Banning of Buckyballs by the CPSC

My opinion: I'm sorry but if we ban buckballs then we should also ban kids being allowed to travel in motor vehicles, remove all electrical outlets from houses (hey some parents don't cover the outlets!), no more cleaning supplies should be sold, and basically your kid should be wrapped up in a bubble pop bag and sealed from the world until they are 18.

Because you think this toy is of similar necessary utility as those other things you mentioned? Hyperbole much?

It's unusual for a response to the CPSC to be open and transparent to the world. But these are unusual circumstances indeed. Let me start by reminding the CPSC and the public:

• We have had exactly ZERO ingestion incidents; our magnets have never injured.
• We have never referred to our product as a toy, or marketed as such.
• We have never put our product on toy shelves, where kids can grab them and shove them in the faces of their parents.

Obviously we are being punished because children have regretfully misused our competitor's magnets, which are similar in size and strength to ours. On 6/25/12, the CPSC Commissioners who have been in office for 3 years decided they would launch an unusually harsh administrative complaint lawsuit against Buckyballs; an action that hasn't been pulled out of the CPSC arsenal for 11 years. Of over 2 million sets of Buckyballs sold in the past 3 years; there have been less than two dozen injuries. Buckyballs have always featured an ingestion warning.

Meanwhile, there will be about 100,000 injuries every year in the United States due to backyard trampolines which require Emergency Room treatment, and trampolines are marketed to children. The United States has over 5,000 childhood gun related deaths in a year. 30 American children will die from drowning in Buckets every year. And there have been more skateboard fatalities in 1 year than magnet sphere related injuries in 3.


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Nobody disagrees with the CPSC when a stroller that pinches fingers is recalled, or toys with mechanical defects are recalled, or a coffee pot that burns people is recalled. But the current decision makers at the CPSC lack perspective in their current attempts to ban magnets. The CPSC is an important arm of the US Federal government, it "Protects the public from unreasonable risks of injury or death" from thousands of types of products. The keyword here is "unreasonable", and while I agree that magnets are more dangerous than push pins or staples, the CPSC has shown no attempt to perform a cost-benefit analysis, and is fully failing its utilitarian duties. How much societal damage results from the slippery slope of absolving parents from the responsibility to read warnings? How many tax payer dollars have been wasted trying to minimize risks that are already insignificant? How much will the CPSC's diminished public respect affect it's organization's safety goals?

Because you think this toy is of similar necessary utility as those other things you mentioned? Hyperbole much?

Its the famous nic signature strawman disguised as a question.

How about balloons? Skateboards?

How many die from balloons or skateboards?

Imagine if you had built the Zen Magnet or Buckyball company and suddenly the government was saying that you could no longer sell your product.... at all.