Government issues warning about water walking balls

Two things that should tip you off to the potential danger of a new trend:

1. The name is very literal

2. Your response to hearing about it is more like “what the…?” than “Oh, fun!”

Case in point: the water walking ball.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued a warning about the balls after two children were injured, the Associated Press reports. The human-sized hamster balls are airtight, seal from the outside and were made for people to move across water.

The government thinks maybe it’s a bad idea to be stuck in a ball full of carbon dioxide with no voluntary way out. Citing a potential for suffocation or drowning, the CPSC is encouraging amusement parks to discontinue use of the water walking balls, and is asking states to ban them.

One distributors says the balls have 30 minutes of oxygen for what’s usually a 10-minute ride.