The sponge is back

In a March 2000 article for Salon.com about the long-awaited return of the Today Sponge, I wrote:
It's been five long years since the Today Sponge sat on drugstore shelves. In March 1999, the newly formed Allendale Pharmaceutical Co. Announced it would bring back the sponge, possibly as soon as fall 1999.
Fall came and went, then winter. Now Allendale predicts its resurrected product will be released in Canada sometime this month, and in the United States no later than May. For fans of the contraceptive sponge it can't happen soon enough.
(Incidentally, I've been informed by family members of the sponges inventor that he was eventually cleared of the insurance fraud mentioned in my article.)

Five years later ... the sponge really is back! But here's my question: You have a safe, reliable product that was pulled off the market due to a factory issue. You have a respected pharmaceutical company purchase the product. You've got an entire Seinfeld episode dedicated to the damn thing. And it still takes the FDA ten years to allow it back on the market? Meanwhile, Bextra, Vioxx and Celebrex ... I don't claim to know the intricacies of the FDA approval process, but I find this troubling.