A great source for science-related materials is any homeschool supply company. When homeschooling my daughter, I bought microscope slide samples, lab glassware, chemicals (including hydrochloric acid), and all kinds of goodies from such a place.
I (ouch) had (ouch) Clackers, too. I never hurt myself more with a toy than with these stupid things.
I had the creepy crawler maker set and the one for little plastic soldiers. Never got hurt by it–even with the little wires we molded into the soldiers to make them poseable.
I remember this Ninja Turtles vehicle that would fire out little plastic pizza discs hard enough to sting if it hit you at close range. It wasn’t on the market too long.
You’re right. I used to work with a Londoner who would tell me stories of fireworks in the UK. Most of them involved being upstairs in a Routemaster bus and dropping 20 kiloton devices into groups of old ladies waiting at the bus stop.
The big thing at my school was the copper bomb, which was simply a sheet of copper with the contents of some fireworks emptied out onto it, then wrapped up like a parcel, and a fuse added. These things were lethal. Kids used to upend the metal school rubbish bins over them. The bin would shoot straight up in the air some ungodly height, then land about ten seconds later elsewhere in the school, with the bottom blown out. I never had the balls to do that, and a few kids got expelled for it.
I bought that for my nephew. It came with over 100 stickers to put on it. He loved it.
We used to just remove the suction cup tips from our dart guns and those suckers could fly 40 feet. If you hit someone within 20’ they stung like crazy.
I built a trebuchet for my daughter the other night to show her how they worked. It is a quick jury-rigged one, but I will eventually make a nicer looking wooden version. Simplest design I could do on the fly. It has four wooden wheels with four large nails as axles. Four popsicle sticks and another nail for a support structure on a Styrofoam base. A plastic paint stir and a small light switch chain as the level with a twisty tie to hold the payload. We have launched a small plastic soldier 20 feet with it. It is a great demonstration toy for 10 minutes work.
Sounds to me like “childhood”. I did almost all of that playing growing up and it never seemed like any big deal. When I was 12 I found some gunpowder in an old powder horn and managed to blow my face off. My dad’s reaction? He made me wear a big floppy straw hat for the rest of the summer to “protect my face from the sun”. At 14 I did a face plant over the handlebars of my motorcycle onto some gravel. Split my top lip clean in two. I drove the bike home, walked up to my mother (Lip split, shirt torn, red with blood from my mouth downward in a fan shaped pattern) and my mom said “Oh, guess we better go to the ER. Lemmie get my purse.” On the way there we talked about what we would have for dinner that night. I hate to sound like a “Hey you kids get off my lawn” old man, but Jesus! Bumps and bruises, breaks and sprains…they’re the currency that you pay for your childhood.
I didn’t have any particularly dangerous toys that I can remember, but I got a wood burning kit when I was 8 and a soldering iron and a surgical scalpel when I was 9. I used the scalpel to sharpen pencils and cut stuff. I was taught how to solder and would burn random pieces of wood with the wood burning kit. I’ve gotten hurt numerous times by all three of those things and not only am I good now, I don’t even have any scars left. I got burned, I respect hot objects, I got cut, I respect sharp objects, I got electrocuted, I respect electricity, I got a fishing lure embedded in my thumb, I’m careful with fishing lures, I called a girl fat accidentally, … same story. People who don’t learn something the hard way as children often have either an unnatural fear or a blatant disregard of safety as adults.
I wonder what they would have said about the lead soldiers we used to make as children. The molds originally belonged to our older half-brothers. Nothing like a little molten lead as a plaything. But, oh, those soldiers were soooo cool.
I found this to be offensive. I don’t know if they were trying to be funny, but it seems to be in line with the growing (and acceptable) trend to be predjudice against people with any intelligence.
I had a crappy day at work, maybe I am just taking it the wrong way
I had the Creepy Crawlers, but I think I was way too young for it at the time (this would have been late 60s/early 70s, so I was definitely under 10). I remember playing with it with my dad, but I don’t think it lasted long before the 'rents took it away from me. I don’t remember getting burned on it, though. And I do remember the smell.
Never had Jarts (never even saw them) but I did have clackers (no mishaps) and the old-style Easy Bake Oven (ditto–just yummy munchies). Kids in my neighborhood had BB guns (I collect comic books and I still remember the ads on the back page for “Are You Ready for a Daisy?”) but once again I don’t recall anyone ever getting hurt more than non-skin-breaking stings. Mom wouldn’t let me have one of those, but I did have a “tracer gun”–a small gold handgun that shot plastic discs–as well as a model rocket and the Battlestar Galactica ships referred to in the article (I had the Cylon one and the good-guy fighter. I probably still do somewhere. Maybe I should try to find them). I also had the coolest toy ever, the Vertibird. Anybody remember that one?
The kids up the street had a full-size trampoline in their backyard. This thing was about five feet off the ground, about 10 feet square, and surrounded by a whole lot of potentially pinchy and very dangerous springs. Oh, and nothing like padding around it except for grass. Miscalculate your jump and you land on the ground next to the thing. My mother wouldn’t let me play on it, which at the time I was quite unhappy about, but in retrospect I think she was probably right.
Still, I do think kids had it better back then. This safety obsession takes the fun out of everything and makes kids stupid. In my day (pulls out cane and waves it at kids on lawn) kids had at least a little bit of common sense about how not to Darwinize themselves.
My older brother had a creepy crawler kit, I remember playing with it as a wee Goob in the early '70’s. We also had the Haunted House game, it had cool glow in the dark pieces right?
I wonder what ever happened to the clackers that were hanging in the garage for ever and ever?
Cool is that I have a set of Jarts in my shed I played with this summer. My friend has a set new in the box. Just to try, he listed them on eBay. It was killed off in less than 12 hours.
Ah, Clackers! (Or “click-clacks” as they were called in my neck of the woods.)
Nothing says fun like flying shards of glass! Plus I damn near broke my arm with the things. When two heavy glass orbs slam against either side of your ulna, it gets your attention.
In a fit of nostalgia I bought my nephew a Creepy Crawlers set in the early 90s. By then, they had eliminated the open hot plate (and thus the delicious air of danger!). Instead, you shoved the plates through a slot into a closed oven. And where’s the fun in that?
I had Sky Dancers as a kid (less than ten years ago!) and they were fantastic! But yeah, dangerous because kids have this habit of aiming at siblings and one of my lesser loved toys had an exciting date with the big manly ceiling fan.
