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Feds Ban 'Buckyballs' Magnets
SicariusMan writes "Looks like warnings and other precautions were not enough to save Buckyballs Magnets. According to this report, the Consumer Product Safety Commission is concerned about the increase in children swallowing the rare earth magnets, and has issued its first stop-sale order in 11 years. Amazon and others have already agreed to stop selling the toys. 'Although the commission issued a safety alert in November, it has received more than a dozen reports since then of children ingesting the magnets, with many requiring surgery, it said. More than 2 million Buckyballs and at least 200,000 Buckycubes, a similar cube-shaped magnet, have been sold in the United States.'"
How about a ban on stupid trailer-park dumbass kids who ruin it for the rest of us?
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
You see? This is why we can't have nice things, Barry!
Something that can be dangerous when grossly misused can be outright banned.
Unless it's a weapon
The article states that dozens of children have swallowed the magnets and 12 required surgery. There are over 60M children age 14 and younger in the US. Isn't this a bit of an over-reaction? I'm curious as to how many children have had problems after swalling coins and other items that people may have on their desk (ie paper clips, thumb tacks, etc.)?
Seems the shootings in Colorado hurt a lot more people, but for some reason, they haven't banned the sale of bullets.
It's not a problem if 1 gets swallowed.
It's a problem when 2 or more get swallowed within a short time period, and then the person who swallowed them dies.
We don't sell cribs or strollers that collapse on infants. We don't sell poisoned dog food. We don't sell toys marketed to children that can easily kill them.
It's just a toy, and it really isn't worth kids dying over it. You can still buy strong rare earth magnets if you want, just not in one children-marketed form.
I modded you flamebait, but decided I'd rather tell you to your face that this comment is every bit as ignorant and prejudiced as any I've heard uttered by the so-called trailer trash I've encountered. I don't know if this really reflects your beliefs or you're just trying to be controversial, but at face value that's stereotypical trailer-trash talk.
Uranium and bleach
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
It's not a problem if 1 gets swallowed.
It's a problem when 2 or more get swallowed within a short time period, and then the person who swallowed them dies.
We don't sell cribs or strollers that collapse on infants. We don't sell poisoned dog food. We don't sell toys marketed to children that can easily kill them.
It's just a toy, and it really isn't worth kids dying over it. You can still buy strong rare earth magnets if you want, just not in one children-marketed form.
So 12 kids died for being dumb, and there are 2 million sets out there in the wild. I'd bet more kids get hurt from knives, percentagewise, and other things adults buy than ever did from toy not-really-a-toy magnets.
This is basically just a shake down. Someone forgot to pay the right people.
We don't sell cribs or strollers that collapse on infants.
That's simply a bad product. I'm sure you could sue the company for that. These work as intended, however.
We don't sell poisoned dog food.
That would be intentionally harming them. Not a fitting analogy.
We don't sell toys marketed to children that can easily kill them.
I think we should be able to if they're just imbeciles and their parents don't pay attention.
It's just a toy, and it really isn't worth kids dying over it.
If it means banning it, it is. Just because you don't find it useful doesn't mean everyone else feels the same way. I believe "for the children" is a terrible excuse whether or not children really are in danger.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
It's a shame this post was modded down. I'd personally prefer to reward dudes with mod-points who decide against using them just to say "I disagree".
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
So basically, because 12 kids were too fucking stupid not to ingest small pieces of metal, or their parents were too fucking dumb to supervise them around these things, nobody can have them, anywhere, at any age?
Land of the free, my ass. Fuck this country. Ten times over.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Right, if a 14-year-old isn't responsible enough to keep them out of the hands of his 10-year-old brother, the kid deserves to die.
The bigger shame is that the parent comment to mine has been modded +5 Insightful... not even +5 Funny, but Insightful. WTF? What does that tell us about the current average Slashdot moderator mindset? Is it tribalism, crazyjj's buddies all mindlessly modding him up, or is it inbreeding?
It's summertime. The self-centered teens have nothing to do but bitch about how everyone's keeping them down.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
it's not that they don't come out that makes them dangerous, when they pinch they kill and destroy intestinal tissue, allowing gut/fecal bacteria into the blood
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Man you guys banned kinder toy eggs aka kinder surprise. ... And people smuggle them in from Canada, so....I guess you shouldn't have to wait too long.
Om, nomnomnom...
They're actually perfectly fine and perfectly safe for 99.99999% of kids 8 years old and up because most kids are not so stupid as to swallow small metal balls. These things are expensive; why would you do anything to deliberately lose them? When I was 8 years old, it would never even occur to me to swallow these magnets. It would be as self-defeating as swallowing my own LEGO pieces.
Even if you swallow some balls, but not at once, you will need to go to the surgery.
Correct - you will need surgery but nobody has yet died. However if you look at the stats for accidental poisonings in the US you will see that there are 41,592 deaths every year. 91% of these are due to drugs which leaves 3,473 deaths every year due to non-drug related poisonings. It is not clear how many of these are due to kids swallowing household chemicals but you have to wonder why there is any need to ban something over 12 surgeries and zero deaths given the number of actual deaths from swallowing things.
Uh huh. So tell us how the ball shattered.
WTF? MRI? Why waste it's time [which is pretty expensive] on this? Just build a nice big iron-core coil magnet and hook it up to a power support. Maybe paint it with some coating to make it easier to wash off the blood and you are set.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
This kid was 4
You argument?
And if something is sold in a store, it makes it difficult not to have it in the house? Because the store owner forces you to buy it? Because you are incapable of thinking "mmm this toy clearly has a warning on it to keep it away from all kids, so lets not buy it for my kids".
Didn't you child proof the house when you got a kid? Use those childproof plastic stickers on all your outlets? Lock the cabinet with chemicals? Keep power tools out of reach? Close the front door so the kid can't escape? Not boil water without keeping an eye on it?
Parenting is hard work, don't want to do it, don't get a kid.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.