Aqua Dots look like delicious little balls of rainbow-colored sugar. Children under the age of four tend to be unable to read warning labels. Perhaps it's no surprise that some kids the balls in their mouths and swallowed them up. But the results were a bit more dire than a bit of kaleidoscopic poo. According to CNN, the balls were coated with a chemical that metabolized into gamma-hydroxy butyrate, or GHB: the date rape drug. "GHB is this drug that in low doses actually causes euphoria," said CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta. "It can cause something known as hypotonia, where all your muscles just become very flaccid ... And it can cause people to become amnestic ... which is why it became a date-rape drug."
And that's what it does in the bodies of grown-ups. In toddlers, the result is a parent's worst nightmare. Children who ingested Aqua Dots — Bindeez Beads, as they were known to Australian ankle biters — suffered dizziness, vomiting, respiratory failure, and coma. Although the product was crowned toy of the year Down Under, and made WalMart's top 12 Christmas toys list in the U.S., its Canada-based distributor, Spin Master Ltd., was forced to recall the product. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission advised parents to immediately get the toy out of children's reach and contact the distributor for replacement beads or a toy of equal value (because surely their other toys were safe).
