Let's Make MEGA Magnet Recalls A National Holiday

MEGA Brands is ushering in spring for the third year in a row with a massive recall of its magnet-based products.

MEGA Brands began recalling its Magnetix magnet-based toys in March 2006 with a recall of 3.8 million toys. It expanded the recall in April 2007 to include more than 4 million more units, still maintaining that any "newer" sets sold since March 2006 "better retain magnets due to improved quality control, material and design changes."

By April 2007 the company had received more than 1,500 reports of the tiny magnets coming loose from Magnetix sets' plastic pieces. Yet in its second recall, the company continued to assure consumers that its other products were safe.

Today it recalled its Magtastik and Magnetix Jr. lines and its MagnaMan Action Figures - another 2.4 million toys, for a total of 10.2 million units and roughly 13.9 bazillion tiny magnets that can lie buried in your carpet, stick to your metal chair legs, or roll under your couch until a toddler finds them.

Embattled companies can always count on some consumers to take them at their word, even if it means reading between the lines of companies' actual statements. "There has been some talk about this product being recalled, but this is not true," one major online "guide" wrote (and probably now regrets) in a review of the now-recalled Magtastik line. "In fact, it was the smaller Magnetix line which had some recalls, because those pieces could be swallowed by young children and cause problems when the magnets joined together in the digestive system. The major benefit of the Magtastik line is that the pieces are so large that they cannot be accidentally swallowed by children."

Thankfully, most of us are not so naive. Here's what has happened to MEGA's stock in the past year.

[Chart via Business Week]

Discussing the company's tarnished reputation last July, ZRecs called MEGA Brands the "Poster Child of Corporate Irresponsibility" and wrote:

Replacement toys are currently available for any Magnetix kits purchased before March 31, 2006, or those that were purchased after that date without a warning label, but the heat is not yet off the company, and there's really no reason to assume that the recall won't expand again. For now, at least, we join many others in recommending that consumers stay away from this dangerous brand.

As of today's announcements, twenty-eight children have undergone emergency surgical procedures to remove magnets from their intestines or lungs that MEGA magnetized toys put there. One of them, Kenny Sweet, Jr., died before he could be successfully treated. A pair of these magnets adhering to a child's intestinal lining causes it to rupture and poses the same danger as a gunshot wound, and can kill just as quickly once the rupture occurs.

We aren't sure why anyone would be willing to believe MEGA's assertions that any of their magnet toys are safe.

But MEGA Brands has a solution for that. Last month at the New York Toy Fair, with company stock at roughly 25% of its value during the previous year's proceedings, the company showed off samples from a new line of magnet-based toys, "MagNext," promising to raise the bar on safety in the hazard-prone product area. The new line will feature magnets molded into plastic parts rather than glued onto them, and it sounds like a good enough plan. The only lingering question is when and how it will be convenient for MEGA to agree to recall additional products still in children's hands - and on store shelves - that do not live up to this new standard of safety.

For anyone who needs a little help reading between the lines, we offer our favorite quote from Reuters' report on today's recalls, offered by company officials as a token of reassurance that MEGA is on the right track:

The company said the MagnaMan figures and the Magnetix Jr. sets were no longer in production, and that the design of the products occurred before the redesign of the Magnetix building set in 2006 [emphasis added].

Let's combine this with the statement they made nearly a year ago in that expanded recall announcement in April 2006:

Mega Brands advises that sets currently at retail better retain magnets due to improved quality control, material and design changes. These products are not included in the recall.

Of course, they were talking about Magnetix sets, not their many other lines of magnet-based products. Such is the art of recall-writing, a tortured negotiation between the Consumer Product Safety Commission and an "affected" company in which the manufacturer has most, if not all of the power. As a case in point, witness the company's recall offers, which have consistently offered unspecified, company-selected "comparable replacement toys" rather than refunds. We'll let you read between the lines on that one.

As for us, we'd like to publicly wager that by next spring, at least two of the five "current" product lines below will be involved in additional MEGA Brand recalls. Given the history of this company and this issue, it seems like a safe bet to us. How about you?