Danger of small magnets being ingested (by children)

I got half way through the vid, and I knew it was gonna make me mad.

If your kid chokes on a small toy like that,
one in which you knew there were small parts,....

YOU ARE A BAD PARENT..... PERIOD !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am so damn sick of hearing parents complainning about a product that coused harm etc.
You shouldnt buy something for your kid that could harm him,
and if you do, keep a damn eye on the kid.

Dont turn around and blame the company for making it too small.
If they had baseball sized magnets, then the parents would complain about the kid dropping them on his toes !

~John

Oops, wrong thread..

My son Loves these magnet toys. He has 3 sets. But he is 8, old enough to not try and eat them. the problem with these thing is when you have an older kid and a much younger kid. Either the older one places with toddler toys until he's 12 of there are some unsafe toys around. Its up to the parents to keep an eye on the younger kid.

The mother said, "This toy has to be recalled..." because I am a bad parent! 3 or 4 problem cases, all in very young children, out of thousands sold and they want the toy recalled. Every toy in America has a suitable age range, but that isn't good enough.

I feel really sorry for the parents whose kids got hurt/killed... But I really cant stand that they want to see a toy recalled for their own unability to watch out for their children...

Well, they should have bought Geomag... magnets don't come loose from that

...all this because of an IDIOT parent(s). These people have NO (read ZERO) common sense.
ARRRGH!
Jay

My daughter has a set of those, I've known about the issues since day one of giving it to her and so we play with them only under adult supervision and clean up help so that her baby brother never finds one of the magnets on the floor to eat.

Anybody saying that it's only bad parents that would let the younger of 2 children get ahold of one accidently have never tried to keep track of all the small parts of a toy belonging to an older child with a lot of parts! Small parts, inevtiably get dropped and lost. A magnet can come out of those plastic parts without you even noticing while putting it away. And the smaller of your children will inevitably find it on the floor.

Luckily the danger is in swallowing more than one of them at a time, or within a day or so of each other, and not just getting ahold of one.

So being stellar parents it may be possible to play with your child and a set of these and count them going into the box at the end of the playtime. Like a surgeon counting sponges This is what I do when we get them out. But no matter what you do, if this is kept in your house where your kids can play with them without you, the little pieces will get dropped and lost!

I think that some small design changes could be made to the plastics and glue used that would keep the magnets more securely attached. Much less chance that they will swallow the whole piece of plastic than the hearing aid battery sized magnet that can fall out of them. And they do fall out very easily. I have re-glued the magnets into 3 or 4 pieces now already and we dont use it very often.

Considering how easy the magnets fall out of these things it may be that they do need to be recalled. Perhaps only for households with children under 3 in them. The product does need a redesign to keep those magnets from falling out.

The fact that as a parent you might not be able to keep a lost, 8th inch diameter magnet from being found by a baby is not at issue here.

I think yes, the product is defective to an extent... but the parent clearly did not follow the warnings on the box. Where does individual responsibility begin and company liability end? Here the parent is blaming the company for something that is warned against on the box... that she blatently disregarded.

:thumbsdow to irresponsible parents.

I'd like to find 3-4 more sets of those - I got the smallest set for my son for his birthday, and he LOVES them.

Geez - there is enough dangerious stuff around here - teach your kids

Sigh

I know it's impossible to watch your kids every possible minute. It's also impossible to completely childproof your house. But this product has warnings that it's not for small children. And if we need to have understanding for imperfect parents and homes, we also need to have understanding for imperfect companies. I remember being a kid, and I considered the disassembly and/or destruction of old toys to be the most fun to be had from them. Much more entertaining than whatever their intended purpose was. Nearly any toy will eventually break under "normal" kid use. That's why the caution is there, to limit it's use to kids past the "wonder what this tastes like" stage. Recalls and lawsuits should only be used for products which are dangerous when used as designed, not just because there is some scenario of misuse which causes accidental injury.

Personally, I would probably go insane if I had to live in a world that been designed to be perfectly safe for a three year old child. I recall reading a Sci-Fi story with this theme once. The rule against allowing humans to be harmed through robot inaction led the robots to eliminate all hard surfaces, sharp corners, bad foods, risky hobbies, etc. The result was a sponge rubber covered world of inactivity and boredom.

DonShock said:

<snip>Personally, I would probably go insane if I had to live in a world that been designed to be perfectly safe for a three year old child. I recall reading a Sci-Fi story with this theme once. The rule against allowing humans to be harmed through robot inaction led the robots to eliminate all hard surfaces, sharp corners, bad foods, risky hobbies, etc. The result was a sponge rubber covered world of inactivity and boredom.

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We will all live like Pierson's Puppeteers if this current mentality persists. Safety should not outweigh sanity.

jtice said:

I am so damn sick of hearing parents complainning about a product that coused harm etc.

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Like parents buy their little kids Grand Theft Auto (that is rated M, not for people under 17) then crying about sex and violence in the game!

MATURE
Titles rated M (Mature) have content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content, and/or strong language.

normally I'd be the first to agree with you guys about it being personal responsibility. However, the warnings on the box are the standard choking on small pieces. That was not what happened to these children. The children swallowed the tiny magnets that fell out of the plastic pieces. Even if you did pick up everything, if you're not aware that the magnets can fall out you wont see them sitting in your carpet until the baby finds it.

in this particular case the plastic pieces do not hold onto their magnets.

As long as the kid didn't choke on it, most foreign objects are passed without incident. (check the diaper )These are different. If you swallow more than one of them they can stick to each other from separate loops of your intestines causing a perforation! This is a new danger, nobody ever though of this till it killed the first child.

If the magnets were glued in properly there would be no danger of this, but they are not. They are defective because the magnets come out and are much more dangerous than the obvious choking danger of the larger pieces.

There is a difference between putting a warning on a package, and shipping a defective product. My lawnmower has a warning about how dangerous the gas is, but if a particular model is prone to leaking as shown by incidents with many people, then the thing is defective, just putting a note on the package, warning may leak gas doesn't cut it. It's still defective. It's not my fault if the thing is broken and leaks gas even though I know that gas can burn. Same difference here.

ANYTHING that a child plays with will eventually break. The constant "snapping" together of magnets and steel will eventually break the magnet, the plastic, or the glue. That's common sense, not a defective product. Naturally, that creates the small parts that children may swallow if they are too young. An indestructable product would be outrageously expensive and there would still be some way to abuse it. We've gotten so spoiled by most products being tolerant of whatever abuse we put them through that whenever something does go wrong, we figure somebody must have been negligent and deserves to be sued.

If you want a $20 magnetic toy you're gling to get someting with a limited lifetime before breakage due to lower cost materials. If you want nearly indestructable ones that will last, you're going to pay closer to $100 or more. It's the parents choice. Nearly everything in life has it's pluses and minuses. If you only look at the pluses and then decide to file a lawsuit when the minuses bite you in the butt, I have little sympathy. Personally, when I decide to save money on an item, I beat myself up for not spending more when it breaks on me. I don't file a lawsuit.

"Choking hazard, not intended for childern under the age of 3"
"A two year old died from this toy"


Parents are stupid, this causes people like Jack Thompson to run around and scream "BAN ALL VIDEOGAMES", or lawsuits like these to happen.

Anyone remember "cow magnets"?

chimo said:

Anyone remember "cow magnets"?

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Chimo, iron fences, grass, static?

The veterinarians where I work (animal diagnostic lab) see a lot of cow magnets during necropsies.

Geoff