This is his side of the story. Some of it does seem shady on the side of CPSC, but my perspective is, Craig Zucker was making tons of money. Am I supposed to believe that the money he was making didn't override his better judgement at all?
Sounds like what happened at the end after his campaign failed was that instead of complying and executing the full recall, he terminated the company; taking all of the profits with him, and leaving the CPSC to clean up the mess while he laid on a beach somewhere. Now he's complaining that didn't pan out and he might have to give the money back.
Craig Zucker created a product that harmed upwards of 80 children. He created the mess, not the Commission. They were doing their job, which is to make sure that products sold in the US are safe for use.
Buckyballs were most definitely not safe, and should never have been marketed as toys for children.
If your kid is dumb enough to eat those little balls after being a toddler, or you as a parent are dumb enough to let your toddler play with them, well, that's on you.
He claims in the article that they were specifically not marketed as toys for children, and went to great trouble to ensure his retailers didn't do it either.
Craig Zucker says a lot of things that don't correspond with reality. There's a reason that this interview is posted under the Opinion section of the WSJ and not the News section--factually, it wouldn't pass muster.
I saw Buckyballs when they were on sale in stores--at Brookstone and at the Discovery Store. (I own 2 sets, they are great office toys, especially if you have metal desks.) They were definitely marketed to children--they were in the children's toy section of both stores, sold alongside other children's toys. Indeed, up until a few months ago, they were even still on sale at the LA Natural History Museuem's gift shop...in the children's toy section. There was a child playing with Buckyballs on the in-store display. The "13+" warning, assuming it was actually on the box art, was in text small enough that it was not visible without the box right up to your face.
Chemistry sets sold today are much better equipped and supplied than the ones sold when I was young, they simply cost more because they're no longer as popular.
Also, fireworks ordinances are not nanny state rules. They're fundamental safety regulations. Much of the West is subject to significantly elevated fire risks, due to a combination of ecology and a decade-long drought. I don't mean piddly little fires like you see in a bbq grill. I mean raging infernos hot and wild enough to burn an entire neighborhood to ash in under an hour.
The two primary choices for minimizing with this type of risk are: (1) force people to move out of the areas at risk, or (2) prohibit high-risk activities (such as fireworks) in areas of heightened risk. Prohibiting fireworks in high-risk areas is by far the least restrictive option available.
I'm all for throwing the book at people who knowingly market things that appear to be safe in a particular sense but are not.
Buckyballs are obviously strong magnets that are small enough to swallow. Seeing the product or hearing a two sentence description is enough information for a parent to understand that it is not suitable for children who still regularly place toys and random objects in their mouths. Young children should also not be allowed to play with knives, household/automotive chemicals, cooking appliances and sources of electricity.
Yeah, it's so obvious that Buckyballs are dangerous compared to other small items that can be swallowed, that there are people in every HN or Slashdot discussion who fail to grasp it, including this one:
"A quick search of: kid swallow lego Returns about 1.9 million results on google, I'm guessing more kids swallow legos, where is the recall order there?"
"Unless you have a gastric bypass they should be attracted to each-other in the stomach, before going anywhere where you can squeeze stuff, well assuming they where eaten during the same time."
Edit - same in the Wall Street Journal comments section:
"Anyway, what's wrong with kids eating magnets? Wouldn't they be the same as eating BB's or ball bearings? If we banned everything that kids eat, we'd have to ban dirt because kids eat a lot of that too. "
"So any toy or object smaller than a human mouth must be banned because it might be ingested by a child? How about Legos? How about marbles? Do we get rid of coins?"
I will accept that the hazards may have been insufficiently obvious prior to the warning label that states exactly what might happen to a person who eats Buckyballs. I believe the warning labels on the packaging are sufficient to entirely shift responsibility for safe use of the product to the purchaser.
The general principle I'm advocating here is that product manufacturers should not be liable for injuries when the potential hazards are either self-evident to a reasonable adult[0] or clearly marked on the packaging. This might get a bit murky when a product is marketed to young children, but as far as I can tell, Buckyballs were definitely not marketed to age groups who were likely to eat them.
The article indicates that one of these kids ingested magnets which were used to decorate a wedding cake. It's just one example... but how can you possibly be held responsible for that?
And as pointed out below, these were never marketed as toys for children.
Sounds like what happened at the end after his campaign failed was that instead of complying and executing the full recall, he terminated the company; taking all of the profits with him, and leaving the CPSC to clean up the mess while he laid on a beach somewhere. Now he's complaining that didn't pan out and he might have to give the money back.