feds don’t say). Others can be thrown out in the trash. Check the site to find out which med should get which treatment.

-- David Lazarus