Consumer Products Officials Target Former Business Owner Who Mocked Them

Nobody makes fun of the state

A year ago I wrote: "It's rare for a regulated company to mount open and disrespectful resistance to a federal regulatory agency, but that's what the maker of BuckyBalls, the popular desktop magnetic toy, is doing in response to the Consumer Product Safety Commission's effort to ban its product." The maker in question had devised cheeky, sarcastic ads asking why other products with injurious potential (coconuts, hot dogs) weren't banned on the CPSC's logic.

One reason it's rare to mount open and disrespectful resistance to a federal agency is that agencies have so many ways to make businesspeople's lives unhappy. This spring, breaking new legal ground, the CPSC reached out and named CEO Craig Zucker personally as a respondent in its recall proceeding.