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ArcticMyst Security by Avery

save the magnet spheres!

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One person can completely ruin or take away a product with their negligence and stupidity. Granted, accidents happen, and I don't think anybody actually FED their child magnets/polymer beads, but if they had taken proper precautions there wouldn't be a problem

There is a case of a woman leaving a small bottle of nicotine that she used for mixing with her vaping fluid... child drank it, died of overdose.

What gets me is, of course it's a tragedy, but it's also pretty extreme negligence, and not only did no one face consequences for that, but now the company that made the nicotine fluid will likely be shut down due to legal costs. :undecided:
 





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Sorry for the necro-post but I thought this thread needed an update.

I didn't even know about Zen Magnets until I read this thread a year ago and I found out that their sale had been banned. I subscribed to their legal battle updates anyway, figuring that they'd never be available again.

This morning I found an email from them stating that the 10th circuit court of appeals has overturned the ban, and the 5mm magnets are for sale again.

I went berserk and pre-ordered the Mandala set plus some booster sets.

Thanks to all the above posters for alerting me to yet another toy that I didn't know I needed. :thanks:

Ed
 
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I remember when these spiked in popularity a few years ago, I bought a set but after a while I lost the magnets one by one every now and then lol. Fun little things to play around with though, it can really help if you have a habit of fiddling with things ;)
 

Benm

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Well, it's nice that thas has been legally resolved in the US, but aren't these the kind of thing you buy from DX or ebay by the bucketload?

It's fairly idiotic consider something not meant for consumption a hazard when someone eats it. And these are actually not that dangerous as long as you eat only -one-. Try that with a small self-tapping screw, thumb tack, or something of similar size and you'd probably have a problem.

And how many people actually die from this anyway?

Personally i like the 'killed by coconut falling on your head' statistic as a nice reference. Initially it was estimated that 150 or so people died from coconut strikes a year worldwide. The practical number is far lower, possabliy about a dozen, but still far greater than death by swallowed magnet ;)
 
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Well, it's nice that thas has been legally resolved in the US, but aren't these the kind of thing you buy from DX or ebay by the bucketload?

Possibly, but I think, from reading the previous posts, that the Zen Magnets company that imports these into the US has a much tighter quality control standard to insure that the coating and sizing is more precise resulting in better patterns and shapes. See the comparison of the Zen Mags with the Buckyballs in post #14 above.

Ordering directly from China, though cheaper, I think you'd more likely get something like the Buckyballs set or worse. ZM sorts theirs critically and sells the oversized ones separately with a warning that they won't make as nice patterns and shouldn't be mixed with the regular sets.

Ed
 
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Unfortunately I mixed mine up, but have about a couple of thousand of them combined... In terms of quality, the magnets from Zen are best, followed by bucky balls, and in last place the ones you order from china.

In terms of price chinese are unbeatable, so it really depends on what you're trying to do. If you're after complex, rather than just large shapes, going with zen magnets would be best. Chinese magnets have horrible geometry by comparison, but hey, they are still strong little magnets, and are a lot of fun.
 

Benm

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Oic, i never though the tolerances on chinese magnets were that bad, but then again i never composed this out of hundreds or thousands of them ;)

I reckon the biggest problem is variation between production runs - if you order 100 of them now and another 100 half a year later they could be more different from eachother than ones in the same batch.
 
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Just FYI, those are 2.5mm, half the size of the zen magnets and bucky balls. Still great, but somewhat harder to do stuff with.
 




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