Consumer Product Safety Commission Banning … Toy Magnets?
The alarming headline: “CPSC sues Maxfield & Oberton over hazardous Buckyballs and Buckycubes. Children and teens injured, needed surgery.”
Buckyballs and Buckycubes are collections of small, powerful, round or cubic rare earth magnets which can be used to form all sorts of shapes or squeezed to relieve stress. Indeed, some children and even a few teens have been injured when they have swallowed multiple balls. However, the desk toys are marketed exclusively to adults and come with labels warning against ingestion and insisting they be kept out of children’s reach.
More than two million sets of these toys have been sold worldwide since they went on the market in 2009; there have been less than two dozen incidents.
After more than two years of working with the Consumer Product Safety Commission — by issuing a voluntary recall, changing the warning labels, and producing a safety video — Maxfield & Oberton has been told the CPSC is banning the product because it is “inherently dangerous” and “serves no useful purpose.”
Why not serving a “useful purpose” is a legitimate criterion, they don’t say. Most desk toys — say, a New York Yankees Mr. Potato Head — serve little useful purpose. As for being “inherently dangerous,” at least 140 children are killed each year riding bicycles, and more than 275,000 end up in the emergency room.
Maxfield & Oberton is a young company that, according to spokesman Andrew Frank, has only eight full-time employees but is expected to make $25 million in sales this year. That $25 million supports the full-timers plus a sales force of about 200, and the products are profitable for thousands of mom-and-pop stores across the country. Frank says it is difficult to calculate the number of jobs that would be lost if the ban stands, since in many of those small stores Buckyballs are the hottest item.
According to a press release issued by the company Friday, Maxfield & Oberton is fighting back:
“We are deeply disappointed that the CPSC has decided to go after our firm — and magnets in general,” said Founder and CEO Craig Zucker. “Magnets have been around for centuries and are used for all sorts of purposes. We participated with the Commission in an educational video less than nine months ago, so we are shocked they are taking this action. We find it unfair, unjust and un-American.”
Frank said the whole thing was patently ridiculous:
You can buy 6,000 rounds of ammunition online but pretty soon you won’t be able to buy Buckyballs.
It’s as if they don’t want anyone to be successful anymore, and they’re trying to child-safe the whole country.
Freedom isn’t “child-safe” for left/liberals.
Hey, it’s not like they made those magnets all by themselves!
the “serves no useful purpose” is what scares me.
who gets to determine that for me?
this is an extremely telling statement IMO.
Well, there goes Justin Bieber, but who the heck are they to say?
There’s always a strong utilitarian streak that runs through the wizened and shrunken souls of totalitarians and totalitarian wanna-bes. Using the thought and language of utilitarians, you can pretty much justify anything you like. “The greatest good for the greatest number.” Sounds really noble doesn’t it? Who could possibly object to such a fine sentiment? And didn’t Spock say something like that in “Star Trek 9: The Search for Cash”? Or something like that.
The devil, of course, lies in the details. Such as who gets to decide? And then there’s that pesky bit about individual conscience and moral agency. Can’t have that, now can we? And for those who insist?
Enjoy your stay in the Panaopticon. And never mind that ditch full of stinking corpses over there.
dmacleo
exactly – “serves no useful purpose” is a very scary choice of words – but typical of a centrist mind-set, where Big Government is deemed to be all knowing, and better able to look after “the little people” than we can ourselves !
Time to reorganize a government department, methinks. If we start by firing everyone in the top three tiers, the next lot should be encouraged to stick with their job – to eliminate fraud and malfeasance and actually dangerous stuff, not just stuff which can be abused by idiots.
Better move — eliminate every dept, agency, task force, organization not explicitly listed in the Constitution
A government of limited and enumerated powers? Are you kidding? The collapse in spending would pay off the national debt in a few years, and we would have no one to order us how to behave,no one to give our money to their cronies.
The Constitution never was intended to be THAT limiting to the Fed. And the CPSC does a lot of good – stopping shoddy workmanship that’s honestly dangerous, or design flaws in otherwise good ideas that render them potentially lethal. It’s just the usual case of a bureaucracy that’s grown too big to do it’s job properly and gotten a god complex.
They should be required to show someone else (a Federal judge, perhaps?) their reasoning if they want to ban something, not have the power to do it off their own bat.
The constitution wasn’t meant to be that limiting to the federal government? Really? Seems to me that was exactly the purpose. The federal government has these enumerated powers. Only those enumerated powers.
I’d much prefer the market decide what succeeds or fails than some bureaucrat deciding what products should or shouldn’t make it to market. People used to have common sense. They would figure out what was dangerous and what wasn’t without having the government tell them.
Curious that the CPSC hasn’t applied the same standard to some sex toys, or that the FDA hasn’t gone after some sex toys for making medical claims.
Unlike Buckyballs, sex toys pass the “useful purpose” test. Inanimate objects are the only identity in the known universe capable of providing liberals with sexual gratification. Buckyballs are cognitive toys – and they are therefore eschewed by liberals.
Soon anything the government does NOT like will be banned (for your “safety,” of course). I wonder when this administration will start to ban books? I mean, couldn’t a book on how to defend yourself from the Federal government be “inherently dangerous” and “serve no useful purpose?” These are dangerous phrases. Oh sure, you could go to court and spend years and thousands of dollars defending your right to write that book, but the government has armies of lawyers and unlimited funds to ruin your day. Can we stand up to that?
We must. Because too many people came before us to give us those many freedoms we take for granted today. Just look at what George Soros, the far left, and the White House try to do to people like Allen West and Glenn Beck. People who dare to speak their minds or write books (like Beck does) are to be targeted and destroyed by this administration, and that’s just wrong. But we’ll rise to the challenge and defend our freedoms by continuing to speak our minds. It’s the least I can do for people like Washington, Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson, the men who gave us these freedoms we hold so dear.
“Frank said the whole thing was patently ridiculous: You can buy 6,000 rounds of ammunition online……”.
For how much longer? Surely putting a stop to that is next on the list.
Yooper, what really surprises me is that they prioritized the magnets over the ammo….
Not to worry, Matty. This from the Washington Times….”During the daily press briefing, Mr. Earnest was asked whether Mr. Obama supports the measure, which aims to end sales of unlimited amounts of ammunition on the Internet and other mail orders. The bill also would force ammunition dealers to report large sales of bullets and other munitions to law enforcement authorities”.
That certainly didn’t take long. They are working on it.
If magnets are outlawed….
The CPSC serves no useful purpose – shouldn’t it be banned?
Obama: You didn’t build that.
CPSC: You don’t need that.
ObamaCare: You don’t get that.
Jawohl!
Bloomberg: You can’t drink that!
By their logic: tobacco, alchohol, sex toys, balloons, dolls/action figures, all other magnets and many many other items must be banned as well for serving no useful purpose. All of the prior list have caused injury/death, so therefor meet the “exceedingly dangerous” criterion, and they serve no useful purpose.
To wit:
Tobacco – does nothing positive
Alchohol – causes only impairment (the science is settled there)
Sex toys – you have the opposite gender available in real life (you ability to connect is not guranteed)
balloons – they just sit/float there.
Dolls/Action figures – they teach gender stereotypes
All Other magnets – you ban one, you must ban all..otherwise it may fit the definition of a Bill of Attainder
Can we ban leftists? They are exceedingly dangerous (Pol Pot, Stalin and so forth) and the serve no useful purpose….
oh. dear. you aren’t around kids’ parties too much, are you?
They DO try to ban balloons- birds choke on the latex.
And every last single time a toy manufacturer sells a feminine-style doll, the toy police go into conniptions. Lego (finally!!) put out a set of girly-girl oriented Legos. They have been bitch-slapped all over the femininist sphere, and in news articles. Fortunately, they sell, to you know, me, and my girly-girl daughter- and you know, every mom who has a girly-girl daughter, so Lego is grinning and bearing it.
What’s disgusting is that highly sexualized girls dolls don’t get the same screaming. Barbie, however, Ms Pilot, Doctor, President, driver of the big pink van? Barbie gets the scrutiny. But not Bratz, or the ones like that. Apparently, vengeful shopping and mini-skirts are pro-femininist.
CPSC was started to intimidate companies. I think they just wanted to make an example of one, so the others get scared. Seriously- Nader, who started it, would invest in companies that would benefit from their campaigns. Really- he invested in seat-belt manufacturers, and he shorted auto stocks, all on the down-low. Peter Schweizer has it in his book ” Do as I Say, Not as I Do.” It’s a scummy mafia intimidation organization, with a lefty, new england whine and a rumpled suit. Not cool, not cool at all. Squirrely and crooked as a rabid chipmunk.
I’ll just hit on the Ballons here…
I said that they had all caused serious injury /death (meeting the first prereq for banning by their definition), and the list was to detail out their lack of utility.
“Can we ban leftists? They are exceedingly dangerous (Pol Pot, Stalin and so forth) and the serve no useful purpose….”
OMG, that gave me a good laugh. I’d love to see a class action law suit ensue.
Kinder Eggs are the most dangerous toy in the world.
Well, that is according to your border agents
Because they say so, peasant!
Now, do you have any more questions before they rule on whether or not your column serves any useful purpose? Hmmm?
Don’t blame the CPSC, though. Long ago the SCOTUS decided it had the authority to dismiss the plain language of the Constitution whenever there was a “compelling government interest”.
If the SCOTUS can write itself a blank check of unlimited authority based on a cute, um, excuse me, very important sounding phrase, so can the CPSC.
It is now the time today to inform the CPSC and SCOTUS: Thank you for your opinion on these matters. Now, everyone please ignore these decisions and get on with your life.
Serves no useful purpose? It annoys CPSC, isn’t that a useful purpose? I’d never heard of the silly things until I read about them here last week. Mine are in the mail as I type. Hope they get here soon.
Actually they do serve a useful purpose. My son, a materials science engineer, uses them to model complex atomic and molecular geometries. They have helped him understand the 3 dimensional properties of these materials.
Let’s hear it for idiots that know not of what they speak.
Now I need to go online and stickup. Right after I go to Chick-Fillet for lunch.
Sorry. Typo got by me. Should be stock up. Got auto corrected to stickup…..
All good comments, especially Mr. Grumpy. Complex atomic and molecular geometries would not be obvious to the average guy or gal in a Federal agency. “No useful purpose” indeed.
Thanks. I already sent an email to CPSC. I also stopped by the buckyballs web site and stocked up.
The doofus in the White House serves ” no legitimate purpose” too. Can we ban him?
They should ban all petroleum products, too. I’m sure drinking gasoline is harmful to your health.
“Mark E” Wrote: “Better move — eliminate every dept, agency, task force, organization not explicitly listed in the Constitution”.
Most comments reiterate the problem, Mark E has the solution. Close down all the parts of government not authorized or intended by our Founding Fathers. Defund them and shut them down.
Hopefully and Changefully we will have a solidly Republican Congress to work with President Romney that will tackle doing just that…
It won’t be easy but, like chemotherapy, must be endured to cure the cancer that’s destroying our nation.
One day we will wake up with sidewalks made of rubber and mailboxes wrapped in bubblewrap.
Let’s see. Stress management, serves no useful purpose, and half the gay population of San Francisco died indulging in the activities, some times referred to as “tea bagging”: sure looks like a good reason to ban gay bath houses.
I’ve written letters to the CSPC twice, I ordered two sets of Buckyballs, and I’ve spammed my facebook with this situation. I get two comments at most. I post a picture of a kitten and get 20 likes. /sigh. I am so disappointed in what is left of our culture. I am so bitterly, deeply disappointed. It absolutely breaks my heart. We used to be so great.
Oh thank goodness, the CSPC is now banning that most dangerous of forces, Magnetism. Now if they can only ban Gravity….
Email sent to Ms Tenenbaum.
Well, this is sure to make Republicans out of all three of my kids.
The 14 yo just made a great top that really spins quite a long time on the granite countertop. We had a nice discussion of perpetual motion machines and friction. How is that not useful? Or are they saying most kids are just too stupid to learn anything on their own without the help of an officially-sanctioned public school teacher?
Oh- I forgot- they DID say that……
Yep. The kids couldn’t believe it. One of them said, “But mom, it even says right on the box that they’re not safe for little kids. Doesn’t that follow the rules of commerce?” (I swear he said “rules of commerce”).
It was a teachable moment in the perils of nanny statism. I told the three of them, “Every time a person votes for a Democrat, a Bucky Ball dies.”
They laughed, but the 18 & 20 year old got the hint. I hope more of them do, especially before November.
I’ve taught Utiliterianism and can’t get students to see that it is “moral idiocy” I finally use the old bumper sticker slogan; Most people are like Slinkies/ useless but they are ammusing when you kick them down stairs.
This is the first I have ever heard of these buckyballs and buckycubes. There is no end to government meddling in the marketplace. If this were a major toymaker, like Hasbro or Mattel, the government would have taken an extortionist bribe and allowed the product to stay on the shelf. But, this is a classic example of how crony capitalism keeps small business start-ups out of the marketplace, and how the government uses bureaucracies to insure that the marketplace stagnates for the protection of the status quo. Does anyone else wonder how there is going to be any advancement of the society without changes in the marketplace? Communism is inherently a bad idea. Our government is always in lockstep with bad ideas that facilitate government control of the means of production. Why not ban a little company’s one intrusion into the toy market? Free markets are essentially dead. I must go now, to buy some buckyballs. ABO2012
Dont’ worry.
They’re coming for the ammo next.
Y’all are missing the best line in there:
“It is hard to understand why CPSC is trying to pry our balls from the hands of adult users…,” Zucker said.
Ha!