Mega Brands fined $1M for Magnetix reporting

By Staff -- Playthings, 4/15/2009 9:46:00 AM

WASHINGTON—Mega Brands had agreed to pay a $1.1 million civil penalty to settle allegations by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission that the toymaker failed to report safety issues with the Magnetix magnetic building system in a timely manner prior to its initial recall in March 2006.

In agreeing to settle the matter, Livingston, N.J.-based Mega Brands America and its parent, Mega Brands Inc. of Montreal, Canada, contend that Mega Brands did not know of the Magnetix defect at the time it acquired original marketer Rose Art in June 2005 and that Rose Art’s prior owners never advised Mega Brands of the problems associated with Magnetix.

“Safety is our No. 1 priority," said Harold Chizick, the company's vice president of marketing told the Associated Press. "We're happy to have worked with the CPSC to have come to an agreement."

The settlement follows a CPSC investigation of the timeline of Rose Art’s revelations about safety issues with its Magnetix toys that found discrepancies between what the toymaker reported to the CPSC and what it actually knew.

Rose Art’s “initial report” about potential safety issues with its Magnetix toys was given to the CPSC in December 2005. It noted only that a 22-month-old child from the state of Washington had died due to ingesting multiple magnets that fell out of pieces from a Magnetix set and that Rose Art attributed the magnets falling out to unusually abusive play by the toddler’s older siblings, according to the CPSC.

A CPSC subpoena later revealed that Rose Art had by December 2005 received more than 1,100 consumer complaints that magnets had fallen out of pieces from dozens of different Magnetix models, including at least one report of an injury due to magnet ingestion prior to the toddler’s death in Washington state.

After filing a “full report” in February 2006—one that CPSC says “again lacked incident and product information as Rose Art stated it did not retain any complaint or incident records”—the toymaker finally announced a recall of nearly 4 million Magnetix sets for users under the age of 6 on March 31, 2006. By the time of that March 2006 recall, Rose Art had had received more than 1,500 complaints of magnets falling out of plastic pieces in more than 65 different models of Magnetix, according to the CPSC.

In April 2007, Mega Brands America expanded the recall of Magnetix sets for users of any age, after more than 25 children suffered intestinal injuries that required surgery to remove the magnets. In March 2008, a recall involving Magnetix Jr., Magtastic and MagnaMan lines was announced due to problems with magnets coming loose from those toys. No injuries were reported in connection to the March 2008 recall.

Federal law requires toymakers to report to CPSC within 24 hours after obtaining information “reasonably supporting the conclusion that a product contains a defect which could create a substantial product hazard, creates an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death, or violates any consumer product safety rule, or any other rule, regulation, standard, or ban enforced by CPSC.”

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