Kissing booths - Hold up. I pay you a nickel and I get to kiss you on the lips? Sorry, I don’t care how hot you are. I’m not risking mono or HSV.
Pet Rocks.
So many things, but the first one that popped into my mind is bathing machines.
The 1950’s Atomic Energy Lab for kids.
Rotary aircraft engines.
No, not those type, these type.
I thought it was an hilarious misunderstanding on the part of the person that told me, but no. They were real enough.
Shoe store flouroscopes. Ye gods!
Radithor radioactive “medicine”
Candy cigarettes for children.
A smoking lot–for students–at my high school.
Those engines are incredibly cool. They were the origin of the oil that had to be wiped off the windscreens of early planes leading to those long scarves associated with aviators.
I’m only 32 and I fondly remember Candy Cigarettes. Also, at my high school we didn’t have a smoking lot, but there was a park across the street that was covered with cigarette butts. It was pretty much the accepted place to go to smoke. In my city, up until about 1999 or so, it was legal to smoke at any age. So, even though you had to be 18 to buy cigarettes, a 14 year old could walk down the street smoking one and no one could do anything about it.
UWM (Milwaukee), when I went there for a semester still had an indoor smoking area above the union. It was nice in between classes to grab something to eat and lounge around on the couches with a cigarette, some food and some books without having to go outside.
I read somewhere, here maybe (broomstick?) that before starting those you have to remove the bottom spark plug and let out any oil that seeped past the rings and into the piston. If you try and start it with a cylinder full of oil, you’ll destroy that part of the engine.
I read that somewhere as well in an aviation magazine. The engine is basically a two-stroke, and the crank case would build up a thick layer of oil as the engine ran. This would end up draining into the lower cylinders when the engine wasn’t running. I can’t imagine what it was like to hand crank an enormously heavy engine like that. The entire aircraft must have been shaken violently as the engine started up. I wouldn’t want to be inches away from that spinning monstrosity. Still way cool though.
Sheesh, where I went, we smoked in the classrooms.
Crystal Pepsi and the Spin Doctors.
Tapeworms sold as weight- loss medicine.
Bayer’s heroin cough medication tops my list. As a close second, tableware with built-in handguns. Both of those things just seem like really bad ideas.
The original Jarts.
Lawn Darts with pointed metal tips that you would throw near the feet of your opponent. Or if you got bored with that, you could all stand in the middle of the yard, launch them randomly upward, and play “Flee In Terror”.
I’m surprised that powerful nobles would vie to be the king’s bathroom attendant.
When I was in college, they had foil/paper ashtrays in all the classroom.
I used to play lawn darts. Kids were smart enough to know they were dangerous and stayed away from them.
There’s currently a thread about some Drama Uncles around this place somewhere. Yeah, I can see where having HANDGUNS AS PART OF YOUR PLACE SETTING might be a bad idea, especially during the holidays, when things are likely to get a bit tense, anyway.