Where things stand with those little spherical magnets (BuckyBalls)

It’s been just under a year since we had an update about the CPSC’s favorite target: Those little spherical magnets commonly known by the brand name of BuckyBalls.

As you may recall, BuckyBalls came on the market a few years back, made quite a splash, but were then hounded by the Consumer Product Ssafety Commission to the point where these magnets were effectively banned.  Another spherical magnet supplier, known as NeoCube, also fell by the wayside, but a 3rd company, the almost unknown Zen Magnets (who apparently were first in with the product but last in overall sales due to BuckyBalls and NeoCube’s aggressive wholesaling campaign.) made the effort to fight back at the CPSC and actually won their court case.

Sadly, that was not the end of it. Zen Magnets has spent the better part of the past year just getting things in order for a new rollout of the classic spherical magnet product. Meanwhile they are bracing for another possible round of legal battles with the CPSC.

It might not come to that. The CPCS commissioner is on record as saying the following:

“We’re doing this without taking the time to learn the lessons about why we failed the first time, or if there’s any need for the rule… I think this is a factor of pure ego, and this agency has taken the thoughtful opinions of the 10th circuit personally, and we just wanna win for winning’s sake…”

The CPSC removed the rule on 3/1, as ordered by the court. But almost immediately the commission voted to implement a new rule regarding magnets. The precedent is set, however, so a rule as draconian as the last one would be lost in court even faster.

Meanwhile, what happened to the other companies? No idea what happened to NeoCube – their inventory was sold Zen Magnets (which may have caused them quite a bit of a legal headache) and we can assume they are long gone. Zen Magnets is in position to restablish spherical magnet sales. The folks who made BuckyBalls? Well, while Zen Magnets was fighting the legal fight against the CPSC they released a set of tiny rare earth magnets that they sarcastically named ‘Compliance Magnets’

Perhaps taking a hint from these Compliance Magnets, the makers of BuckyBalls released SPEKS. A set of rare earth micromagnets that is also compliant with the CPSC’s old rule.

Time will tell if they succeed with this product. Having personally handled such ultra-tiny magnets I find they had some appeal, but lacked the fidget potential the classic larger Spherical Magnets posessed.

 

As for our store? Well, we have our own (as the top image shows), and can sell them until another ban comes down. Sadly we can only sell these in-store at the moment.

www.spectrum-scientifics.com

Buckyballs, ALL rare-earth spherical magnets to be banned. But is the CPSC being honest?

Scarcely a handful of years ago, the rage in magnets was BuckyBalls, the little spherical magnets that were fun to build and just fidget with. BuckyBalls were not the only producer of these magnetic spheres, but they were definitely the best known and most popular due to their aggressive marketing campaign.

However this popularity made them a huge target for any product issues and BuckyBalls was soon hammered by lawsuits brought by the CPSC and eventually were effectively forced out of business.

The reason? It was alleged that many children were swallowing the magnets and when two magnets attached in the intestines the skin could necrophy and sometimes surgery was required.

BuckyBalls stated they were aware of two dozen emergency room cases out of  3 million of BuckyBalls sets sold, while the CPSC claimed over 1700 cases. BuckyBalls agreed to multiple warnings on the box agreed and to not sell the magnets in toy stores, but it wasn’t enough and the CPSC, in an unprecedented move took action to push BuckyBalls out of stores.

Unfortunately, the company that produced BuckyBalls, Maxfield & Oberon, did not handle the situation well. At times they made reasonable replies, but at other times the company’s founder went on anti-Obama screeds  that did little to defend the company’s position and probably estranged would-be supporters.

That being said, the push on BuckyBalls may have been the CPSC’s least popular action ever. But that didn’t stop them from pushing harder. Last month they put into law a total ban of rare-earth magnet sets to take place in 2015.

BuckyBalls, as noted earlier, are not the only spherical rare-earth magnet sets on the market. Even we at the store sell sets (although not online, and they are kept in a cabinet), at least two other companies, Magnicubes and Zen Magnets, sold the magnet sets. only Zen Magnets remains.

Zen Magnets is taking a slightly more scientific approach to defending their products. Instead of lashing out in anger, the founder, Shihan Qu, actually took a closer look at the CPSC’s claim of ‘1,700 emergency room incidents’ involving spherical magnets and found something rather odd. Here is their video:

The short version is: It seems the CPSC was using a very, very loose Venn diagram of search terms used in emergency room cases (words like ‘rare’, ‘powerful’ ‘spherical’  were all accepted) and considered any case that fell into that diagram to be a spherical magnet case. On its own that is shaky research, but it gets worse when the same terminology is used on the 3 years of emergency room cases prior to Spherical Magnets being introduced and shows there were just as many cases that fall under those terms over those 3 years.

The raw data from which the CPSC extrapolated their ‘1700 cases’ can be found here with highlighting to note the period when spherical magnets were introduced and what cases are doubtless caused by ingestion or aspiration of spherical magnets (most emergency room visits did not involve surgery).

Savemagnets.com is the place to visit to see latest developments in the attempts to prevent a CPSC ban.

www.spectrum-scientifics.com