I had Jarts. The real ones with the long metal tips. Fun stuff … and perfectly safe if used as directed. It was my idiot friend and his brother, who weren’t following directions, who had a Jart injury.
They did a ‘here catch this.’
I always thought the “Lil Terrorist Atomic Bombmaking Kit” sounded dangerous, even though it was labeled “for ages 3-6 and up”.
Hell, legal fireworks are a thing of the past (in this part of the world, at least).
When I was a kid, we’d have “Cracker night”, and my dad would bemoan the mimsy nature of the fireworks, and regale us with stories of “bungers” from the 1930s. Of course, we’d just use the “fairy” crackers as fodder for eptying out the gunpowder and making copper bombs…
Blowing stuff up never gets old.
I’m kind of surprised that Wacky Clackers didn’t make the list; high-impact plastic balls on a string that you’d bounce up and down until the shattered, either at groin-level or eye-level. Hours of wacky fun until someone loses an eye.
So, playing “catch the Jarts” wasn’t an approved use? We’d play that for hours and never got hurt. The trick was staying to the side and reaching out to grab it as it went past.
So you don’t want to hear about our New Year toy then? It was called “Battlement Thunder” and bulked about as large as a 24-can case of beer. 
/relieved to find something we can beat the Aussies at.
A friend of mine in 4th grade had the male Sky Dancers you’re talking about. If I remember correctly, they were called “Dragon Warriors” or something like that. They were all evil winged barbarians.
I had the Creepy Crawlers thing, and I must have made a million of those damn bugs. I, too, am vividly remembering the smell of that plastic stuff you filled the molds with. (I’ve heard that smell is the sense that’s most closely tied to memory.) I do recall burning my fingers on the hot metal molds a few times, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle. I felt such a sense of accomplishment and productivity each time I peeled a new set of rubber bugs out of a mold.
My sister also had the Cabbage Patch snacktime doll. Now that thing was creepy.
I can report proudly that number 10, the **Fisher Price Motorcycle ** sits proudly in our garage. My 9 year old still wants to ride it (but he’s too heavy now and the wheels won’t turn when he sits on it).
It has two speeds: half-battery (a tame speed you can walk slowly behind and keep up with) and full-battery (whoa-nelly! Get out the Nikes and Stretch before you try to keep up with your kid at that speed!). It also has reverse, which would be in, you guessed it, two speeds as well. It was the one toy that Every Single Kid At The Playground would ask him if they could ride. In truth, no one has ever gotten hurt on it (yet) but my youngest keeps asking to ride it.
(I also found out that if you only connect only One of the two batteries, you permanently reduce it to half-speed and effectively make the ‘full-power’ button a ‘stop’ button.)
I think I still have my clackers somewhere. They were see through magenta with gold sparkles. I played with them so much that the string broke, and had to retied. Still, I managed to get through my childhood without doing serious injury to myself or anyone else.
We had a knock-off version of Jarts, where, instead of a pointy end, the dart was terminated by a plastic cup filled with cement. They were quite heavy, IIRC. I was actually quite scared of one of those cracking my ( or my dogs’) head open.
I wanted a Vac-U-Form so bad! Instead I got a Creepy Crawlie Thingmaker and hated the smell of the gunk you put in it. That gunk also ruined any fabric it came in contact with. Exit Creepy Crawler.
But I did score serious girl points for taking rhinestones out of my kid jewlery and putting them in my creepy crawlies. Lizard brooch with rhinestone eyes anyone?
And that was just what the parents did, when they found out how annoying that noise is! My little brother got a pair of Clackers. After a week and a half of that racket, I waited until he was outside, and I shortened the rope on one side. After that, they didn’t work so well.
Our dentist could be talked into giving us a little mercury to play with. :eek: A couple years ago, a bratty teenager near here got peeved at his mom, so he scattered a few ounces of mercury around her house. They were ordered to leave, while the Environmental folks tore out the floors and dug up the yard.
According to the scary public service ads on TV, trampolines cause a lot of serious injuries.
I had a Stomp Rocket Set. Plastic hollow rockets slipped over the end of a plastic hose. The other end had a big rubber bulb to stomp on.
Count me among the legions for whom the aroma of cooking Plasti-Goop is a cherished memory. We had Creepy Crawlers, the one that made flowers and the one that made dragon and monster body parts that were all interchangeable. I think I liked that one best. However, scaring the shit out of my older sister by putting Creepy Crawler spiders in her bed was an awful lot of fun.
We also had some kind of haunted castle game that launched hard, plastic bats (the flying mammal, not the piece of sports equipment) in the air so you could catch them with monster claws. And I still have both eyes!
You can still get trampolines, but they’re round with a big safety net enclosing them (so’s you can’t fall off), and all the Big Scary Springs are safely covered with rubber pads (so’s there’s no pinchy places).
When I was a kid, half the fun of a trampoline was getting four or five kids on it at once and trying to bounce someone off.
I had a “sister” product to the Atomic Lab. In some of the older Gilbert Chemistry Sets they gave you a smaller version of the lab, complete with a chunk of carnotite ore (Potassium Uranium Vanadate). There was some sort of jar with a metallic hashed lid (presumably lead) to block the particles. There was some warning about radioactivity in the set.
I was given the set by my 6th grade teacher at year’s end as a reward for being top student in my class. The set was old then, buried in the back storage closet of the classroom. It had all sorts of “banned” (even at that time) chemicals inside : crystals of Potassium Permanganate and the glycerin to make it ignite; various cyanide salts, powdered zinc (great for explosives) along with ammonium nitrate. Sulphur, potassium nitrate and powdered charcoal for your gun powder needs.
But once I realized that the carnotite was radioactive I shit a brick and threw it in the trash. Since the exposure was in 1971 and I’m still healthy (knock wood), I’m hoping that any damage was minimum.
Gotta love Gilbert.
Did you try American Science and Surplus? They frequently have high-grade products for reasonable prices (I had a biologist friend buy one of their scopes for field work, where you don’t want to risk the $20,000 equipment), and the stock changes pretty frequently. There’s also this cute scope, which isn’t especially high-quality but does have a built-in digital reciever for taking desktop snapshots. Unfortunately, you do need to be a little more creative in searching for/assembling science kits yourself these days, but it’s still possible.
mischievous
You must be the person I have to thank for the Geode idea. That is where I ended up ordering them from.
Thank You,
Jim
“Mini-Dragons” I SO wanted a creep crawler set, and was dissapointed when I unwrapped the mini-dragon maker…but it turned out to be great. This would have been in the 60’s, so I’m sure it was the dangerous hi-temp version.
One thing I recall is that the plasti-goop would eat the styrofoam box the set came in, so if any bottles leaked, it ate through the bottom.
As soon as I read “dangerous toys” I made a list to see if they were mentioned, and if everyone would beat me to them. I got lawn darts, chemistry sets with “real” chemicals, wood burners and clackers. I especially remember clackers:
clack, clack, clack, OUCH
clack, clack, OUCH
clack, clack, clack, Ha - missed me.
I agree many toys had some real risk if used unresponsibly, but that is true of many, many things. Lawn darts were just dangerous under all conditions.
Yup, no list of Dangerous Toys without a mention of Clackers has any validity.