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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.'"
Thanks to Woot! I now own several million Buckyball magnets. I was waiting for the rare Earth metal market to skyrocket before cashing in, but this may be my chance. Hello Ebay!
What's so special about these magnets?
Children can swallow any kind of magnet you find in toys.
It should be up to the parents to ensure the child is old enough not to swallow the damn thing.
Next up: crayons banned because kids stick them up their nose.
Soon we'll be battling the Buckyball cartels in the streets of America. I say end prohibition now!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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
I have 7 sets of them. Well... technically about 6.7 sets. It's hard not to lose one here or there when you play with them nearly daily. I'm just glad that I got them now, before the ban... they are my third favorite toy, behind my computer and my phone. I make bracelets out of multiple colors as transient art (lost as soon as they stretch out and get rearranged), play with them on my desk, and use them as temporary tie tacks if I leave my mine at home.
Yes, tie tack. Don't knock it, it works!
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
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.
Looks like I'll just have to get my kid Lawn Darts for Christmas instead.
How about a ban on stupid trailer-park dumbass kids who ruin it for the rest of us?
They already tried that. You may have heard of "Planned Parenthood"...
There's no place like
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.
Me and my brother recieved the silver Buckyball cubes as Christmas gifts a few years back. These things are a blast to play with.
When one of the balls on my brothers set shattered, we called one of the listed numbers for the company to ask about maybe purchasing a replacement ball. The person on the other end was extremely interested in how this happened (apparently they hadn't had a report of a ball shattering before), and offered to send us an entire new set for free. On Christmas day. This was excellent, excellent support for an awesome product.
It's sad to hear about this.
I'm not saying lets kill all the stupid people, I'm just suggesting we remove all the warning labels and let nature sort it out.
These are neodymium magnets that stick together quite strongly. If two are swallowed they run the risk of coming within close proximity to each other while passing through separate parts of the intestines and clamping them together. Only way to remove them at that point is surgery.
That's not to say the other things you mentioned don't run a risk of getting stuck, or that these will get stuck. By being rare earth magnets they set themselves up for causing problems in the twisty path of our lower digestive tract.
I think the sales of Zen Magnets are about to increase...
(For those who don't know, Zen Magnets are *exactly* the same thing as buckyballs except for a very slight increase in quality and price. That would also mean they'd be more dangerous due to higher magnetic strength.)
Fucking crazy. Some schizophrenic lunatic can buy thousands of rounds of ammunition of the Internet, but God forbid anyone should buy a Buckyball magnet.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Hey, at least we know that it reality it takes at least a dozen dumbass kids now to ruin it for everyone else... The Onion pegged it at three, back in the day.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
How about a ban on stupid trailer-park dumbass kids who ruin it for the rest of us?
Why is this insightful? It's not the kids, or even their parents that are banning this stuff. They're a vocal minority. It's a government that wants to nanny us 24 hours a day banning things like this. "For the children" is just another variant of "the public good". Various levels of government want to regulate... or outright ban... everything from the size of your soda to the ingredients in your food.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
My understanding is that it is different, the intestine isn't blocked, but actually ruptured because the magnets pull through it.
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!
How about a ban on stupid trailer-park dumbass kids who ruin it for the rest of us?
I found a load of these on the ground in a park. Never mind how they got there, how do you expect children to read the warning which isn't present with these things? Also, you, I and likely everyone else on /. put stuff in our mouths in a time when we were so young we don't remember what these things were (but our mothers tell us, usually at the most inopportune times) These things, for the amusement value vs. the hazard value are understandable. See some of the x-rays where a couple of these things pinch and then pass through stomach and intestine walls. I've ever received some darn painful pinches from them while idly playing with them.
I hate to see it happen, but these really are a danger to children.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It's not the kids, or even their parents that are banning this stuff.
It's the parents who killed their kids who are looking to blame others that are calling for the ban. The government didn't call for the ban. There wasn't an independent investigation that found them unsafe. It was parents begging the government to ban them that got them looked at. And the democratic government looked at the wishes of the citezens and responded.
The issue is either that democracy is bad, or the parents are to blame.
Learn to love Alaska
The kids aren't dumb asses. Kids are kids. Young kids put things in their mouth, it's human nature. Dumb ass parents, and dumb ass owns of these magnets are why it happens.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Never mind that nail, rock, and used condom over there on the ground. What if someone's kid picks that up and tries to swallow it? Lets ban all that stuff!
No. How about you teach your kid common sense and save the entire world the trouble of looking after them for you? I'm not going to run around the world slapping warning labels on stuff for your kid that may not even be old enough to read yet.
"Don't childproof the world - worldproof the child."
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
No, "The Government" is responding to citizen concerns. The people who don't want something banned don't get together to stop it. It's the Citizen who allow this to happen.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
yeah, fuck thinkgeek responding to a government stop sell. WTF are they supposed to do? You wan't to be pissed at someone? be pissed at the people who brought this concern to the government. Take that anger and get other poeple together to tell the government you don't want them banned. Oh, you won't do that because it takes work, and it's hard..and besides you have all those new steam games to play.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
nail, rock, and used condom...
Call me old fashioned, but I always preferred rock, paper, scissors.
If you're an adult you don't necessarily have to have your fun ruined. Just get your rare off magnets off United Nuclear web site. Be sure to go for the ones labelled in red, "EXTREMELY DANGEROUS MAGNET". That's their code for "this is the fun one!" While you're there you can pick up some uranium ore and death ray parts.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I had lawn darts. Flying Death From Above is what we called them, and that's the way we liked it!
Buckyballs are *NOT* for kids!
They are marketed to adults. Designed for adults. There are 6 warnings on the package, instructions, plastic storage box, etc that is so expressive, it's to the point where I'm not sure a child should LOOK at it. Really, above and beyond on warnings that kids should not go near these things.
if (it != oneThing) it = another;
And the democratic government looked at the wishes of the citezens and responded.
The wishes of how many citizens, exactly?
I wish they'd do the same thing with the TSA and just get rid of it. If it was anything like this, a vocal minority could get rid of it.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
The best part is when the dumbasses say things like "we did much worse things in my day and *I* survived!". Of course you survived, you fucking asshole, all the kids who didn't aren't here to say they died.
Responsibility begins before purchase.
If the child is old enough and responsible enough to save up money and pay for their own toys, he/she is not within the group of children likely to die by these magnets. In any other case, the parents (or some other presumably responsible adult) are purchasing the magnets.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
I've seen the x-rays.
The problem is that, if you have 2 of them, they don't pass through the intestine like the other stuff kids swallow. They pinch 2 sections of intestine together, crush them, and cause necrosis and blockage, and, like you said, perforation. The kids can die. They need fairly invasive surgery. There weren't too many deaths, but there were a few. The people who brought them to the attention of the CPSC were the emergency room doctors who were dealing with them.
The diabolical thing is that they're so interesting that kids are attracted to them.
Craig Zucker is an asshole. I realize his problem with selling a popular, profitable product, but they've been responsible for a couple of deaths. Too bad. You can't make a million dollars if a 6-year-old kid dies as a result. If somehow he manages to defy or stall the CPSC, he's going to get sued by the next parent whose kid winds up in the ER over them.
I can see Zucker being cross-examined: "You did know that several children had died from swallowing these buckeyballs, didn't you?"
What has to occur for you to actually get it? When two or more magnets are swallowed, and they come together on opposite sides of intestinal tissue (note that the intestine is intricately folded), life-threatening pinching can occur. Do we have to show you pictures for you to get it? Sock puppets? A video game where you chase little magnets through a child's intestine? A raunchy cartoon on Comedy Central? What, Dude, what?
It's simply a labeling issue:
http://www.cpsc.gov/CPSCPUB/PREREL/prhtml10/10251.html
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Rock dulls nail, condom covers rock, nail breaks condom!
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.
The kids aren't dumb asses. Kids are kids. Young kids put things in their mouth, it's human nature. Dumb ass parents, and dumb ass owns of these magnets are why it happens.
So if parents ignore age rating on a goddamned dildo, can we sue the manufacturer for child sexual abuse?
At some point, it comes down to "don't be an idiot". If you buy your kids a gun and they blow their heads off - don't blame Remington, try a frickin' mirror.
Better yet, a ban on idiots who don't read the facts of the case? also a ban on people who post these damn articles without any real facts in them.
This is ridiculous, and when a headline is ridiculous you should follow it to the source. Gather some fact.
The article is nothing but a set up baseless attack on Obama.
What has happened is the CPSC told the company that there are reports of injuries. Items like these should be marketed for "14 or older". The company labeled it 13+. The company could have simply change the labels on the new one being produced when the first found out, in 2009. The didn't in 2010, they didn't in 2011. The "Ban" is only on the ones labels 13+
For some reason, the company is stirring this into a much larger issue then it is,. Sine the company attacks Obama, I suspect Zucker did it intentionally. Why else wouldn't you change your label?
" This recall involves the Buckyballs® high powered magnets sets labeled "Ages 13+""
http://www.cpsc.gov/CPSCPUB/PREREL/prhtml10/10251.html
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The problem is that, if you have 2 of them, they don't pass through the intestine like the other stuff kids swallow.
So, I, an adult without any children and none planned, am not allowed to own them for this?
That makes sense...
How many children die from accidental gunshots in households where parents are too stupid to secure their weapons, but I can buy guns at the local Walmart? Oh, can't ban those... Shucks.
This is a stupid ban, no matter HOW nasty they are inside children. I feel bad for the kids, really, but there is no need to punish everyone else for it.
I can see Zucker being cross-examined: "You did know that several children had died from swallowing these buckeyballs, didn't you?"
So people would have the same reaction to any firearm manufacture right? I can picture P. James Debney (CEO of Smith and Wesson) in court "You did know several children have been accidentally shot, didn't you?".
My house has around 1000 things that are very dangerous to children (cleaners, knives, airsoft weapons, small parts and screws, cactuses, poisonous plants, solvents, magnets!, outlets, glass objects, plastic bags, gasoline, cigarettes, booze, lighters, other flammable liquids, R rated movies, metal music, a chainsaw, three or four machetes, a weed wacker, atheist propaganda, a Koran, the Communist Manifesto, and the complete works of Socrates/Plato), should I be expecting the police to swing by and arrest me for being "dangerous" soon?
EVERYTHING IS DANGEROUS. Ban it all.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
I couldn't disagree more. Buckyballs are not toys for kids. They're toys intended for adults, marketed for adults. Arguing that they should be banned because kids play with them and get hurt is just as nonsensical as arguing that the Ferrari should be banned because parents can give their five-year-olds the car keys and those kids can drive the car off a cliff. There is zero difference. Both are toys designed for adults, and clearly labeled as such.
These products already have prominent warning labels on their packages saying that these are dangerous when swallowed, and that they are not intended for children under 13 years of age. Most kids stop swallowing random objects by about age three, so that's a solid ten year safety margin. To the extent that some of them might have been sold prior to when that warning label was added, they should be held liable for any injuries resulting from those early sales. However, it is not the CPSC's responsibility to protect parents who are so clueless that they buy a product that is clearly marked for ages 13+ and give it to a two-year-old. The only way to achieve such a standard would be to ban all toys designed for children over three years of age. No sane person would say that this is a good idea.
As for younger kids getting their hands on them accidentally, it is the parents' responsibility to watch their kids, and to ensure that anything potentially dangerous is kept out of reach. You don't see people trying to ban household cleansers because kids can be killed by drinking them. You don't see people trying to ban all medications because kids can climb into the medicine cabinet and OD. And yet all of these are things that children of the very same age do. There really is absolutely no difference here. The products are properly labeled, so to the extent that there is a problem, in much the same way as we have poison control ads, the right solution is public service announcements to educate the public about the risks of kids swallowing magnets, not a ban on the products.
Oh, and more importantly, educate doctors, nurses, and poison control centers so that when you ask them if you should worry after a kid swallows one of these things, they immediately tell you to go count them and make damn sure the kid swallowed only one.
People trying to get products banned because of egregious misuse and abuse are what drives us rapidly towards being a nanny state in which anything interesting, useful, or fun is outlawed to protect us from our own stupidity. That isn't a world I want to live in.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Last I checked, the 2nd amendment doesn't say:
"...and the right of the people to keep and play with Buckyballs shall not be infringed."
Banning the sales of ammo would be unconstitutional, regardless of any statistic. Banning of Buckballs (not that I agree) would be within the dubiously used "Commerce Clause"
For everyone outside the US. Hopefully an over supply will result in lower prices for everyone else at the expense of US citizens, caused by the stupidity of US children and their parents.
I agree, this isn't a case of "It's a dangerous product!" It's a case of parents who don't read warnings and let their kids have access to something that clearly isn't safe for them. According to a quick Google search in 2002, over 1 million children were hospitalized due to accidental poisoning, and in 2001, 96 were killed as a result. Following the lead of the Buckyball ban, let's ban all substances that can poison a child! http://www.preventinjury.org/PDFs/POISONING.pdf
You have to marvel at a society that can recognize the rights and responsibilities involved with gun ownership but bans the sale of a toy. Sort of like you can die for your country or be in a gang bang on camera at 18 but you can't have a beer.
So what you're saying is that someone needs to make a gun that shoots Buckyballs, and then we can buy them again?
To clear up some confusion I found the source on CPSC's own site. It's slightly more informational than the Reuters summary... But I'm still confused.
I bought tiny fridge magnets from The Container Store that are actually tiny neodymium cubes, are they banned also? Are they exempt because they're not toys?
How about just plain neodymium magnets direct from suppliers? Are they banned also or are they exempt because they're not labeled as toys?
How about a hobby brushless motor kit that comes with neodymium magnets? Is that banned also or is that exempt because even though it's a toy the magnets are supplied with the purpose of installing them in the motor?
So many unanswered questions... I think it would be easier to require all kids to wear muzzles to keep their mouth closed at all times. It would solve all the issues where kids choke on things or eat poisonous/dangerous materials, and has added benefit of muffling their annoying whiny cries.
If the child is old enough and responsible enough to save up money and pay for their own toys, he/she is not within the group of children likely to die by these magnets.
That doesn't mean that the child doesn't have a sibling that might swallow them.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
"So people would have the same reaction to any firearm manufacture right?" ..well, check this shit out. ...by a Los Angeles policeman who was paralyzed from the waist down when his 3-year-old son shot him with his service pistol. ....Enrique Chavez claimed in his lawsuit that the Glock 21 lacked adequate safeguards against an accidental discharge because it had a light trigger pull and did not have a grip safety ...now Glock has to defend themselves against this moron.
cop allowed to sue Glock.
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Judge-allows-paralyzed-dad-to-sue-Glock-3732408.php
ok - this is true. Glocks do not have a traditional safety that needs to be released before the trigger moves.
and put his son, Collin, in the back seat of his pickup truck to drop the boy off at his grandfather's house...
sounds tragic, right? wait -
Chavez had removed the child's car seat from the truck and had forgotten that he had left his Glock, which he always kept loaded, beneath the front seat, the court said.
go back to the beginning.. "son shot him with his service pistol."
SERVICE PISTOL. there's a reason LAPD picked Glock as their standard issue.. it's BECAUSE of the lack of traditional safeties and the light trigger pull.
he should sue LAPD for trusting him to carry a gun.
It's called a right to bear arms. It's a right because it was considered necessary for the defense of our basic rights.
In addition, most gun related homicides stem from drug or gang violence - and a large percentage of those cases are using illegally obtained firearms.
Some of those "homicides" (depending on the statistic set you're using) may be self defense cases.
So, I'm going to argue that we shouldn't be banning magnets just because some kid is stupid enough to swallow one. I'm also going to argue that banning guns, opposed to banning Bucky balls, does more harm then good, if only because gun ownership does not correlate with homicide.. (Some recent numbers for you)
Yes, the surgery is needed. If swallowed the magnetic balls stick together through the intestine walls, cutting off circulation and eventually punching holes in the intestines through which the intestinal contents leak into the abdomen. That's just a little fatal without surgery.
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.
They can have my Buckyballs when they pry them from my cold, dead.... intestines.
nonsig. unsig. desig.
Yes, because as everyone agrees, the federal government should be in the business of picking and choosing which genes get passed on based on your biased opinion and pushing birth control and abortions onto the unworthy.
I'm sorry your quest to create an utopian super race of humans are being thwarted by those selfish religious nuts but hey, look on the bright side, government funding of planned parenthood was only a small portion of their overall budget so Margret Sanger's dream of Eugenics will still be somewhat in place.
According to Alive Past 5 .com
The Top Five Causes Of Unintentional Injury involving children:
1. Car Accidents: Kill 260,000 children a year and injure about 10 million children. They are the leading cause of death among children and a leading cause of child disability.
2. Drowning: Kills more than 175,000 children annually. Up to 3 million children each year survive a drowning incident. Due to brain damage in some survivors, nonfatal drowning has the highest average lifetime health and economic impact of any type of child injury.
3. Burns: Fire-related burns kill nearly 96,000 children a year.
4. Falls: Nearly 47,000 children fall to their deaths every year, but hundreds of thousands more children sustain serious injuries from a fall.
5. Poisoning: More than 45,000 children die each year from unintended poisoning.
Looks like there is a whole lot more that needs to be banned, or re-labeled. Think of the children.
Automatic weapons are not banned. Whoever gave you that idea. I have two of them sitting beside me right now. Well, actually, they are locked in my gun safe but all you need to do is get a tax stamp for them. I suggest you stop imagining things and take a trip to the machine gun festival and see how many private citizens own fully auto weapons. You might be surprised to find that ordinary citizens can and do own explosives too.
Sorry, it's you who didn't read the facts here. This administrative action is against _all_ buckyballs, not just the old 13+ ones (which were fixed in 2010)
You're looking at 2 year old actions and assuming they relate to today's one, but they're only tangentially related.
Here's the press release about the current action: http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml12/12234.html
You'll note that in this release they point out that in both the previous actions, the company was cooperative. That is also pointed out in the actual complaint here: http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml12/12234.pdf
The founder's bizzarre political allegations aside, they are not being misleading about the CPSC complaint.
Actually, Glocks don't have a particularly light trigger pull. The standard is about 5.5 pounds and LAPD may use the heavy NY1 trigger which is around 8 pounds. There is a light trigger as well at 3.5 pounds.
i had toys with small pieces when my younger sister was at the stage where everything went in her mouth and i was told not to let her near them. i was also given a piece of plywood to put across the entrance to my door so she couldn't get to them when i was using them. i was also banned from using them in the same room as her without parental supervision. never had a problem. i don't see why there is issue here just keep out of reach of small children and dumb-ass's
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Can you name the parents that are stong arming the governemnt here?
Stephanie Thompson, for one. First hit on first google search. Did you even look, or are you just a (knee) jerk?
Learn to love Alaska
"So what you're saying is that someone needs to make a gun that shoots Buckyballs, and then we can buy them again?"
They already do!
A "T"-size steel shotgun pellet is about Buckyball size. I don't have a reloading press or any Buckyballs to load, but it would be interesting to shoot a few rounds loaded with nonmagnetic steel shot and compare their pattern on target to that of Buckyballs.
http://www.thefirearmsforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=52612&stc=1&d=1318459735
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
And I want to own Buckyball magnets. It's my choice, not the government's. Seems like a tyranny to me. You're the gun owner, get out there and water the tree of Liberty with a little blood.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yes, the surgery is needed. If swallowed the magnetic balls stick together through the intestine walls, cutting off circulation and eventually punching holes in the intestines through which the intestinal contents leak into the abdomen. That's just a little fatal without surgery.
But why do you need to waste money on a surgeon?
Can't you just put the kid in an MRI and rip the magnets out?
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.
Generally if they're within innser-stomach distance from each other, they connect instantly and would pass through the digestive track together since it takes significant force to pinch them apart.
Their safety guidance for medical professionals seems to suggest otherwise:
It's a case of parents who don't read warnings and let their kids have access to something that clearly isn't safe for them.
Parents would probably read warnings if they were only displayed on products that are actually dangerous. In the US, for fear of lawsuits, everything comes with a long list of warnings. It's like the boy who cried wolf: Parents are trained to ignore warnings. (I once bought a toy for my three year old that was labeled "EU: Not suitable for children under 3. US: Not suitable for children under 5.")
It's not that simple. I have an 11 year old, 3 year old and 18 month old. The 11 year old is obviously allowed to have such toys. She is required however to make sure they are picked up and stored in her bedroom and has been told that if I find parts laying around that the younger ones could get a hold of I will throw them out without warning or even telling her about it. I have followed through on that many many times.
However, a few months ago when changing my son's diaper, I found he had swallowed and subsequently passed, a silicon button that was part of my daughter's iPod cover. One of these: http://amzn.com/B0086YLNVW Apparently one he saw laying around before I did.
I'm not saying that a ban on this toy is appropriate. I'm certain the packaging is appropriately labeled with age restrictions and warnings. It's just not as simple as "parents who don't read warnings".
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
Actually, your link is from 2 years ago. The correct current link is here.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - In an effort to prevent children from suffering further harm, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) staff filed an administrative complaint today against Maxfield & Oberton Holdings LLC, of New York, N.Y., alleging that Buckyballs and Buckycubes contain a defect in the design, packaging, warnings, and instructions, which pose a substantial risk of injury to the public. The Commission voted 3-1 to approve the filing of the complaint, which seeks, among other things, an order that the firm stops selling Buckyballs and Buckycubes, notify the public of the defect, and offer consumers a full refund.
So no, this is not a labeling issue. They already corrected the labeling issue. This is about stopping all sales of Buckyballs. Headline is correct. Posting to undo my upmod of your comment because it turns out you are wrong.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock