Inside a gray government cubicle littered with colorful construction toys, Jonathan Midgett played with pieces from a Magnetix set, one of the year's hottest sellers.

Midgett connected and disconnected them as a child would. Remembering that day, the self-described "toy scientist" at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission says he could feel the powerful attraction and repulsion of the embedded magnets. He quickly understood why the toy was so popular.

To a child, the magnets behave like they're alive.

Midgett knew they could also be deadly.

He could see that it wouldn't take much for the tiny magnets to break loose, the way they had several weeks earlier in the suburban Seattle home of the Sweet family.

Twenty-month-old Kenny Sweet Jr. died on Thanksgiving Day 2005 after swallowing loose magnets from his older brother's broken Magnetix toys. They connected inside Kenny's intestines, strangling his bowels.

Parents and caregivers had warned the government of that very danger, but the safety commission failed to act.

In the weeks after Kenny's death, the alarm was finally sounding inside the agency's ranks. "I thought it was a defective product," Midgett said, "and should be recalled."

What followed was neither decisive nor swift, but an illustration of how weakly most children's products are regulated in America.

The commission did not sweep Magnetix off store shelves. It did what the law requires: The commission first accommodated the toy's maker, negotiating the wording of the news release meant to warn parents. The resulting voluntary recall was so confusing that consumers had no way of knowing whether they were buying a dangerous toy.

The federal government's influence was even weaker during the next step, when new manufacturing standards were written in an attempt to ensure that such toys couldn't harm children. At that point, regulators became just another voice in a debate controlled by the toymakers themselves.

This flawed system put many children at grave risk. In all, more than two dozen kids suffered life-threatening intestinal injuries after swallowing magnetic toy pieces. At least 15 of those followed Kenny's death.

After months of inquiries from the Tribune, the Consumer Product Safety Commission in April expanded its recall of Magnetix and admitted it knew of at least 1,500 cases of the toys shedding loose magnets. The new recall covers another 4 million boxes — potentially hazardous toys that were allowed on the market for more than a year because the original recall was botched.

But the second recall has proved equally confusing. The Tribune as recently as Saturday bought Magnetix toys that should have been removed from shelves.

And over the weekend, some major retailers froze sales of Magnetix building sets, responding to the Tribune's investigation.

Weighing every word

It was around Christmas 2005 when Jonathan Midgett first recommended that Magnetix be recalled. Had the agency's top managers done so, the alert could have warned thousands of families to the potential danger of toys given during the holidays.

The Booke family in Oak Harbor, Wash., thought Magnetix would be perfect for 4-year-old Kyle.

His grandmother had carefully considered what to get him that year. When she asked Kyle's mother about Magnetix, his mom responded enthusiastically. Sure, she said, her son would love them. And on Christmas the adults watched when Kyle opened his Magnetix with glee.

As Kyle was playing with his new toys, federal regulators began examining whether Magnetix were dangerous. The staff of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, or CPSC, first met formally to discuss the possibility of a recall more than two months after Midgett's recommendation.