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Buckyballs

Though desk toys are obviously marketed toward a slightly more mature audience, that doesn’t mean they’re guaranteed to keep kids away from the surgeon’s knife. Buckyballs were “super strong” magnetic ball bearings that could be used to construct creative desk sculptures or even “to play ‘darts’ on your refrigerator.” While that part was true, the whole “stress reliever” marketing angle proved far more ironic. Unfortunately, these round magnets slid easily down youngsters’ gullets. When multiple magnets were swallowed, they had the nasty tendency to clamp together through intestinal walls and not let go. This could lead to tears in organs, blood poisoning, bowel blockages, and possible death. Due to the large number of balls in each set, it was also difficult for parents to notice when a handful of them may have gone missing inside Junior. And accidental ingestion wasn’t limited just to the tykes, either. Teenagers routinely played around with them to mimic tongue and lip piercings. The government ultimately deemed Buckyballs a danger to consumers. But unlike the 1,000 or so children who required surgery to remove their product, the Buckyballs manufacturer didn’t take that lying down. In fact, they refused to voluntarily recall their product, forcing the feds to sue. When the inventor dissolved his company rather than fund a recall, the government came after him personally in an effort to collect the $57 million in costs. After a bunch of posturing on both sides of the argument, the inventor settled for about 1 percent of that figure.