Press Releases
10/2015 Status Update: Compliance Micromagnets, Final Zens & Neos, Battle Summary
Sup with Zen Magnets?
Well, we’ve shipped no sets of magnet spheres for the past seven months. And although it’s not technically illegal to sell Zen Magnets or Neoballs in the US, we can’t import more due to the magnet ban. The very last of our supply of Zens and Neos will be available this November (for email notification, click here), and after that we won’t have more until we succeed in defeating the ban. And that’s only one of our three simultaneous legal battles.
Compliance Magnets
In the meantime, we’ve begun accepting orders for our new Compliance Magnets. They are still magnet spheres that can be used for construction, and they will ship in time for the holiday season. Compliance Magnets will obey, conform, and abide by all CPSC regulations but still be capable of most of the same structures as Zen magnets. Find details at micromagnets.com.
But to be clear, these new tiny magnets are Not designed for ease of use, they are designed to fit inside the regulatory limits set by the CPSC. They are not a substitute for Zen Magnets, for which our fight continues. Given a choice between Compliance Magnets and no magnets at all, we choose Compliance Magnets. But don’t get us wrong. The CPSC’s attempt to remove proper magnet spheres from the US market for all ages, in all states, is still disproportionately irrational regulation championed by unelected regulators, based on dishonest data and baseless assumptions, to create unclear, ineffectual rules, despite the greatest historical public opposition. Meanwhile Europe is still laughing at the US for banning Kinder Eggs.
Battle Summary
Our current legal situation is summarized as follows:
Battle 1: Awaiting results. This was our December 2014 court battle. The judge must decide whether or not we have to recall currently sold products. A judgement was to be rendered as early as March 2015, but as of now we’re still waiting. The results will greatly affect the other two fights.
Battle 2: Early stages. We are appealing the nationwide all-ages rule that effectively bans magnet spheres. This is by far the most expensive battle, and our new product is largely to fund this legal challenge. But a product safer than skateboards should not be harder to obtain than guns. This is the most important one to win.
Battle 3: Just started. We get vindictively sued for purchasing raw fungible magnets from Magnicube, who was bullied into settling, even though the magnets came from the same factory we use for Neoballs, and we only used the same thing that would have been ok to purchase directly from China. They pulled the neat trick of labeling magnet spheres dangerous based on the bullied settlement of a fallen competitor, without any judge evaluating the merits. A large portion of our neoballs are now “stained” by recall until the outcome of this battle, which means we will only have a small portion of our Neoballs for sale by the end of year.
Magnets must be respected, but need not be feared.
💙 Zen Magnets
4/2015 CPSC’s Magnet Sphere Ban Lasted 17 hours [Edit: It’s back]
As of right now there *is* a Magnet Import/Manufacturing Ban, we’re still in it to win it.*
[Edit 5/6/2015: Tenth Circuit Lifts Stay on CPSC’s Magnets Rule via National Law Review]
[Edit 4/19/2015: Two Cheers for the Tenth Circuit via Forbes]
[Edit 4/9/2015: Also reported on Westword, NY Times, Denver Post]
“The enforcement and effect of the Safety Standard for Magnet Sets is temporarily stayed until further order of the court.” On April 1st, 2015, at 4:50 pm MST the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals granted our Motion for Stay, which temporarily nullified the magnet ban. See the order here. We’d have told you on the 1st, but nobody would have believed it wasn’t an April fools joke.
Historically, stays of this sort are very rarely granted, since courts generally tend to maintain the effect of safety standards while they are being contested. It’s especially noteworthy that the Tenth Circuit granted the stay three hours after we submitted our 20 page motion requesting the stay.
It’s far from time to post the “Mission Accomplished” banner, but this is a giant and tangible indicator of momentum. The temporary but indefinite ruling represents the first judgment outside of the CPSC’s walls which affects US consumers. While we cannot speculate what the Court might be considering, if the Court thought we had a losing argument it seems unlikely that it would have granted the stay.
Although there is no active import and manufacturing ban as of now, that doesn’t mean we can return to business as usual. The continued threat of a ban is itself an impediment to business; magnet sphere companies in the US are necessarily cautious about purchasing large quantities of magnets which take months to manufacture. We simply cannot risk driving full speed in the dark without knowing if a wall lies ahead.
How long until we’ll be selling Zen Magnets again? Hard to say. If we do attempt to manufacture more magnets during this stay, the quantities will be moderate. We’ll know a lot more
Although we are not selling Zen Magnets right now (4/3/2015), we do have enough funds to continue fighting, thanks to wonderful supporters such as yourself. As of right now, neither the CPSC website nor the Federal Register accurately reflect that the ban is currently suspended.
Stay tuned at newsletter.zenmagnets.com.
Magnets must be respected, but need not be feared.
❤ Zen Magnets
* We don’t have enough Zen Magnets to sell, more accurately. Especially since we give away an average of 3 sets per day through the Zen Gallery and various contests. We’re saving the last of our best as fuel for passion and creativity. Star our emails and you’ll be the first to know when Zen Magnets are once again for sale. We do however still have Neoballs for sale at Neoballs.com, and we’ll continue shipping and selling until they are sold out.
8/2014 We Will Fight Until The End
1847 points on reddit.
Zen Magnets is now the last surviving magnet sphere company still selling, standing, and fighting in the United States.
Buckyballs settled their lawsuit months ago. And news of Magnicube’s settlement comes today. They’re both out of the fight.
We’re at a critical crossroads between two options.
Behind Door #1: Shutdown & Stop-sales.
This makes the most sense from a business perspective. We exit the business as soon as possible with as much as possible, at the recommendation of nearly every lawyer and consultant we’ve talked to. We comply. We recall. The unique “Warnings don’t work” argument goes unchallenged in court. Nobody else stands in the way of the magnet ban rule-making. The CPSC sets the precedent of dodging the most public objection the agency has ever received for any single action item. The CPSC wins it’s gamble.
Behind Door #2: All-In for the Conscience.
Fight for: Warnings and Consent, Democracy, and beautiful spherical magnets. Because how others treat you is their Karma, but how you react is your Karma. Because the beauty and wonder that magnets generate is worth a rescue effort. Magnet spheres work exactly as they are supposed to, and nearly everybody (over 99.99%) is able to use them safely. Statistical polls show consumers would rather see a ban of tobacco, than an all-ages nation-wide non-consensual market removal of magnet sets used for art and education. We can sleep without regret, knowing that as the last company standing, Zen Magnets fought for what was right.
Nothing rational lies in between these two options, as costs and cortisol levels only go up from here on.
Warnings
The paramount issue in this case is the CPSC’s argument that warnings don’t work, alleging that “No warnings or instructions could be devised that would effectively communicate the [ingestion] hazard so that the warnings and instructions could be understood and heeded by consumers to reduce the number of magnet ingestion incidents.” (Second Amended Complaint, ¶ 89) This issue alone makes an influential case with vast implications, as warnings are the traditional method used to encourage public safety.
Warnings are an agreement between a customer and product. The consumer retains the benefit of using and choosing a product, in exchange for the responsibility of doing so. And by assuming people are unable to follow or understand instructions — despite the lack of confirmed injuries linked to Zen Magnets — the CPSC makes the judgment that the American Population is not worthy or capable of deciding for themselves. By alleging that magnets “have low utility to customers” (SAC¶ 105) and are “not necessary to consumers” (SAC¶ 106) is non-consensually replacing a consumer’s judgment with a value judgement of it’s own.
It does not matter if you are a parent who knows your child can safely handle magnets. It does not matter if you don’t have children and want to use magnets at your own home. It does not matter if you’re a professor looking to build sculptures for demonstrations of molecular bonding or platonic solids. The CPSC is seeking no middle ground on the subject, and assumes with great prejudice, that the American population cannot be trusted to ever keep magnets out of the mouths of their children. As if magnets are the first product to be dangerous if misused by an audience it is not intended for.
Democracy
Then there’s the fact that removing magnet sets from the market is the single most unpopular action item ever sought by the CPSC. And isolated from all other points, this fact alone warrants that the federal agency be challenged. Even those who are not interested in magnets (yet) will still have a vested interest in the accountability of their Consumer Product Safety Commission.
A peek at comments on related news will show a clear consensus against magnet prohibition. Statistically, PPP and Google Consumer Surveys have shown 9/10 consumers disagree artistic educational magnet sets should be prohibited to all ages. As required for the rule-making process*, the CPSC must receive public comments. In the rule-making for magnets, they received over 2,500 comments which were nearly all against banning magnets. These 2,500 comments represent more than half the comments ever received by the agency in its history.
And while we’ve received countless messages of encouragement, CPSC Commissioner Robert Adler reports to having received thousands of emails angry emails in objection. Adler, the reappointed chairman of the CPSC, “considers himself a pragmatist” and says he’s concerned about “resentment among members of the public.” When confronted about balloons having a greater incident rate than magnet spheres while sharing similar warning attributes, Adler says “we should be looking at balloons [too.]”
Magnets
Magnet spheres are not defective, they work exactly as they are supposed to. Strong to hold formation. Round to allow connections at non-fixed angles. Used en masse for endless possibilities. There is absolutely no replacement or substitute for magnet spheres, nothing has the same dynamic tactile abilities that magnet spheres do. And to say that the appeal of magnets, is itself a problem, is entirely throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
The harm of products can be categorized in to three groups. There are products that are meant to cause harm. These are products like guns, pepper spray, brass knuckles, tasers, warships, and most other products that come out of the military industrial complex. There are products that may be reasonably expected cause harm, even if used responsibly. Alcohol, tobacco, trampolines, skateboards, ATVs, skis, snowboards. Things with warnings that say “Using this is inherently dangerous”. And then there are products that are only dangerous if misused. This is the category that every other product falls under, including magnet spheres. Anything can cause harm if misused.
By forcefully insisting on a comprehensive ban, instead of negotiating age labeling, or collaborating on an educational campaign, this becomes no longer a legal discussion about safety. This is about the US Government’s stance on whether or not art and education is a valid use for magnets, when it has no right to usurp the decision of “usefulness” from individuals in the first place. Having built a business on strong spherical magnets, we’ve seen first-hand that art and education are not only valid uses, but some of the best uses for magnets.
Vow to Fight
Take this as official notice that Zen Magnets LLC is going All-in, and taking “Door #2” as described above. We will not settle for any sort of stop-sale of magnets that are perfectly safe when not misused. The hearing is set for December, and we are committed to taking this influential case to trial.
We vow to continue this legal, awareness, and lobbying battle, until our very last drop of cash-flow blood. We will combat the CPSC’s magnet prohibition until triumph, or until a glorious death of insolvency on the legal battlefield. At the very least, we’ll have one more holiday season of availability.
Magnets must be respected, but need not be feared.
-Shihan Qu
Founder, Zen Magnets
*It’s important to understand that the CPSC’s attempted to remove magnets from the US market is two pronged. The lawsuit is to force a recall & stop sale. Then there is the rulemaking, which tries to enact the ban. The CPSC won’t be able to ban magnets until after the lawsuit ends (or else risk showing prejudice as the appellant body of the complaint.) Were we to stop fighting, the magnet ban would pass with nobody left to push back.
8/2012 RE: Your letter requesting us to shut down
1687 points on reddit.
If you would like to help stop the magnet prohibition, please go to savemagnets.com.
8/1/12
RE: Your letter requesting us to shut down.
Dear CPSC,
It’s unusual for a response to the CPSC to be open and transparent to the world. But these are unusual circumstances indeed. Let me start by reminding the CPSC and the public:
- We have had exactly ZERO ingestion incidents; our magnets have never injured.
- We have never referred to our product as a toy, or marketed as such.
- We have never put our product on toy shelves, where kids can grab them and shove them in the faces of their parents.
Obviously we are being punished because children have regretfully misused our competitor’s magnets, which are similar in size and strength to ours. On 6/25/12, the CPSC Commissioners who have been in office for 3 years decided they would launch an unusually harsh administrative complaint lawsuit against Buckyballs; an action that hasn’t been pulled out of the CPSC arsenal for 11 years. Of over 2 million sets of Buckyballs sold in the past 3 years; there have been less than two dozen injuries. Buckyballs have always featured an ingestion warning. [Edit 6/8/12: Zen Magnets has now also recieved a CPSC Administrative Complaint. We are the first company to ever recieve this prior to any record of injury.]
Meanwhile, there will be about 100,000 injuries every year in the United States due to backyard trampolines which require Emergency Room treatment, and trampolines are marketed to children. The United States has over 5,000 childhood gun related deaths in a year. 30 American children will die from drowning in Buckets every year. And there have been more skateboard fatalities in 1 year than magnet sphere related injuries in 3.
In comparison, we have sold much less volume than Buckyballs, but magnitude of interest is comparable. If you go on Flickr which is the largest public photo sharing site, you’ll find 16000+ photos tagged with “Buckyballs” and 13000+ photos tagged with “Zen Magnets”. A search on YouTube shows 7150 videos of “Buckyballs”, and 4250 videos for searches of “Zen Magnets”. Despite these comparable gauges of interest, we have had exactly Zero ingestion incidents. By the way, if video views are any indicator of public reach, there are 7 times more views for the first Zen Magnets video, than all 86 CPSC YouTube Videos combined.
Not only is it unusual for the CPSC to target a product with such low risks, it’s unusual for the CPSC to target related companies that have caused no injuries. It’s also unusual for:
- *The CPSC, in citing the dangers of magnets, to cite sources that directly contradict the actions of the CPSC. The author said, “I don’t want the magnetic balls recalled because they are not broken products.”
- *Your badged federal agent, field investigator [Name Redacted] who came to visit our office in May, to say that she “Found our case to be extremely irregular … [she] didn’t agree with what was happening to us, and that she was only doing her job.” By the way, don’t fire her for showing some humanity. She was just doing her job, and seemed like a cool person.
*DozensHundreds of essays to be written against your recall and stop-sale requests. AndHundredsThousands to petition in protest of the magnet prohibition.
Considering the documented therapeutic, artistic and educational benefits, there must be some context in which magnet spheres can be sold, right? It would much be less ridiculous if the CPSC was trying to pass regulation that required some sort of age verification similar to video game sites and movie sites. Even if magnets were to be regulated like tobacco (which would still be crazy), it would be more rational than the full on request to “immediately stop manufacturing, importing, distributing, and selling… and recall all products”.
Nobody disagrees with the CPSC when a stroller that pinches fingers is recalled, or toys with mechanical defects are recalled, or a coffee pot that burns people is recalled. But the current decision makers at the CPSC lack perspective in their current attempts to ban magnets. The CPSC is an important arm of the US Federal government, it “Protects the public from unreasonable risks of injury or death” from thousands of types of products. The keyword here is “unreasonable”, and while I agree that magnets are more dangerous than push pins or staples, the CPSC has shown no attempt to perform a cost-benefit analysis, and is fully failing its utilitarian duties. How much societal damage results from the slippery slope of absolving parents from the responsibility to read warnings? How many tax payer dollars have been wasted trying to minimize risks that are already insignificant? How much will the CPSC’s diminished public respect affect it’s organization’s safety goals?
We’ve complied with your invasive investigations, except for the part where you requested the names and addresses of each and every one of our customers. We checked with a few of our customers, and they were insulted that you even asked. In your letter to us, you say that “The Staff will make every effort to work closely and cooperatively with the firm [to] protect the public while at the same time create a minimum burden and inconvenience for the firm.” How kind of you. It would certainly be a big burden if we couldn’t sell the only product we provide. All things considered, we are requesting that the CPSC “cooperate” by complying with the demands of the public petition at savemagnets.com, and retract the stop-sale requests sent to all magnet sphere brands and retailers. The solution to the dangers of magnets is education, not prohibition. Even though there have been no ingestion incidents or injuries involving Zen Magnets, we’d love to work with the CPSC to ensure the continued safety of our customers if you have more reasonable requests.
You know our numbers. We’re a small company, and we have no investors to back us. If you drew the litigative sword to our necks, we don’t have the resources to defend. The squeakiest gear gets the oil; if you slice us down, the last of our company’s efforts will be to siren this injustice before we fall.
Again, we have served millions of magnets and there have been exactly zero ingestion incidents. I urge those within the CPSC to think twice before applying the death penalty to innocent corporate citizens. See below for the growing list of letters submitted against the CPSC’s magnet prohibition.
-Shihan Qu
Founder of Zen Magnets