In 2007 a 16-month-old toddler swallowed candy-colored Aqua Dots beads and lapsed into a coma. It turned out the beads were manufactured with a coating that dissolves into GHB, an illegal drug in many countries. The child’s family sued the companies that designed distributed the toys, and was awarded $435,000.
Spin Master and Moose’s lawyers blamed a Chinese company that made the toy on an outsource basis for secretly spraying the beads with a chemical that metabolizes into GHB. That Hong Kong-based manufacturer wasn’t named as a defendant in the case because it doesn’t do business in the U.S.