Roseart Magnetix are dangerous!
A Quote:
This letter comes from a local midwife’s client whose son was injured…
“The word needs to get out so that Roseart, the maker of Magnetix, will be forced to do the right thing by comsumers.
Magnetix is a toy building set – consisting of marbel-sized metal ball bearings and posts and other shapes, which have magnets encased in the ends / corners – intended to be used by children for building toy structures. Some of the shapes break easily, letting the small but very strong magnets fall out.
There is a ‘small parts choking hazard’ for children 3 and under on the box, but no other warnings. The recommended age for this product listed on the label is 6-100. I have not heard of any choking deaths from magnetix, but there have been several serious injuries (in children as old as 8!)and at least one death from the swallowing (ingestion) of the magnets. There has also been one serious injury, requiring surgery, from inhaling two of the magnets.
My son was seriously injured last month, when he swallowed two of the magnets, resulting in a bowel obstruction, which put him in critical condition and required him to have surgery.
I met with the investigator from the CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission) sent to investigate my complaint. A recent press release from this agency looked like a recall had occured, however, the Magnetix ‘recall’ is NOT a true recall.
Apparently, Roseart has implemented a voluntary replacement program. If a comsumer wants to exchange the toy, Roseart will give them a free replacement toy with parts too big to be swallowed. Other than an obscure icon on Roseart’s website linking parents to this information, Roseart is not advertising – either via the media or in the stores about this program or the dangers of the toy. It’s up to the public to figure it out and contact the company.
Roseart was notified in early Novermber of 2005 about a child’s bowel injury/surgery from swallowing the magnets. Roseart did NOTHING to change the warning on the label or to warn the public – even after another boy died from the same type of injury on Thankgsgiving Day later that month!
Roseart KNEW of this danger and did NOTHING to protect children. They just sat there and sold as much as they could for Christmas – and they are still selling!
Then, in an interview, Roseart LIED when they said they had no knowledge of any other injuries or deaths prior to the 2-year-old’s death on Thanksgiving day.
Dangerous Magneitx sets are STILL on the store shelves with inadequate warning labels.
Magnetix is a popular toy and big money maker. How many kids are going to have to die or be seriously injured before the toy gets recalled!?
If your child has been injured, at least make the CPSC aware of it by making a report on-line or by mail (see their website www.cpsc.gov ). You don’t have to take any legal action, but do report the incident. You can even choose to have your name kept private. The number of incidents reported affects the action the CPSC can take against the manufacturer. You can also use this website to check for recalled products.
There are several lawsuits nationwide in different stages of the process, but publicity that puts pressure on Roseart from any source will help.
PLEASE, email/tell everyone you know – whether they have kids or not – about the dangers of Magnetix and about Roseart’s apparent lack of concern for our children. They are profitting off of us, at the expense of our children’s safety.
Contact your local TV stations and ask why they are not reporting on this danger to children, and on Roseart’s lack of integrity.
Talk to the managers of the stores that carry Magnetix – better yet – send/hand them letters & contact the main offices of the corporations. Ask them why they are still selling this dangerous toy. Remind them that even though there hasn’t been a mandatory recall, the store can be sued right along with the manufacturer for injuries and deaths resulting from products they sell, so taking Magnetix off the shelves would be in the store’s best interest – not to mention children’s best interest.
Get the word out any way you can.
Believe it or not, it is actually less costly for big corporations to just keep selling the toy and use a portion of the profit to keep the victims tied up in the court with endless, costly legal battles. Bad publicity is the only way to make it less expensive for Roseart to do right by the victims than to keep on selling its dangerous products to our kids.”
**All About the Horrors of Magnetix**
Please go to this site which has more details including official press releases, on the dangers of Magnetix and toys with small magnets. As the victim’s mother says above, let’s stop this from happening to more kids!
http://spaces.msn.com/magnetscankill/
cotton candy makers catching fire, soap making kits giving children 2nd and 3rd degree burns, and now life altering surgery and death. when will someone shut this company down.
My son just swallowed one of the small magnets that popped out of the rod end. The Doc is not concerned and wants to wait until it passes. The xray showed the magnet obviously in his stomach. I will be letting the cpsc know about this. We will be watching and waiting. My heart goes out to other parnets and children who have been seriously affected by this product.
These products need to be removed permantently, they are defective!
I suggest that rather than try to get a company to pull a highly entertaining and eduational toy from the market, you read what you are buying and evaluate your buying decisions based on the maturity level of your child. The recommended age is only a guideline for the average consumer. I can’t phathom why anyone who has a child of any age who puts none food items in their mouth would buy any toy small enough to do such with. Jelly Beans are choking hazards too.
To Mary:
The point of this post is not that they’re a choking hazard. The point is that it goes beyond a simple choking hazard to a much more severe hazard if the child swallows more than one of them. That could cause the intestines to adhere and have serious – even lethal – problems.
And THIS hazard is NOT on the label.
dpenguin
If the recommended minimum age on a product is 6, and your child is trying to eat the toy, then I’ll chance a guess that your child is younger than 6. (If your child is older than 6, and is still trying to eat their toys, magnets should be the least of your concerns.)
As for the claim that a more stringent warning needs to be on the package, what would you suggest? “Warning: Eating more than one magnet at a time may cause serious health problems since magnets stick together by virtue of being magnetic”? This additional warning would create any further impediments to toy-eating kids, and if adults are too stupid to know that the main property of magnets is that they are magnetic, what the **** are they doing having children in the first place?
I don’t normally defend corporations and agree that most of them will gladly write off a few human lives due to cost benefit analyses. But I also have little patience with an infantilized culture that supplants common sense with ubiquitous warning labels.
Pardon me, but you don’t seem to understand the problem.
The magnets fall out of the casing that holds them into the coloured plastic pieces. If the toy was not breaking due to poor quality, then the magnets would not be on the floor, and potentially in a small childs mouth. The toy is defective.
We have two sets of this toy here, (exciled to the junk pile in the garage) So I do fully understand the problem.
Also, it should be noted, that Roseart/Megabloks did not give everyone the chance to return their defective sets. They only offered a trade to children of the age that still might ‘mouth’ a toy. The toy they offered in return was well, in a word infantile. My 6 year old was not able to trade his in as Megabloks did not offer a toy substitue for his age group. (hence why they are now in the garage pile. We have other smaller children in our house, so the toy had to go, for safetys sake.
But I digress.
Numerous phone calls to roseart, and each time they reacted as if they were hearing about the broken magnets for the first time.
They are a dishonest company, and care very little about children, Megabloks/Roseart/Megabrands are only concerned about building cheap knock offs of European toys and taking the money to the bank. Period.
My son is now 7, and recently had a birthday party. On the invitations to his classmates he made two requests of his party guests.
“If you send a gift, please no weapons, and no products made by Megabloks/Roseart.”
All of the parents enquired as to why he requested this, and I gladly dragged out his broken Magnetix to show them and told the story of little Kenny Sweet. They were horrified. Word of mouth is a wonderful thing.