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.

Incredibly stupid

[Zaldarr]

There was a big hoo-ha in Australia about 6mo ago where a 12 year old kid swallowed a bunch of them that were sitting on a high shelf in his father's locked study. 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 mother went on to campaign for them to be pulled from Australian stores, which they were 4 months later.

Now the infuriating thing about this is that because of one *incredibly* stupid kid everybody doesn't get some awesome toys. My 26 year old brother in law is pretty annoyed because he spends a lot of his free time tinkering with big blocks of them and now he can't get anymore. These are not children's toys and it is foolish to ban them entirely because some dumbass kid was stupid. By that logic you'd have to ban every adult product on the logic that it was not safe for children

A growing problem

[Animats]

The risk for teenagers comes from attempts to use magnets to simulate piercings. [lww.com]

See "Magnet Ingestions in Children Presenting to United States Emergency Departments from 2002 to 2011." [nih.gov] "A national estimate of 16,386 (95% CI: 12,175-20,598) children The incidence of visits increased 8.5-fold (0.45 per 100,000 to 3.75 per 100,000) from 2002 to 2011 with a 75% average annual increase per year. The majority of patients reported to have ingested magnets were under 5 years (54.7%). From 2009-2011 there was an increase in older children ingesting multiple small and/or round magnets, with a mean average age of 7.1+-0.56 years over the study period. "

Re: death to children and teenagers.

[deimtee]

"At least" they've only gone after Buckyballs, not the other manufacturers. I bought mine from NeoCube, as they're by far the cheapest for their large combo set. Buckyballs are expensive. As NeoCube and others (like Zen Magnets) generally only sell online, I'm not sure if they're in the CPSC's reach.

There's a banner on Neocube's website now that says :
THESE PRODUCTS ARE NOT FOR CHILDREN UNDER 14!! Please Read All Warnings
NOT FOR SALE INSIDE THE U.S.

Re:A growing problem

[dgatwood]

Could you please supply the exact number of children's deaths over a 3 year period that you believe would justify banning the product. Thanks.

For perspective, on average 25 kids die every year from plastic bags [livestrong.com]. On average, 350,000 kids require emergency room care and 200 kids die every year from bicycle accidents [livestrong.com], and that's a toy designed for use by kids. I can't give you an exact number, but it should certainly be several orders of magnitude greater than the number of kids injured or killed by Buckyballs.

Either that or ban all bicycles and plastic bags, including garbage bags.

Re:Seriously?

[heathen_01]

Fake tongue piercing. Granted its a stupid idea but it's not the same as an infant putting something in their mouth.