Six Retailers Announce Recall of Buckyballs and Buckycubes

thereitis writes "The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), in cooperation with six retailers, is announcing the voluntary recall of all Buckyballs and Buckycubes high-powered magnet sets due to ingestion hazard. CPSC continues to warn that these products contain defects in the design, warnings and instructions, which pose a substantial risk of injury and death to children and teenagers. An administrative complaint has been filed which is rare, as CPSC has filed only four administrative complaints in the past 11 years." This follows last year's ban on buckyballs.

Comments

Seriously?

[Red_Chaos1]

Why does this even need a warning? If you're too stupid not to understand to either A) not ingest these, or B) not give them to someone not old enough to know better, then by all means, swallow them all, then go get an MRI.

Re:Seriously?

[AK Marc]

If you swallowed them all, you'd be fine. The way I described it to my wife is, eat one. Wait between 1 hour and 6 hours and eat another. Don't see a doctor for abrominal pain, and there's a reasonable chance you'll die. Multiples at once will not cause an issue. One a day will not cause an issue.

My 5 year old gets to play with my set, but the 3 year old (who doesn't eat toys) has close supervision, especially since these look like dragee, candy he has had before.

The problem is that a proper warning is hard when everything is deadly already. I'm surprised bottled water doesn't come with a DHMO warning label. When everything has a warning on it, adding a real warning to something that looks safe doesn't have proper effect. People don't read warnings when everything comes with 100 warnings.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice work AC, being pedant while missing the point.

Re:Seriously?

[phantomfive]

People don't read warnings when everything comes with 100 warnings.

Very good point. Or they read them and laugh.

Re:Seriously?

[oiron]

You're assuming that the reason for the warnings is to save lives...

It's actually purely to get themselves off the hook after lives are lost. Plausible deniability!

Re:Seriously?

[Fuzzums]

Really?! Now that wouldn't be very smart, would it?
Just like swallowing magnets in the first place.

I think he did mean MRI for exactly that reason :)

(My apologies for my sarcasm)

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, my boy, you clearly haven't been to an MRI scan before. Just try to go into the chamber with your glasses on, and see the reaction of the operator.

Nope, my boy, you clearly haven't been exposed to sarcasm before. Just try and go on Slashdot without it, and see the reaction of the intertubes.

Re:Seriously?

[Bengie]

CPSC has received 54 reports of children and teens ingesting this product, with 53 of these requiring medical interventions.

Sounds like Darwinism in action. Young children, I can understand, but teens?

Re: Seriously?

[ColdWetDog]

This doesn't appear to be the case. Look, for example at this reference, where several magnets had stuck together and yet caused problems. These appear to have been larger than buckyballs, but the idea is that they can loop back and pinch the bowel even if they are stuck together.

Even a cursory glance at the literature is a bit scary. The problem is that MOST things that kids swallow are pretty harmless and therefore not brought to anyone's attention. We don't know the numbers of kids that swallow magnets yet have no problems - they certainly exist - so the reporting bias is going to be fairly high.

But I personally would keep kids away from these things. They just don't need to play with them just yet.

Re:Seriously?

[Bengie]

And they should be treated as such. If a warning says not to let 2-3 year-olds have something, then a teenager with a development issue probably shouldn't play with those things either.

Re:Seriously?

[makomk]

Nope, the problem is that people are idiots, even smart people. On one of the previous /. discussions there were a surprising number of people who posted comments talking about how they'd swallowed all kinds of metal objects as kids, many of which were sharp, and swallowing something round like Buckyballs is no big deal - it's just the nanny state kicking up a fuss about nothing. They did this in response to an article which described, in fairly graphic detail, exactly why swallowing strong magnets was more dangerous than other small metal objects and the actual injuries that had resulted from it.

Yay, we can stop this pernicious danger!

[Anonymous Coward]

But if it's guns, well, we can't even suggest that background checks should be implemented or the NRA will unleash a titanic fury of political money to get what they want.

Re:Yay, we can stop this pernicious danger!

[Z34107]

Relax. We're laughing that "think of the children" claimed your toys, too.

ffs

[maliqua]

Why is it the governments job to parent. keep an eye on kids, teenagers? lol teenagers if they eat them that's natural selection

Re:A growing problem

[thegarbz]

Smoking is a problem. Motor vehicle accidents are a problem. Guns related deaths (some say it isn't) are a problem.

A product that has sold 2.2million sets resulting in 33 surgical procedures and 1 death since 2010 is NOT a problem.

Re:A growing problem

[thegarbz]

No. But it's damn well higher than one. As a quick guide think of the things we as a society take for granted and then consider how many people get killed by it each year.

But then it's not a case of absolutes either. The primary purpose of buckyballs is not to be eaten. As such a child related death due to ingestion is simple bad supervision by parents. Accidental deaths are attributed to all manner of products used improperly. A teenager got killed opening a computer powersupply, does that mean we should ban all computers? On the other hand a safety device like a seatbelt pretensioner failing and causing one death over a three year period is cause for alarm as the device failed to perform it's primary purpose.

Re:Incredibly stupid

[grumbel]

So the kid, who is 12 and should have known better, went into his fathers office, climbed up the shelf, pulled down metal balls and proceeded to eat them.

The kid didn't just ate them for the fun of it, it swallowed them accidentally while pretending to have a pierced tongue. You might still call that stupid, but that's well in the realm of normal child stupidity (I for one prefer to call that creativity).

These are not children's toys

It's looks like a toy, it plays like a toy and is fun like a toy. The very problem with them is that it is not obvious how dangerous those things can be.

Labelling

[VirginMary]

When I was living in the US, I enjoyed showing my German friends labels from water bottles that listed 0% fat, with the comment: "Look, they sell fat-free water in the US, quite unlike all the fatty water that is being sold in Germany!" ;-)