You know Christmas is just around the corner when the annual 10 worst toys list comes out.
Personally, my favourite is #5:
The “Carpet Skates”. I can’t imagine how this made the list! What’s wrong with children skidding across a carpeted room at potentially high velocity with no mechanism to stop what so ever?? It’ll be even more fun when the kids discover the carpeted stairs (and rug burn!)
In truth I kinda want a pair of these for the office!
Each year when I read this, I can’t picture much else than the classic SNL skit with Jane Curtain and Dan Akroyd.
We have one of the toys that is very similar to it.
The Air Burst Rockets. ( Ours is Stomp Rockets.Which you jump on the air cushioned launch pad and air is whoosed through a fish tube to the foam tipped rocket. Brilliant and basic. I wish I thought of it.) Stomp Rockets The only caveat, besides keeping kids heads away from it on lift off ( which isn’t difficult as the kids are so spaztic they are already running somewhere else to get the rocket.) is the fact you need loads of space to do this in. If you lived in a regular subdivision, you would be hoppping over fences and avoiding rabid dogs to retreive your rocket.
Looks pretty similar in design effort.
All I know is that these things are a blast. No pun intended. Keeps kids and dogs entertained for HOURS and WEARS THEM OUT.
I think the Pocket Rocket is more of a pathetic toy than a dangerous one. It’s for kids 12 and up and can only go 12mph? That’s slower than a bicycle. And their objection… that even though it says 12 and up, the kid still needs to be able to ride a bike without training wheels. Do kids that old really not know how to ride bicycles?
I think the problem with the “Pocket Rocket” (besides it’s name) is that it sits so low to the ground, a driver in a car couldn’t see a child riding near the car.
This reminds me of a story my brother told me. He went with a group of his workmates to an aquatic centre. They have huge waterslides with radar equipment that displays your speed as you fly past. One of the guys worked out that the only thing that slows you down is the drag created by your body in the water. So if you arch your back and go down on the back of your head and your heels you can go really fast.
As he tore past the sensors at record speeds it suddenly occured to all the observers that the pool at the bottom was designed for people travelling much slower. Apparently everyone looked away as he slammed feet first into the wall at the end of the pool,
We’ve had the “Mirror Pound-a-Ball” for years now, and apart from the occasional hammer misuse on siblings, have had no problems. Teaching kids to smash stuff with a hammer is great fun.
I realize that little kids do choke on small items like the button on the penguin and the presents on the bear, but do small children often stick dowels down their throats?
Well, I haven’t experimented with dowel rods, but the drumsticks were put in storage after .001 seconds of play. First thing my son did is stick one down his throat. They’re still free to pound on the drum with their little fists, however.
I still have my Uzi machine pistol, complete with sling. It was before the regs that said that the barrel had to be orange, it has the sights and grip safety, a detachable magazine (which held the batteries), VERY realistic sound effects, and if you had 3-in-1 oil you could put it in a little hole and it would burn off, making gunsmoke.
Ah, for the good old days when people weren’t so ridiculously scared of everything. I even brought it into school (a Catholic school, no less) when I was in 4th Grade. And gasp not only did I not get in trouble, not only did nobody die, but we actually had gasp again fun with it.
Oh, I forgot one more detail, one that’s as outrageous as all the others. There was a little light inside the barrel that would flicker while you held down the trigger, simulating muzzle flash. Amazing I didn’t get shot carrying that around, isn’t it?
Or maybe people realized it was just a toy. Nah, that couldn’t be it, could it?
Well you won’t want to start your sword-swallowing career with something sharp!
don’t ask: About ten years ago, some drunk yahoos broke into a water park in my hometown that was not yet open for the season. One of the idiots went to the top of the “fast slide” – you know the one that has not turns, just a really steep drop. He saw that – oh, goody! – it was wet with dew!
The pool at the bottom was of course empty, so there was nothing to slow him down at the bottom. Hit the wall at broke both legs (including thigh bones). Urk!
So forget about the children. Half the time, toys and amusement parks have to be idiot-proofed against adults!
On THIS TOY they’re worrying about choking??
What about worrying that the little barbarians are gonna smack each others’ brains (if any) out with the friggin’ hammer?! :smack:
Yes, they do. My daughter tried to deep throat the post of her donut stacker at 7 months and continued occasionally until she was a year old. We had one that was a wide cone with a big knob on the end so she could not manage to choke herself, though she tried.
Of the toys above, my favorites are the carpet skates, and the little mini trampoline. It’s just impossible to imagine how children could possibly hurt themselves with those…
And I’m with Johnny LA on the toy gun thing. Not only did we have toys guns everywhere when I was a kid, but we had actual, REAL guns. I had a Pellet Gun when I was 12, and a .22 when I was 14.
The electric motorcycle is a toy that just about any male child who could possibly ride it would want. And maybe a fair number of the females too.
The black toy gun I don’t understand, the whole “realistic toy guns” business is overblown.
The objection to the “megabuster battle weapon” seems to be mostly in that it is supposed to be a weapon. Not seeing how it functions I might be unaware, it seems to be just a watergun? And someone thinks that small kids should not pretend to shoot each other??? Apparently whoever recommended this item has never been around small boys.
The “Dress Me Paz” is undoubtedly the epitome of unrepentent evil. God smite the horrible people who would ever dare to create such a thing (-actually the inconsistent package labeling is more than likely a result of the thing being made in a country where nobody at the plant speaks conversational English very well).
~
What’s so bad about carpet skates? I had roller skates with no brakes. I was also unable to control myself in any way (as I’m a complete klutz) with the ones with brakes, and I survived.
I think the engineers at OSHA have an annual “Unsafe Toy” competition. The one who makes the single most dangerous toy wins. One year on Letterman, they demonstrated a few. The self-powered chair that had a sharpened-pencil launcher is the only one I remember.
Well, they are all a hell of a lot better than those wonderful Lawn Darts…remember those? Huge darts with sharp points that you would toss in the air to see if you could hit the dart board on the lawn? Those were just an accident waiting to happen, and trust me - didn’t take long for the accident to happen either.
But I am old enough to remember when every kid had a cork gun, and then almost all of my friends had BB guns or pellet guns. I got a Bowie knife when I was about 8 and my grandfather taught me to whittle.
I can understand making toys super safe for kids under 5, but after that, it is really a parent’s job to figure out if their kid can handle “toys” that are not made out of plastic with rubber feet. Some kids can, some can’t. Same thing with protective helmets. In all my years growing up in a small town in Illinois, I never once heard of a kid having a head injury on a bike, on skates or a skateboard. Skinned knees and elbows, sure. A few teeth missing earlier than the tooth fairy planned, yep. But brain damage? Uh…never. Same goes for the friends of my older and younger brothers. The only deadly, serious accidents kids had back then was drowning in local rivers and creeks (despite 1000’s of parental warnings not to go there), and an occasional broken arm falling out of trees that simply had to be climbed. Maybe my tune would change if I had a kid who was hit by a car while riding his bike. Don’t get me wrong - I am not advocating kids running off on unicycles down the freeway ramp, but sometimes I think making every toy a glob of nerf plastic isn’t the answer either.
