Update: More from CNET.
Well, the nanny state bureaucrats did it--they've run another successful American small business into the ground.
BuckyBalls are a desktop magnetic toy, and they're ingenious. They're basically tiny magnets in a variety of colors and shapes--balls, cubes, and rods.
They are targeted at adults, and they've been highly successful. Two entrepreneurs in an apartment with $2,000 started the company in 2009, and in a short period of time BuckyBalls became highly successful, sold in specialty retail stores.
But the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) came after them, and despite the fact that BuckyBalls has jumped through every hoop presented to them by CPSC, finally this year CPSC dropped the hammer. You can read the whole story, in detail, at this link.
Because a very small number of children were injured through misuse of the product and the failure of adults to be responsible, a perfectly great product is taken off the market.
This is everything that is wrong with the nanny state Big Government system, and every believer in freedom and individual responsibilty should be outraged.
I'm not at all surprised about Inez Tenenbaum (read the story). She's an ideological leftie from South Carolina, and since I'm from SC, I pay attention to SC politics. Tenenbaum ran for Senate against free-market hero Jim DeMint, for instance. And she otherwise has been a nanny state bureaucrat in SC before getting promoted to running an arm of the nanny state in Washington.
While pulling some of their best products from the market, BuckyBalls plans to continue to fight the CPSC, and those who believe in freedom should support them in any way that they can.
The BuckyBalls saga is everything that is wrong with the Big Government nanny state in microcosm. And it's another example of the Obama administration putting a small business out of business.