I didn’t have my own radioactive lab, but I had chunks of fluffy asbestos in my rock collection.
I certainly played on metal playground stuff, including a very high, straight slide (the type you can fall off of easily and is no longer allowed) that got so hot in the sun it could burn you.
missed the cabbage patch eating doll and the explosive best buckle.
I’m sure I played with jarts once or twice. Who didn’t?
I ADORED candy cigarettes. And I hated smoking. I don’t think those are dangerous at all.
So that’s what happened to sky dancers… That was a great toy. We got some for the kids one year for Christmas, and had a lot of fun with them
Sure, everyone played with slap bracelets, then got bored with them. I’m surprised they hurt people. I wonder how. Like, did people go slapping sensitive body parts or something?
Clackers were fun. We never had any trouble with them.
I missed yoyo water balls.
Other dangerous toys… One of my favorites as a child was liquid mercury. Every so often a thermometer would shatter, and my mom would let us play with the mercury for a while before she cleaned it up. SO COOL. I also had a chemistry set full of toxic stuff. But that, like super-magnets, is perfectly safe if used as directed. We used to play with mouse traps, and similarly “this could hurt you” household stuff. Seriously, slap bracelets? Try playing chicken with a mousetrap. And of course I played with knives (whittling) and with heat sources (wood burning) and the actual stove…
But the things that most often hurt kids were cars, bicycles, baseballs, and other kids (wrestling, etc.) I bet they still are.
Water Wiggle was an absolute blast! I was already a teenager when my younger siblings got it. I’d play in the yard for hours with them. It was great fun. I don’t see it as any more dangerous than a common jump rope.
Balloons and bicycles probably hurt and killed more kids that the things the OP listed. When I was a kid in the 60’s they had wood burning kits recommended for ages 8 and up. Who the funk thought that was a good idea? :eek:
Why not? I spent a lot of time playing with crafts like that. They are designed so you are unlikely to set the bench on fire, and it’s not that hard to avoid burning yourself or your friend. Whitting (where sometimes the knife would stick and then suddenly release) was probably a lot more dangerous, but I never hurt anyone else doing that, either.
How about the Battlestar Galactica Colonial Viper toy that killed a kid in the late 70s and got the missile launching Boba Fett figure cancelled? Probably put an end to spring loaded missile shooting toys altogether.
When you were only 8? It was basically just a soldering iron. Our neighbor almost had his house burned down because of one. Seeing that some kids are too stupid to play with a $3 water toy without drowning themselves do you really want to give them something that gets hotter than blazes to play with unsupervised?
I had some of the OP’s list.
Tracer (disc) guns
Spark guns- never had one, but I sparked the hell out of the ones in the Woolworth’s!
Cap guns
bow and arrow sets
suction cup dart guns
Clik-claks
Creepy crawlies - I had two complete Thingmaker sets and some extra molds. Best toy I ever had! It was fun to spit on the cooker and watch it sizzle away!
I also had Incredible Edibles, which cooked “candy” critters from an artificially sweetened starch slurry. Imagine Twizzlers sweetened with saccharin.
I also had a Pretzel Jetzel that used a 100 W light bulb to cook pretzels!
I had all these before I was ten. I never hurt myself.
How could my parents allow this? My dad said he had a toy soldier foundry set when he was a kid. It included a stove, molds, and lead to melt to make the soldiers!
Perhaps the neatest one was the Derringer belt buckle. It was a cowboy style buckle with a gun inlaid within it. When I stuck out my tummy, the gun would flip out, shoot a plastic bullet, and pop a cap!
I think when I was about 11 or 12, I got a nice 3-wood for my birthday, which I promptly used to break my best friend’s tooth because he happened to be standing in my follow-through.
When I was ten I had a chemistry set that had little containers of all kinds of stuff that was poison and a microscope set that came with a piercing needle and exacto knife. We used it to see what was inside a slug (looks like eggs if you were wondering).
When I was a kid, one of my favorite “toys” was a yardstick made like a slap bracelet, but that was intended as a tool, not a toy.
And Mom started teaching us to use the power tools in the basement when we were about 5. Yes, it’s potentially dangerous, which means it’s a really good idea to learn how to use it properly.
I had those. I don’t think they were especially dangerous. I mean, sure, you might have burnt a finger, and it would have hurt, but that’s about as bad as it was likely to get. They were a lot of fun, although the incredible edibles were disgusting. (Yes, I ate them.) I had a great time playing with creepy crawlies. Also with some plastic film you could draw on, cut up, and then put in the oven, where it retracted into a much smaller and thicker thing.
I’d guess I was around 8? I think parental discretion was advised as to whether YOUR kid was responsible enough to play with stuff like that.
Yeah. I used to like playing with one of those. My dad also had a folding yardstick, with joints, that I liked to play with.
When I was a little kid I had a Hot Wheels Factory, which would heat up little rectangles of plastic to the point that they melted & could be injected into a mold that had two wheel sets across it, and you could use that to make cars. that thing got so blisteringly hot that I burned myself more than once. And, it made crappy cars. And it had weird fumes, though I’m assuming they weren’t toxic. Much.
It looks like they still have a version of that, but the heated section is in some sort of protective cover.
I remember two of these - the one you’re describing, I think was called Whittle Away, and you whittled off pieces of a small plastic log; the other one, I can’t remember the name, but it resembled a block of stone that you “carved” to reveal a statue.
