The Australian competition regulator has ordered Amazon, eBay, Kogan and Fruugo to pull banned toys and games with small high-powered magnets from sale, widening its push against products marketed for children that can turn dangerous if swallowed.
The request lands this week with retailers under pressure to remove magnetic chess-style games and to stop sellers putting them back up again. The products are not harmless playthings, the regulator says. They contain separable or loose magnets covered by a permanent ban because, if a child swallows them, they can cause serious injury or death.
Catriona Lowe said the risk is catastrophic. Small high-powered magnets can stick together inside the intestine or digestive tissue, causing life-threatening internal injuries, particularly for young children. She said online marketplaces are carrying too many of these listings and urged them to do more to keep consumers safe as shopping shifts further onto their platforms.
The ban on those magnets has been in place since 2012, but the regulator says the products keep resurfacing in listings aimed at children, including magnetic chess or magnetic battle chess games. The ACCC sent take-down requests to the four retailers and asked for extra measures to stop the same or similar products being relisted. The companies committed to those steps.
That leaves one awkward point in the middle of the crackdown: Amazon said it already has a policy barring magnetic battle chess games from its store, even if such products can be lawfully sold in Australia, while the regulator says the magnets themselves are under a permanent ban. In other words, the dispute is not about whether the toys are popular, but whether marketplaces are acting fast enough to keep prohibited products off their shelves.
Kogan said all products with the illegal magnets had now been removed. The ACCC, meanwhile, is treating the issue as part of a broader cleanup of online retail, with digital marketplaces becoming a bigger focus of its enforcement work. The takedown requests also came days after it began legal action against Amazon over separate safety concerns involving button batteries and a unicorn-themed toddler backpack, including an allegation that 41 of the backpacks were sold in Australia in 2022.
For shoppers, the immediate outcome is simple: the regulator wants the listings gone and wants them to stay gone. For the marketplaces, the harder task is proving they can block banned magnetic toys before they reach parents hunting for children’s games online.
