Did anyone not do that?
When I was a kid in the late 50s, early 60s, we would go to a construction site and play “War.” You were only supposed to throw “dirt clods” at the other guys, but plenty of times, rocks got thrown. No injuries, that I’m aware of. Perhaps that’s a bit of a miracle.
How about collecting all the dud firecrackers after the 4th? Cut open, combine the powder in a piece of paper, wrap in layers of tape, bury under a pile of dirt(and rocks) and light the scavenged fuse.
I did that.
Once.
You could say that about anything. But generally when they put an age group on the box they’re talking about the child using it without supervision. Nobody would ever accuse me of being an old hen but I know at least half a dozen stories from folks that caused big problems with a wood burning kit. 8 is just too young for an item that gets that freaking hot.
We made our own dangerous toys, didn’t need help. When I was about 9 I taped the end of a paper towel cardboard roll. I snipped the heads off of dozens of matches and mixed them with the silver sulphuric stuff I bent off some boxes of sparklers. Made my own fireworks. Set the front hedges aflame. One of the few times I ever heard my Dad say the “F word”.
One time my cousin and I tied a rope to a very high branch of a tall tree. We tilted it at a slant and secured it to the ground with a railroad stake. We spent all weekend using a pulley zipping up and down on it. An awesome time that could have gotten us killed had our knot on the branch or the stake hold failed.
Then there was the “wrist rocket” slingshot. My brother and I welted up half the traffic signs in town with one of those. We could never figure out why someone would spend the 59 cents on a pack of Steelies when rocks were free. One woman yelled at my brother for shooting at a bird in the park. As she walked away he cracked her right in her fat ass with a sharp jagged rock. No way we should have had one of those. My old man bent it up with the vice in the garage. I can still hear him bellow “shooting people with rocks? I must of had rocks in my head letting you have this!”
Thanks, that was it!
I had a set of clear blue clackers that shattered as I was playing with them. Fortunately none of the fragments ended up in my eyes.
I can still hear the voice of my junior high school’s assistant principal angrily announcing over the PA system that CLACKERS ARE NOT ALLOWED AT SCHOOL.
My brother hung a 30’ halyard in the maple tree. There was a knot at the bottom for grip. It was right at the edge of the rockery that lined the path that went down to the back yard. We were in the habit of swinging out over the hedge (which had a low spot because of that), which took us out over the neighbor’s driveway some 20’ below.
No one ever got hurt.
Not everyone that played with any of the toys mentioned so far were hurt and/or killed by those toys. If I manage to drink and drive safely for a couple of years does that make it safe to do so?
Of food oriented toys, I had a Pretzel Jetzel, Incredible Edibles, a snow man snow cone machine, and a Mr. Peanut peanut butter maker (I still have it, 50+ years later). As far as being dangerous, I guess the first two could burn one’s fingers if one wasn’t careful enough. However, all of them sucked at what they were supposed to do. My niece and nephew had an E-Z Bake oven and said it was pretty lousy also.
About six years ago I was walking around in a Big Lots on Black Thursday and saw they had cotton candy machines on sale for $15. This was the one food toy I always wanted but never got so I bought the last two- one for me and one for my great nieces.* **These things work!** *I guess a small child could hurt himself with it without supervision, but a with bit of instruction for anyone over 6 or 7 they'll probably be fine.At least none of these things were the Cornballer.
When I was a kid some of our fathers had brought back “souvenirs” from Korea, which usually meant a beat up old 1911. Our dads removed the firing pin and glued a piece of wood into the magazine well. One kids dad gave him a S&W Model 10 snubbie. He had bent the firing pin off and filled the cylinder chambers with cement.
I knew of at least 4 boys who were playing cops and robbers with real pistols. Nobody held up the local gas station, no adults got hysterical, and no jumpy police officers shot any of us.
But can you imagine how dangerous having those “toys” would be today?
The danger level of those “toys” probably hasn’t changed at all. Then or now, white kids playing with them would probably get left alone, and then or now, black kids playing with them would probably get shot.
I had a toy called “Mercury Maze” which was a plastic maze with a blob of actual mercury in it. You were supposed to maneuver the mercury through the maze like those toy ball mazes, with the added complication that you could accidentally cause the blob to split into two, and then you had to get them back together. I liked it, and although I was aware at the time that mercury was dangerous, it somehow never occurred to me that THIS particular blob of mercury could be dangerous to ME. After all, it was just a toy.
Hey, I would have played with BAG O GLASS!
My parent’s idea of safety was to buy us rubber BBs for the BB guns. That way we could play tag out on my Mom’s family’s farm without hurting anyone. Welts didn’t count as “hurt” in our family. Basically anything short of a pumping blood wound you sucked it up and maybe got a popsicle out of it.
Apparently, the big danger of the EZ-Bake oven was food poisoning. It turns out that a lot of food poisoning is caused by raw flour. Who knew? I had one, seldom used it as I was allowed to make real cookies using the real oven from about age five. I’m sure my Mom was somewhere near the kitchen while I did it. . .
I also had this doll with her own bowl and mixer to make whipped instant pudding. The danger with that (as with the cotton candy machines) was that long hair could get caught up in it and the machine was strong enough to just rip it out in chunks. Didn’t happen to me, but once I heard about it she went to the giveaway pile.
OMG the slingshot. Did he hit somebody you knew? Or did she just follow you home? We had the luck of a storm drain system that went all through the neighborhood. No adult would follow us down there and we could get home without being followed.
I was a crack shot with a slingshot; I craved one of those wrist things but I never got one. I also had a Swiss Army knife that I could bury into anything at about ten paces. Child paces, of course. When I was nine, EVERY kid had a Swiss Army knife, and we took them to school with us.
We also used to do something we called “Tree-jumping.” that’s where several kids climb up a sapling until it bends over. Then you all hang by your hands and there’s this “Survivor” type wrangling that goes on to see what group is going to let go all at once and who will be left holding on thrashing back and forth with the tree. (or flying to their death if they don’t get their legs wrapped around in time.) Good fun!
I could go on for hours. It’s a demned miracle we made it to adulthood.
I remember sometime in the seventies someone put out a set of power tools for kids, actual power tools just smaller than the normal ones
Nonsense. Every now and then we’ll get sent to a call of a kid with a gun that turns out to be a BB or Air Soft gun. It’s handled the same regardless of the race of the kid. The difference is in the reaction from people now as opposed to 55 years ago when they see a kid playing with a life like guns. And of course the instances of kids actually shooting each other for real. We took our rifles and shotguns to school to give speeches on and we had a school trap team. Nobody ever killed anyone.
Then there were Cox cars. Anyone have one of these? Had tiny engines that ran on flammable fuel? They made an awful racket when started. You were supposed to tie a tether on it to control where it went but nobody ever did. I had a Cox airplane that flew away from the field I was in right into the open window of a semi-truck cab that was passing by. The commotion created would have been hilarious to watch if it wasn’t me getting my ass screamed at by a very large and very pissed off truck driver.
We actually didn’t get in trouble for that one as we GTF out of there, pronto. But the dumb ass clipped a couple more people and word finally got back to my Pop.
How about those water rockets that you pumped up with air and it flew from the pressure. If you stood wrong and looked down at it while releasing it’d fly up and smack you in the forehead. That hard plastic hurt.
Did anyone mention cheap plastic squirt guns? Filling them up with a liquid other than water made them plenty dangerous.
I’m not sure precisely how old you are, but that was probably more common when you were a kid than it is now.