[deliciouscoffee]

Your last line is an excellent point and really the crux of the issue. These buckyballs are marketed as a toy and widely understood to be a toy. Just glancing at the website there's "NOT A TOY" in large font but a little further down is a quote saying "There's no better desktoy". It's not surprising that there is some confusion. People just don't associate magnets with danger and the toy-ness of this product certainly doesn't help.

[lambda]

But toys aren't necessarily for kids. There are many toys which are intended for adults. Now, in some cases they may be called things other than toys (fashion accessories, schwag, sports equipment, sex toys), but at their heart, they are toys, just toys targeted to adults, not kids. Should every one of those that's dangerous be banned because it might be mistaken for a toy for a kid? Does the fact that a vibrator or handcuffs are sold as "sex toys" mean that they should meet all of the safety guidelines for children's toys?

Or should we say, maybe, that people should just exercise better judgement themselves; that people should realize that a collection of many small round magnets that are easily lost and difficult to do anything with without some fairly fine manual dexterity probably isn't the best toy for someone who might be tempted to eat them?

[jobu]

Agreed, but BuckyBalls look very harmless to most adults and kids (they're basically beads), so most people don't put much care into hiding them from young kids.

Also the Reuters story mentions one kid thought they were chocolates: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/25/us-usa-buckyballs-...