I can't believe they waited this long. I'd be surprised if a lot of adults haven't swallowed these, too. Everybody knows that BBs and pennies pass easily, so why wouldn't you think that about magnets? It isn't like the warnings are printed on every ball, and there's nothing intuitive about their danger.
Tiny, strong BB magnets can have no place in a house that ever has kids in it. It's not safe to have them in or on daddy's desk, or anywhere else. Maybe in the gun safe.
Also, I always assumed that the Fuller estate got a cut of this. Pretty rotten all around.
edit: swallowing small strong magnets is a fairly unique, well known, and long standing danger. When I was a kid, a lot of plastic items were made magnetic by gluing in tiny (maybe 3/4 cm diameter) disks. After a lot of resectioning of the necrotic bowels of a lot of children, and a lot of death amongst both children and animals, this ended. Good riddance. It's safer to let your kid play with a bag of broken glass.
They're also both an educational and creative toy that can introduce kids to the counterintuitive ways that magnets interact, while teaching them to build things within unusual constraints. Yes, they are dangerous if swallowed, just like a lot of other things that we have around our houses all the time. Keep them out of reach of young children, sure, but this is a tiny risk that has been blown out of proportion by the media. Last year, over 1,600 kids under 6 were poisoned by household cleaners... just in Washington DC.
As for "why would you assume that you can't swallow it?", I just don't even what to say. Don't just assume that you can safely swallow shit?
Magformers are a safe and interesting magnetic toy that offers that magnet magic you mention. I think the point is that some designs are inherently unsafe. They need to go back to the drawing board.
But it's marginally unsafe, and the risk is clearly labeled. As long as people are being informed of the moderate danger (and they are), it is nuts for the government to come in and try to take these off the market. The world is full of dangerous crap, and if you step back and try to keep a little perspective, this desk toy shouldn't even show up on your radar.
>As for "why would you assume that you can't swallow it?", I just don't even what to say. Don't just assume that you can safely swallow shit?
Because you can safely swallow things that look identical to them in every way, maybe? Would you rush your child to the emergency room because you found out they swallowed a ball bearing?
Tiny, strong BB magnets can have no place in a house that ever has kids in it. It's not safe to have them in or on daddy's desk, or anywhere else. Maybe in the gun safe.
Also, I always assumed that the Fuller estate got a cut of this. Pretty rotten all around.
edit: swallowing small strong magnets is a fairly unique, well known, and long standing danger. When I was a kid, a lot of plastic items were made magnetic by gluing in tiny (maybe 3/4 cm diameter) disks. After a lot of resectioning of the necrotic bowels of a lot of children, and a lot of death amongst both children and animals, this ended. Good riddance. It's safer to let your kid play with a bag of broken glass.