After at least 12 cases of children swallowing small magnets resulted in surgery, the Consumer Product Safety Commission sued to ban the sale of Buckyballs and Buckycubes last week.

While Buckyballs and Buckycubes are reportedly marketed as desk toys for working adults here in Pennsylvania and throughout the U.S., they are essentially packages of very small magnets and the CPSC believes that they are a very defective and dangerous product in the hands of younger children.

Major retailers who sell the magnets, including Amazon, Brookstone and Urban Outfitters, have already agreed to stop selling the products at the request of the CPSC.

It is very unusual for the CPSC to make such a bold move, and this signifies just how dangerous the agency believes these magnets to be. In fact, the CPSC has only filed an administrative complaint like this once in the past decade to seek to stop the sale of a product. That case was to halt the sales of a BB gun manufacturer.

The CPSC wrote in its Buckyball and Buckycubes complaint that when the magnets are swallowed, they can perforate the intestines or pinch the intestinal walls. This can cause serious injury or death.

Buckyballs and Buckycubes represent $50 million in business for Maxfield & Oberton Holdings, which reportedly makes no other product.

The CPSC said that warnings on the product have not been effective. And as such it has asked the company to stop selling the products, refund money to those who have purchased the products and post a notice on its e-commerce sites to say the products are defective.

Of course, those who have children who have been injured by Buckyballs or Buckycubes may also want to talk to a products liability attorney about recovering damages and holding the manufacturer responsible.

The company has not yet filed a response.

Source: ABA Journal, "In Unusual Move, Consumer Agency Sues to Bar Sales of Buckyballs,"