Apple AirTag removed from sale in some Australian stores, due to Child Safety chocking hazard regulations.

[dizmo]

18 hours ago, Video Beagle said:

While I think it's a bit over reaching, the actual ban is on non-edible things inside of edible things..which kind of makes sense.

If your kid is stupid enough to eat the thing contained with the egg...well. Bad parenting and Darwinism. 

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, dizmo said:

If your kid is stupid enough to eat the thing contained with the egg...well. Bad parenting and Darwinism. 

The worry with that one is someone might call your folks and they’ll have some sort of story about stuffing something up your nose that wouldn’t come out causing a hospital visit or something.  In my case it was the Googley eye off a stuffed toy frog.  So it’s not a position I can take.  All kids are dumb.  Hence the phrase “dumb kid” that lasted for at least several generations.

[Video Beagle]

5 hours ago, dizmo said:

If your kid is stupid enough to eat the thing contained with the egg...well. Bad parenting and Darwinism. 

I think it was more intended like you can't put chunks of wood into perserves to make people think there are seeds...which used to be a thing.

[Video Beagle]

22 hours ago, Spindel said:

You still have lollipops and popcicles right?

It's been a long time since I learned about the regulation so I couldn't even tell you how it works cuz yeah, there's popcicles and stuff. And I'm from New Orleans, so Mardi Gras King Cakes are known to me, and they have plastic babbies in them..so no idea.

And there are kinder eggs you can buy that have the toy in them at the stores so i don't know.

[Arika]

6 hours ago, James Evens said:

Legal in California but illegal in Australia? Something is wrong.

Simple explanation for that

 

 

i would say that California wouldn't want to piss off apple given that they pay taxes in California.....but......

 

Quote

Some claims reflect extreme differences in estimated values. In one appeal filed in 2015, Apple said that a cluster of properties in and around Apple Park in Cupertino that the assessor valued at $1 billion was worth just $200. In another, property that the assessor valued at $384 million was, in Apple’s view, worth $200, according to an appeal application.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Want-a-lower-tax-bill-So-do-Apple-and-Genentech-13148121.php?utm_campaign=thirdparty&utm_source=article&utm_medium=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sfgate.com%2Ftechnology%2Fbusinessinsider%2Farticle%2FApple-is-reportedly-arguing-that-buildings-at-its-13154475.php

[PineyCreek]

On 5/8/2021 at 5:15 AM, Spindel said:

You still have lollipops and popcicles right?

Tide Pods

[PineyCreek]

17 minutes ago, Arika S said:

Simple explanation for that

 

 

i would say that California wouldn't want to piss off apple given that they pay taxes in California.....but......

 

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Want-a-lower-tax-bill-So-do-Apple-and-Genentech-13148121.php?utm_campaign=thirdparty&utm_source=article&utm_medium=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sfgate.com%2Ftechnology%2Fbusinessinsider%2Farticle%2FApple-is-reportedly-arguing-that-buildings-at-its-13154475.php

I'd like to value their property at $200 as well...then I'll buy it at $500.  I am a generous overlord.

[Kisai]

On 5/8/2021 at 1:51 AM, Video Beagle said:

While I think it's a bit over reaching, the actual ban is on non-edible things inside of edible things..which kind of makes sense.

It's definitely overreach. 

 

But you also need to realize two things:

- There is a version that doesn't have the toy in the egg called "Kinder Joy"

This is available in more places than the eggs themselves. Take a close look at the "spoon" and "toy" though. What is to prevent the same kids swallowing either here? At least the kinder egg had a capsule in it that you couldn't fit in a child's mouth.

 

- America is land of the frivolous lawsuit.

 

It isn't so much that kids are stupid, but Adults might use kids as lawsuit fodder. The UK didn't ban them after three deaths.

 

Apparently Ferrero has been the manufacturer of Kinder products since inception, which explains the relatively high cost compared to the cheap Cadbury and Hershey chocolate.

 

At any rate, There are some very logical reasons and fixes that apply here:

 

The Airtags simply need a screw (like most battery-containing toys) that closes the battery panel. Kinder eggs likewise could be solved by making the capsule and egg larger so that the capsule itself can not be put in your mouth, and the capsule has to inflexible so you can't break it apart they try to put it in their mouth. Current capsules can be opened just by pulling it apart, and if you were to clamp your teeth down on it, the contents would empty out.

So really, the solution here is just not to give them to young children, and if you are, make sure you unwrap it and take the capsule out once they break it open.

 

The apple air tags look like this

So using the same logic here, the actual airtag itself is probably about as big in diameter as the kinder egg is. If it happens to be "too small, potential choking hazard" then it will become a problem for travelers too (literately people have been held up at border crossings for having "illegal" kinder eggs), so perhaps Apple might be requested to make sure they are only sold with actual leather tags (not plastic) attached, and not leave it up to the customer to do it properly. 

 

[Bombastinator]

21 minutes ago, Kisai said:

It's definitely overreach. 

 

But you also need to realize two things:

- There is a version that doesn't have the toy in the egg called "Kinder Joy"

This is available in more places than the eggs themselves. Take a close look at the "spoon" and "toy" though. What is to prevent the same kids swallowing either here? At least the kinder egg had a capsule in it that you couldn't fit in a child's mouth.

 

- America is land of the frivolous lawsuit.

 

It isn't so much that kids are stupid, but Adults might use kids as lawsuit fodder. The UK didn't ban them after three deaths.

 

Apparently Ferrero has been the manufacturer of Kinder products since inception, which explains the relatively high cost compared to the cheap Cadbury and Hershey chocolate.

 

At any rate, There are some very logical reasons and fixes that apply here:

 

The Airtags simply need a screw (like most battery-containing toys) that closes the battery panel. Kinder eggs likewise could be solved by making the capsule and egg larger so that the capsule itself can not be put in your mouth, and the capsule has to inflexible so you can't break it apart they try to put it in their mouth. Current capsules can be opened just by pulling it apart, and if you were to clamp your teeth down on it, the contents would empty out.

So really, the solution here is just not to give them to young children, and if you are, make sure you unwrap it and take the capsule out once they break it open.

 

The apple air tags look like this

So using the same logic here, the actual airtag itself is probably about as big in diameter as the kinder egg is. If it happens to be "too small, potential choking hazard" then it will become a problem for travelers too (literately people have been held up at border crossings for having "illegal" kinder eggs), so perhaps Apple might be requested to make sure they are only sold with actual leather tags (not plastic) attached, and not leave it up to the customer to do it properly. 

 

There are pretty severe penalties for bringing a frivolous lawsuit in the US.  One of them seems minor but can be incredibly crippling is if a suit is deemed frivolous the plaintiff pays ALL court costs which can easily be millions.  There are con artists who specialize in abusive lawsuits.  The slip-and-fall was really famous for some years. It’s a dangerous game though.  The stakes are pretty high.  Conversely  A lot of lawsuits that are claimed to be frivolous actually aren’t.  The MacDonald’s hot coffee lawsuit was one example.  Look into that one and it doesn’t look frivolous at all.  Lawsuits are capitalism’s answer to regulation. The thing though is that a lot of people who claim to be pro capitalist are also anti-lawsuit, giving lie to the claim.  Anti-lawsuit AND anti-regulation isnt capitalism. It’s plutocracy. On the whole there’s more room for abuse with lawsuits than regulation.  Lawsuits create regulation but they do it after the fact.  There is a defacto regulation against four legged swivel chairs for example that came out of lawsuits. There’s no actual law against four legged swivel chairs, but anyone who sells one new in the US is courting disaster. 

[RejZoR]

Kinder yolks are only problematic for US of A and Australia. We have them in Europe for decades going further back then I was a kid and there were apparently no problems. Those when i was a kid had two splittable halves for the plastic yolk. Only thing they've done till now is having them joined on one part so it's a single larger piece even when open. It's funny that yolk is the problem, but even smaller toy parts in it are not. Its like everyone worries kid won't eat the plastic yolk, but when the kid gets to the toy it's assumed he's under "parent supervision". ?! When I was a kid we were under parent supervision the entire time we were handling Kinder eggs. Guess Americans and Australians either don't have time to be bothered with their kids or they just don't care and expect government agencies to babysit their kids instead...

[suicidalfranco]

2 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Guess Americans and Australians either don't have time to be bothered with their kids or they just don't care and expect government agencies to babysit their kids instead...

Not just Australia and the US, I'd include the entire commonwealth in that statement

[Video Beagle]

Went to dig up some info on kinder eggs in the us, and the laws, to rectify some of the stuff I couldn't remember contradicting itself.

 

Quote

Kinder Eggs are illegal in the states because they break a rule in the 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. Regarded as a “watershed in US food policy” the act was drafted to protect the public from unscrupulous, or sometimes just negligent, manufacturers. It was made law on the back of several highly publicised cases of poisoning, most notably the deaths of 107 people (the majority of whom were children) in what became known as the The 1937 Elixir Sulfanilamide Incident.

Quote

Among other things, the Act required that for the first time in US history, drug makers had to demonstrate to the FDA that drugs were reasonably safe before they could be marketed to the public, set standards for how different kinds of food should look and be packaged, and specified legal maximums for “certain poisonous substances” commonly added to food and drink at the time.

Quote

The Act also included a small section explicitly banning the sale of any confectionery that contains either alcohol (except in limited quantities, as an amazing number of things we all eat every day actually contain trace amounts of alcohol) and banning any consumable product that:

“has partially or completely imbedded therein any nonnutritive object, except that this subparagraph shall not apply in the case of any nonnutritive object if, in the judgment of the Secretary as provided by regulations, such object is of practical functional value to the confectionery product and would not render the product injurious or hazardous to health;”

The exceptions mentioned are things like the stick of a Tootsie Pop which is embedded in the candy item, but serves a purpose and otherwise has been deemed not to make the product dangerous.

Above quotes from here:

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2017/08/kinder-surprise-eggs-banned-united-states/

 

There's a whole bunch getting into details at that link if you're interested.

[Bombastinator]

7 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Kinder yolks are only problematic for US of A and Australia. We have them in Europe for decades going further back then I was a kid and there were apparently no problems. Those when i was a kid had two splittable halves for the plastic yolk. Only thing they've done till now is having them joined on one part so it's a single larger piece even when open. It's funny that yolk is the problem, but even smaller toy parts in it are not. Its like everyone worries kid won't eat the plastic yolk, but when the kid gets to the toy it's assumed he's under "parent supervision". ?! When I was a kid we were under parent supervision the entire time we were handling Kinder eggs. Guess Americans and Australians either don't have time to be bothered with their kids or they just don't care and expect government agencies to babysit their kids instead...

Might be an allowance thing.  Or possibly the way a law regarding another law is written.  This sort of thing only becomes a problem if a kid has died from it but they may not have died from it specifically but perhaps something else and the way a law was written happens to cover it.  

[StDragon]

On 5/9/2021 at 3:51 AM, Video Beagle said:

It's been a long time since I learned about the regulation so I couldn't even tell you how it works cuz yeah, there's popcicles and stuff. And I'm from New Orleans, so Mardi Gras King Cakes are known to me, and they have plastic babbies in them..so no idea.

I'm not sure in the past, but currently a King Cake is baked without the small plastic baby Jesus figurine; or so I've been told. It's up to the purchaser to insert it into the cake prior to serving (tradition). So because it's optional, it's my understanding that it's not deemed a choking hazard to sell the cake from the bakery.

[Bombastinator]

A thought occurs. C2032 batteries are used in a LOT of things.  Are other companies that use them in other devices also having issues?  A lot of cameras use them I am told.  I suspect a lot of flashlights as well.

[Kisai]

10 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

A thought occurs. C2032 batteries are used in a LOT of things.  Are other companies that use them in other devices also having issues?  A lot of cameras use them I am told.  I suspect a lot of flashlights as well.

Probably only things small enough that a child might swallow it. eg kids watches. Many of those cheap dollar-store watches actually use smaller batteries (like LR44), and would easily come apart as the back of the watch would typically be just slightly bigger than the entire watch module. So swallowing the battery, let alone the entire watch module was possible.

 

 

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, Kisai said:

Probably only things small enough that a child might swallow it. eg kids watches. Many of those cheap dollar-store watches actually use smaller batteries (like LR44), and would easily come apart as the back of the watch would typically be just slightly bigger than the entire watch module. So swallowing the battery, let alone the entire watch module was possible.

 

 

Swallowing an entire fob would be serious high level pika for a kid young enough not to know better.  Small mouths.  Also the thing might be waterproof enough to make it through their digestive system.  I was under the impression the danger came because it was too easy to open.  It’s why medicine bottles come with childproof caps in the US. The thing is there are other products that could also be opened to produce such an issue.  The question is are they getting the same treatment that Apple is?

[Video Beagle]

13 hours ago, StDragon said:

I'm not sure in the past, but currently a King Cake is baked without the small plastic baby Jesus figurine; or so I've been told. It's up to the purchaser to insert it into the cake prior to serving (tradition).

 

Guess it's changed since I was a kid...as so much has

 

 

[Video Beagle]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

The question is are they getting the same treatment that Apple is?

I'd imagine it's someone with a cause using apple to get press or a competitor trying to get apple static.

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, Video Beagle said:

 

Guess it's changed since I was a kid...as so much has

 

 

Heh.  I binged stargate sg1 recently. A show from when I was much younger.  That show ran a long time.  The first few seasons there were CRTs everywhere.

 

What I find terrifying is I grew up in NorthDakota in the 70’s and I’m hearing racist stuff in the news lately that I thought stayed in 1970’s ND.  Sometimes worse even.  Stuff that would have been called out even then.

[Bombastinator]

6 minutes ago, Video Beagle said:

I'd imagine it's someone with a cause using apple to get press or a competitor trying to get apple static.

If it’s not general to all devices with button batteries it’s BS then.  If it is though that kind of stuff sometimes happens.  Laws can be written strangely.  I was reading about that absurd Chinese chop thing that is giving AMD so many problems.  It sounds like something straight out of the 12th century.  Apparently you can steal an entire company by stealing a little brick of wood.  Totally screwed up.

Edited May 11, 2021 by Bombastinator

[Video Beagle]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

If it’s not general to all devices with button batteries it’s BS then.

it's not the battery.. it's an.. accusation? a "hey we need to test this before allowing it" that the battery can come out easily.

it's either standard bureaucracy or it's enemy action using standard bureaucracy.

 

And if you were young in the 70's (like me) then reference Six Million Dollar Man, not Stargate

[Bombastinator]

9 minutes ago, Video Beagle said:

it's not the battery.. it's an.. accusation? a "hey we need to test this before allowing it" that the battery can come out easily.

it's either standard bureaucracy or it's enemy action using standard bureaucracy.

 

And if you were young in the 70's (like me) then reference Six Million Dollar Man, not Stargate

I didn’t binge 6 million dollar man though.  I did covet the action figure as a kid, you could look through the head. I had a friend that had one.  He was allowed to have “stupid plastic junk” toys whereas I was not.  So much jealousy.  That show was even dumber than Wonder Woman though and I couldn’t stomach that some years ago.  I actually liked watching stargate sg1 again.  Long after the show finished its run the primary female lead came out as gay.  Thinking of the character as being gay actually makes the show better.

Edited May 11, 2021 by Bombastinator

[Video Beagle]

30 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

 Long after the show finished its run the primary female lead came out as gay.  Thinking of the character as being gay actually makes the show better.

Sg-1? Amanda Tapping (Samantha Carter)?  Did she tell her husband of near 30 years?

Might you be thinking of Gillian Anderson from X-Files?

[JediFragger]

1 hour ago, Video Beagle said:

Might you be thinking of Gillian Anderson from X-Files?

Not gay, and still very bangable.