The Feds vs. Craig Zucker: regulators pursue a vendetta against the creator of Buckyballs.

• Author: Epstein, Jim
• Position: Reason TV

In 2009 Buckyballs, a desk toy comprised of tiny, powerful magnets, started flying off the shelves and into the shopping baskets of fidgety-handed customers. Serial entrepreneur Craig Zucker, the product's creator, saw it reach $10 million in sales that year. By 2009 Maxfield & Oberton, the company Zucker co-founded, had grown its distribution network to 5,000 stores. Two years later, the mini-magnets were still gaining market share, and People named them one of the five hottest trends of 2011.

Today Buckyballs are a sad chapter in the history of consumer product regulation. The federal Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) drove Maxfield & Oberton out of business on shaky grounds. Now the agency is targeting Zucker himself in what appears to be retaliation for speaking out about the case.

Maxfield & Oberton's troubles started in July 2012, when the CPSC began legal proceedings to ban and recall Buckyballs on the grounds that the toy was dangerous for children. If swallowed, the magnets can cause internal bleeding because they attract each other when lodged in a person's bowels or intestinal tract. But banning the product was "statistically ridiculous," as a July 2012 report in The Huffington Post explained. There were 22 reported incidents of ingested Buckyballs from March 2009 through October 2011, or one for every 100,000 sets sold. That makes the product orders of magnitude less risky than dogs, tennis, skateboarding, and poisonous household chemicals. Furthermore, Buckyballs were clearly labeled, "Keep Away From All Children."

Determined to drive the product off

the market, the CPSC started reaching out to Maxfield & Oberton's retail partners, including Brookstone and Urban Outfitters, requesting that they stop selling the toys. In what the company described as "a last-ditch effort to regain CPSC's favor and to save its business," Maxfield & Oberton offered to expand its safety program by putting more warnings on the product, distributing a childproof case, and giving Buckyballs a bitter flavor to dissuade kids from putting them in their mouths. The day after the company submitted this plan, the CPSC filed an administrative complaint seeking a total recall of the product.

Rather than suck up to regulators in the hope that they might spare his company, Zucker went on a publicity tour, appearing on national TV and radio to defend his product and speak out against the CPSC's bullying tactics. On its website, Maxfield & Oberton...