Yo-Yo Balls: Why are these toys being sold?

Herb Weisbaum • Profile • E-mail

It’s happened again. Two weeks ago, Brayden Daher, a 5-year-old boy from Bellevue, Wash., was nearly strangled when he got a Yo-Yo Water Ball wrapped around his neck.

“He was purple, almost blue, and his eyes were bloodshot and watering,” Brayden’s mom, Carolyn Daher, told me. “I could barely get my fingers underneath the cord to pull it. And when you do that, it pulls tighter and tighter, and it was cutting into his neck.”

Somehow she was able to break the cord, which is not easy to do, and remove it. “I think we were very lucky,” Daher says. “He was very close to passing out.”

Parents may not spot the danger
These cheap (less than $5) and colorful fluid-filled balls – made from a stretchy, rubbery material – are imported from China and Taiwan. The ball is attached to a bungee-like cord with a finger loop at the end.

It’s easy to see why they’re such a hit with the kids, who love to swing them around their heads like a lasso. When they do that, the cord stretches. I was able to stretch one about 6 feet. As they lower the ball, the cord can get wrapped around their neck.

“It’s clear that these are inherently dangerous,” says Dr. Brian Johnston, head of the Department of Pediatrics at Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center. Anything with a cord longer than six inches, he explained, is considered a strangulation hazard.

Dr. Johnston noticed something else: “One of the scary things about this is the cord material is so sticky,” he said. “So once it wraps around on top of itself, it’s going to be hard for someone to unwrap it because the material is adherent to itself.”

At least 410 cases … and counting
This is not a new problem. The first reports of Yo-Yo Ball injuries started in 2003. That’s when Lynn Moran of Lowell, Mass., almost lost her 6-year-old son, Justice.

Justice got the cord of a Yo-Yo Ball wrapped around his neck six times. “His eyes were rolling in the back of his head, and he was foaming at the mouth and his legs were jumping up and down,” she says. Justice spent the night in a hospital getting treatment for “near strangulation.”

Moran and hundreds of other parents who’ve experienced a near miss with a Yo-Yo Ball would like to see it banned. “I just don’t get it. There have been so many kids hurt,” she told me. “Why are they still being sold?”

Something had to be done
After Lisa Lipin’s 5-year-old son, Andrew, was hurt by a Yo-Yo Ball she decided something had to be done. For three years now, this mother from Skokie, Ill., has been trying to get the toy off the market.

She convinced the Consumer Product Safety Commission to investigate. In September of 2003, the CPSC concluded there was a “low, but potential risk of strangulation.” But the safety agency said the risk was not great enough to issue a recall. So it advised parents “concerned about this risk,” to cut the cord or throw the toy away.

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