How small are those spheres exactly? They look like toys, or candy. Small children love to swallow things, especially small round non-pointy things, and someone's kid dying or merely getting serious lifelong intestinal damage from swallowing small powerful magnets (like neodymium magnets are), due to intestinal pinching, is no joke. It doesn't matter to a kid if the original product came with a warning label or consent form or not.
Muscle cars, whiskey, full-size swords, chemicals don't look like toys, and aren't as likely to be played with by especially small children. Small separated magnets, especially any that happened to fall and roll across the floor out of sight, seem like a greater risk to me.
They should not be played with where any of the things you mention may come into play. Period. People need to be responsible, and it really isn't on the magnet companies to ensure that. Their job is to develop a product and then responsibly label and market it in such a way that people are reasonably informed that these are not for kids. Sorry, I don't buy the "well they look like candy, so gotta protect the kids" argument.
The witch hunt for these things is ridiculous, and does not stand up to scrutiny - Dogs are statistically over 120 times more dangerous than Buckyball magnet sets. Should we ban dogs? This is simply a case of someone championing their cause because they can, not because it's the right thing to do.
I mean look at The Mandala Set that Zen Magnets sells? http://zenmagnets.com/the-mandala-set/
How small are those spheres exactly? They look like toys, or candy. Small children love to swallow things, especially small round non-pointy things, and someone's kid dying or merely getting serious lifelong intestinal damage from swallowing small powerful magnets (like neodymium magnets are), due to intestinal pinching, is no joke. It doesn't matter to a kid if the original product came with a warning label or consent form or not.
Muscle cars, whiskey, full-size swords, chemicals don't look like toys, and aren't as likely to be played with by especially small children. Small separated magnets, especially any that happened to fall and roll across the floor out of sight, seem like a greater risk to me.