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Buckyballs Throws In the Towel
RenderSeven writes "As previously reported the immensely popular Buckyballs office toys have been targeted by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Last week Maxfield and Oberton, the maker of Buckyballs gave up the battle and announced they would discontinue sales and close. However, being driven out of business is not enough for R Buckminster Fuller's estate, who has filed yet another lawsuit that they own all rights to the name "buckyballs" despite widespread use of the term. If you still haven't bought your own yet, a few thousand sets in stock are still available."
The company I work for bought everyone on our team a set. Probably worst investment ever. Productivity has definitely suffered. But look at my cool artistic design!
... on eBay, and you will find multiple vendors selling exactly the same thing, but not called buckyballs. They still exist - just not under that stupid name.
Dammit, freedom isn't free. And if the price of my freedom to be entertained by buckyballs is measured in the lives of toddlers, so be it. And now, I think I'll go outside for a nice game of Jarts. Who wants to be goalie?
I am a baker and normal dragées just don't work the same.
I don't see how kids can swallow these, not with their guts full of washing machine gel packs.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Oh, look, the State destroying a business and free choice in the first part of the summary and then the State enabling people to harass other people over imaginary property in the second. Thank goodness they're around to keep things civil.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
So if you want rare earth magnets before they're officially banned, get them from zenmagnets.com. Cheaper and higher quality. Also, they're not jerks like the buckyballs guys are.
Fun video here comparing the two http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7Tka4NUmUo
I know it looks like an advertisement posting, but as someone who owns a crudload of rare earth magnets, zenmagnets seem to me to be the best. I keep a mandala set on my desk at work for downtimes, and I have a manager who keeps trying to make the perfect soccer ball when I'm not looking.
- and if you get the colored ones, just beware - the color tends to come off very easily if you're rough at all with them. You've been warned.
Regulations work! If it wasn't for these bureaucrats we'd all be dead from lead poisoning, asbestos, and big gulps. Thankfully these unnamed heroes from the government are here to save us from ourselves.
magnets.. bad.
Guns, assault rifles, knives, mace spray, tazers, baseball bats, and realistic 3rd person shooters... good.
Glad you guys have got your retail priorities straight and are protecting your kids so well.
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
we have to protect another child on behalf of the parents not capable of using good common sense.
We need to stop making scissors of all kinds, stop the production of any toys that a small child might play with but not marketed to them, and even take kids balls away because someone might get hurt.
Stupid people doing stupid things... being going on for millenia, and every effort to stop them has failed.
It's all in the article:
""CPSC stands behind the case at this time," commission spokesman Scott Wolfson said Friday. "We continue to allege and believe that Buckyballs and Buckycubes are dangerous and defective for young children as well as teenagers."
Internet videos direct older children and teenagers how to use the toys to mimic tongue or cheek piercings, he said, and some have ended up ingesting them...
At the time the suit was filed, Maxfield and Oberton spokesman Andrew Frank said the company would "fight this vigorously," noting that while "some people have misused the product," the toys were marketed to those aged 14 and up, and carried warning labels.
Darwin award time, then. I cannot believe we pay taxes to pay people who then spend even more of our money on this kind of arrant waste and stupidity.
Zen Magnets hasn't yet caved to the CPSC.
The estate's claim that the use of the name infringes on their rights (which is a patently ridiculous claim, in my view) is apparently quite consistent with R. Buckminster Fuller's views --- supposedly he would claim credit to his student's work but saw himself as simply protecting his own intellectual property by so doing.
Can I mod something +1 Scary if it's true but I wish it weren't?
shoot ahh well I have nothing to do i going for a smoke outside at least that does not kill many people like buckyballs.
This happened because we have a Kenyan born soshalist in the White House. Don't blame me, I voted for Ronmey!
http://www.zenmagnets.com/index.php?p=1_20_November_Update
Lots of things are dangerous for children for swallow. There are entire bottles of cleaners and chemicals under my sink and in my garage that are dangerous for children to swallow.
Should we ban bottles of cleaning chemicals because mom or dad might leave them out somewhere kids can get a hold of them?
Put a warning/hazard label on them, but leave parents to be the ones responsible for their children's environment.
It's ok, I use zen magnets. ...Well, that was until I read the article :(
Eleven of 13 manufacturers agreed to stop making, importing and selling the toys. Maxfield and Oberton and a Colorado company called Zen Magnets did not, and the commission filed suit against them, Wolfson said. Both suits continue.
Zen Magnets is the last standing company selling these things in the USA. Please help them: http://www.zenmagnets.com/index.php?p=1_20_November_Update
Still interested in starting a small business in the US?
Didn't think so....
Starting a small business in the US today is less like reaching for your dreams and more like Running Man where you get a 30 minute head start before the death lawyers start chasing you...
They could follow precedent and just rename the product "Butthole Estate"
Fun Toy Banned Because of Three Stupid Dead Kids
I'd assume the countries, which have not yet banned those magnets, make up a sufficiently large market for at least one or two manufacturers of them to still be in business. I can't say whether it would then be legal for individuals to import some for their own entertainment.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
If your #1 product kills children, you fail.
One of my favorite toys growing up was Girder & Panel. It was suddenly removed from the house after about a year because it was recalled. The reason? Kids were eating the rubber rivets and killing themselves.
Kriston
How do they work?
That's for all these "rightsholders" making ridiculous claims; there should be hard jail time for that as an extortion scheme ('fines' etc. don't work in the business world - just another expense, maybe not upgrade the Ferrari. Not "martha stewart puppy farm" jail either.)
How about instead of arbitrarily banning products that some obsessed mothers think are somehow more dangerous for their toddlers, mostly because it is new, we just force all packaging to list the number of lives the contents have cost.
Buckyballs (Killed 20 infants since 1995) For example (I have no idea how many, if any, have died of been seriously injured by BBs).
Then we can make informed choices and be held responsible if we allow children to kill themselves will objects we know are dangerous. BB are not designed to be given to infants, just like a nail gun is not designed to be given to an infant; That does not mean they should be banned.
Personally, I love dangerous things and would consider that as good advertising, for those of you with overprotected children well they do no have to buy one.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
WARNING
Keep Away From All Children!
Do not put in nose or mouth.
Swallowed magnets can stick to
intestines causing serious injury or death.
Seek immediate medical attention if
magnets are swallowed or inhaled.
It says right on the little plastic container that this isn't for children. The cardboard retail box gets torn up and thrown away, so I can understand a label on that *possibly* not being enough. The inner plastic cube is pretty explicit too, though.
There are a handful of stupid people somewhere out there, so bureaucrats close down a business that I like and decide that I can't have something that is of no risk to me or anyone around me. Gotta love this world we live in.
responding to many, many consumer complaints about a products. Many children requiring surgery.
http://www.cpsc.gov/CPSCPUB/PREREL/prhtml12/12234.pdf
Byuckyballs says:
"Now, after more than two years, they're saying our extensive measures aren't enough and we should be put out of business.
I can't find any doc the confirms that on cpsc.gov
And the company keeps using the logical fallacy we sold lots, so protect us; which has nothing to do with the safety concern.
"We are fighting the CPSC action because we believe responsible adults should have the right to choose to purchase adult products like ours."
History shows you are wrong.
"We are fighting the CPSC action because we have been betrayed by a government organization that switched overnight from being an ally, helpful in ensuring our products would be marketed correctly, to being an enemy trying to shut us down."
Nice scared words. The steps you took did not work. You refused to take more, the CPSC took the next logical step.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They do not market them to children. The products have extensive warnings on them.
Here's the package that was sold at my mall. I see no warnings. In fact if you can read that scribbling on the front in a playful font it says "The amazing magnetic toy you can't put down." Is that how you market to adults?
Jesus Christ, who's lying to who here? This company seems to not want to properly label their product and just throw their hands up and rage quit when a consumer protection agency makes them!
I don't have kids. Why should I be subject to restrictions because some parents can't watch their offspring and they manage to swallow random objects?
The world is full of objects that are dangerous if swallowed. Watch your kids and let me have my toys.
.... so men don't get them. /wink
They really do sell Blue Buckyballs. So now when I play with them, blue buckyballs, and I roll them around you blue balls won't feel all alone. /wink
Sorry, it was just so easy....
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
They are just shutting down their lines of small magnets (buckyballs and cubes). According to their website they still plan to sell the larger magnets and are planning new products.
I have a feeling this was their plan all along, turning the CPSC action into a publicity stunt to sell out their remaining stock.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Back in the day, you could by Jarts. The package included six rather heavy pointy metal spikes with plastic fins on them (three each with two different colors of plastic fins), front-weighted so that they would land point first when thrown, and heavy enough that they would pierce into even fairly hard soil and stick upright; yellow plastic goal rings; and instructions.
IIRC, the instructions actually called for two people to stand at opposite ends of the yard, with one of the yellow target rings for the other guy to aim at laying on the ground in front of your feet, and then you'd throw the Jarts toward one another in an attempt to land them in the target. Or maybe that's just how we played, when we visited Grandpa and Grandma's house when I was a kid. (They didn't have a lot of other toys around, because they raised their kids in the era before it was expected that every child get new toys every year; but they did have an old set of Jarts, so we amused ourselves with those. Occasionally we even talked Grandpa into playing with us.)
Anyway, my point is, none of us ever actually got hurt with those things, but the risk we were taking was obviously rather larger than with these magnet toys, and we were well behaved. If you gave Jarts to a group of athletically inclined kids with a taste for violence, it's virtually a sure thing someone would become injured.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Sorry for the salty language, but at worst, this company should have had to put a "10+" and "Not for internal consumption" conspicuously on their packaging. This is a harmless, novelty toy; not a Jagged Metal O in your box of Krusty O's or a Bag'o'Glass (link for those of you too young to know that one). This is a toy which has dangerous consequences if ingested...
It seems to me, that maybe American children are more prone to putting things in their mouth that they shouldn't, which is the same reason why the Kinder Egg is banned in the states, because kids swallow the parts, which isn't a concern in Canada for some reason. Buckyballs needs to move their operations to Canada, where we have a greater degree of personal responsibility for doing stupid things.
However, being driven out of business is not enough for R Buckminster Fuller's estate, who has filed yet another lawsuit that they own all rights to the name "buckyballs" despite widespread use of the term.
... yes, widespread use of the term when referring to R Buckminster Fuller's discovery. Come on, Subby, that's like saying "McDonald's claims they own rights to the name 'Big Mac' despite widespread use of the term referring to a fast food burger from McDonald's."
We used to buy Magnetix. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetix
They were great fun...simple...self assembling, but you could do some fun things. It seemed like a great toy for kids. After we had gathered a sizable collection, we heard about the warning of swallowing the magnets. Coincidentally we also started noticing the magnets falling out of their plastic housings.
So, we heavily increased the supervision as the kids were playing with them. Made sure to keep everything glued in tight and or disposed of. Basically I guess that means I'm a responsible parent.
In the end though, we stopped buying them and switch to a toy that was less hazardous. That means the warning effectively became a ban ...for my house...
I think that's how it should work with pretty much everything.
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
So, CPSC has decided to ban the sale of small round things due to their capacity to harm children. I'm so glad that they'll finally be putting a stop to all those injuries caused when children get their hands on adult toys. Oh, wait, they're only banning *magnetic* bullets?
And yet Hasbro is still allowed to sell Hungry Hungry Hippos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_Hungry_Hippos, which is openly advertised as a toy marketed to 4 to 6 year olds. My guess is Hasbro has a heck of a lot more money than R Buckminster Fuller's estate to pursue legal action.
Sometimes I wish there was a simple button you could press... to somehow indicate that you no longer stand by what you said.
Maybe you could ask Mitt Romney where he got his!
problem solved.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
They are candy which have many form and content. The most wide spread is the ovoid form with almond in it, the other sort with chocolate. There are other sort but those are the crushing majority. The majority come in flat void shape but some come as metallic looking round and small, mostly in confiserie. You offer them (the almond or choco one flat ovoid one mostly) mostly at christian communion, confirmation, mariage, bapteme. And yes refuse whatever skipkent is offering ;)
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
for a few months. Finally, pulled the trigger.
Thanks for the notice.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Yes but think of the hassle. After another kid dies they would need to print all there packaging again.
I'm saving the one unopened set I have. I'm storing them with my lawn darts. Maybe I'll put them in a box with my Scrabble dictionary I bought when I heard the new edition would remove "offensive" words, and my green laser pointer if enough idiots shine them at police helicopters that they get banned too.
The state objected to their labeling, not their product. They labeled the toy as OK for 14+. The state says that magnets must be labeled as not safe for 14 and under. The labeling included 14 year olds as part of an acceptable audience. From an observers perspective, the company has been completely immature about the entire event. They responded with inflammatory accusations of persecution and have used the event repeatedly in their marketing. And now they are shutting down...? The company should have been fine. This misrepresentation makes me wish I hadn't given them money. There are alternatives out there.
Can't buy in California
http://articles.latimes.com/2005/dec/18/magazine/tm-dragee51
It says "swallowed magnets can stick to intestines." Why? Because they're magnetic? Or no differently from any other object that one might swallow?
Little leaning rare earth magnets designed to look like othello pieces (but can appear like oreos to really REALLY stupid kids), chokeable if placed in the mouth, JUST LIKE A LEGO!
It's a pretty good game, though: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/380/polarity
Sell the brand to an overseas company. There are over 6 billion other people you can sell them to.
Why does the summary say the company is going out of business? They're still selling the larger items and that article doesn't say anything about them closing - in fact, it says they're working on new stuff.
I don’t know if the name is used in other parts of the world, but in the U.S. the “ovoid form with almond in it” are called “Jordan almonds.” The chocolate ones are usually M&Ms.
My toddler loves playing with them and has never choked on any of them... now if you'll excuse me, I have to go get her off of the refrigerator door...
the public is just so freaking stupid and it is NEVER their fault that someone like the brilliant people in government have stepped up to protect them. gawd, what next, bottles with screw off caps because someone can swallow them?
these are the original Buckyball( Buckminsterfullerene )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminsterfullerene
All that is true. But people still dream of going into the US and oppening a small business.
In most of the world, people envy that 30 minute head start, and wish they had so much time.
Rethinking email
If I were them, I'd come up with an even MORE dangerous toy to put on the market. Buckyspikes, anyone?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You just paid for being a dumbass with the life of your child. Why do I have to give up my magnets as well?
Because a child's life may be of more value than your desktop toy?
I gave my ex a bracelet out of those, she didn't eat them, she gave them back to me at the end of the relationship. At least i wont have to see anyone going around with them anymore.
Can't he just make his product a commercial product and the CPSC would no longer have jurisdiction? According to 15 U.S.C. 2052(a)(1)(i) and (ii) definition of "Consumer products" it has to be “consumer products” that were “distributed in commerce.”. What if they were commercial products? Certainly that would be outside of the jurisdiction of the CPSC. If you can sell dynamite commercially, you should be able to sell magnets... "Zen Magnets are for sale to commercial artists only." Done. Then you can tell the CPSC to suck your balls. Tell them to suck mine while they're at it.
I am not a fan of over regulation but bucky balls are fairly unique because their danger is not obvious and can not be communicated by it's form. They are too small to have a warning or graphic on them. I've seen a lot of bucky balls, I have NEVER seen the box with warnings (people throw it away). A small sphere (as opposed to say a kitchen knife, or a jart) is almost the definition of safe. Even swallowing one is not a horrible outcome. They are not poisonous. What I'm getting at is it's a very unintuitive danger. It's only when multiple are swallowed that it becomes deadly. So take yourself out of your obvious nerd minds and try to look at this objectively. The personal responsibly arguments hold together in the case of me the parent buying them and me the parent allowing my own toddler to eat them. But it's a big world out there. Your kid could take 2 off your desk. Would you even notice (or do you keep your bucky balls locked up in the gun safe)? She brings them to school. She leaves them on the floor. My younger kid comes by puts them in her mouth. Is this my neglect as a parent? Insert almost anything else into that scenario and the outcome is better because it's either larger, more obviously dangerous, or problematic but not dangerous. For example: Knives/tools/etc- Most reasonable adults and even kids above the age of 5 would intervene or tell someone "Hey, Bobby's trying to eat that knife" Bullets- If you saw a kid playing with a box of bullets, even a strangers kids, hopefully you would intervene. But even if the kid ate one it probably wouldn't kill him. BB's, Coins, Legos- Kids have been swallowing these for years and while it's unpleasant, they survive. The problem is they are small, numerous, easily transportable, and not intuitively dangerous.
Where's all the concern about button batteries. Like the ones in all those seasonal childrens toys at walmart, or in all those kids birthday cards... They're dangerous too!
they didn't have a problem with the name back in 2011.. from tfa:
imho, their window to sue based on the name of the product closed when they essentially endorsed it, and its name, when they gave permission for the guy's likeness to be used.. even if it was just one time.