Today's dangerous toys pale to those of past

Chicago Sun Times ^ | November 26, 2003 | MARK BROWN SUN

[KneelBeforeZod]

'Tis the season for dangerous toy warnings. The Public Interest Research Group issued its 18th annual "Trouble in Toyland" report Tuesday, while the Consumer Product Safety Commission was releasing its list of toys cited for safety recalls. Last week was the 31st annual presentation of the "10 Worst Toys List" from WATCH -- or World Against Toys Causing Harm.

You know the drill by now: toys that might choke a kid, toys that could put You know the drill by now: toys that might choke a kid, toys that could put somebody's eye out, toys that could poison you if you chewed them up, many of the toys so obscure that you'll never see them on the shelves.

Through ever-increasing levels of vigilance, diligence and litigiousness, we Americans theoretically keep making our toys safer and safer year by year.

I was just wondering then: How do you explain the fact that the world into which we're sending our children to play is becoming more and more dangerous every day?

Is it possible we're spending so much time sweating the little things that we've lost track of the bigger picture?

Unfortunately, I have no answer to these deep philosophical questions.

What I have is a list of my own: Favorite Dangerous Toys from Childhood.

It's a compilation actually from interviews with other guys. It's amazing that we're all still alive to talk about this stuff. Just don't let your kids read this. They'd be jealous.

First off, there used to be toy guns, lots of them.

Let's set aside for a moment the issue of BB guns or pellet guns, which were always a matter of parental dispute.

There was a time when nearly every boy had a six-shooter with a holster. Most of them fired plastic bullets.

The projectiles didn't move fast enough to break a pane of glass, but they could have certainly "put somebody's eye out" under just the right circumstances.

There were toy rifles, too. Spring-loaded ones with big cartridges.

"I had the Johnny Seven," one protective father told me wistfully. "It was seven weapons of destruction in one. You could pull out the Lugar or convert it into a grenade launcher."

Neither he nor I would allow our kids anywhere near such a thing now.

"Don't forget the dart guns," said another product of a pre-PIRG childhood.

Oh, yes, the dart guns with the hard plastic darts and the rubber suction tips. When you removed the tips, you could do some real damage to your little brother, but you had to keep in mind that his chance would come, too.

I was surprised to find one of those dart guns on this year's most dangerous toy list. I suppose the Chinese are still churning them out somewhere.

There were also bows and arrows with the same suction cup tips. Every boy knew that these could be removed and the arrow point whittled down into something more useful.

My friend Pittsburgh John did this one better. He and his brothers were allowed to have toy arrows with actual steel tips that they would let fly at squirrels and rabbits.

"I don't think we ever hit anything. I'm surprised we never killed one another," said Pittsburgh John. That possibility never curtailed their use, but when the boys started using the bow and arrow inside the garage and put holes in the wall, their father had to put his foot down.

The hazard posed by other toys was only slightly more subtle.

Take the Vac-U-Form from Mattel, which used a sizzling 110-volt hotplate to mold small toys from melted sheets of styrene plastic. The Vac-U-Form heating plate was also later used for Creepy Crawlers and Thingmaker molds.

There's no telling how many ways these would flunk the safety tests today. They could burn you. They could burn the house down. There were toxic materials that let off what were probably toxic fumes.

Boy, oh, boy. What a great toy.

"A sense of danger is what makes a toy interesting," observed another very proper father.

This particular father reminded me of the most important rule about toys: You can never keep a kid from using a toy for a purpose for which it was not intended, not that this would deter either of us from trying to anticipate each and every one.

"You can make anything dangerous depending on what you do with it," he observed. "Superman capes were dangerous because then you'd jump off the garage roof, which I did."

OK, he might be a special case.

I received varied opinions on the potential danger from chemistry sets in that time period. Everyone has a story about combining the various chemicals in random ways that they thought might blow up the house. But nobody could cite any example of actually blowing something up that way.

I've got to be careful. Kids really did get hurt with some of these toys. And I don't want to diminish the work of the safety watchdogs. You can't argue with somebody trying to protect kids.

Another buddy, Scott the Jeweler, had a favorite toy cannon that he fired off in a closed garage. It didn't really shoot anything, but it made one heck of a noise, the louder the better as far as Scott was concerned. These days there's a special category on the watch lists for dangerously loud toys.

Come to think of it, Scott is a little hard of hearing.

[Interious]

Time Bomb--of course. Wonderful. Look at the style of dress.
Men in suit and tie at a party--clean cut. Take me back dear Lord.

[tet68]

I don't know if that would classify as much of a toy.

Dirt clods? Of course!

We used to have great dirt clod fights, and there were some kind of plants that we could pull up that had a big clod of dirt around the roots, great maces!

I got hit in the head with a claw hammer once, building a tree fort, asked the kid in the tree to "throw me the hammer!" he did , claws caught me right in the top of the head. I chased him around the yard but couldn't hit him because of all the blood in my eyes, Ma really freeked out over that one.

We used to skip grammer school and go hang out at construction sites all day, then after the workmen went home would play world war II on the roofs.

Such an innocent childhood.

[Ichneumon]

Then:

.

Now:

Effective December 19, 1988, all lawn darts are banned from sale in the United States. Lawn darts, used in an outdoor game, have been responsible for the deaths of 3 children.

A set of lawn darts usually includes four large darts and two targets. The darts typically are about 12 inches long with a heavy metal or weighted plastic tip on one end and three plastic fins on a rod at the other end. The darts are intended to be grasped by the rod and thrown underhand toward a target. While the tip may not be sharp enough to be obviously dangerous, these darts can cause skull punctures and other serious injuries.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission urges parents to discard or destroy all lawn darts immediately. They should not be given away since they may be of harm to others.

Consumers who find lawn darts still being sold, should contact the Consumer Product Safety Commission on the toll free hotline: 1-800-638-CPSC (2772). A teletypewriter for the hearing impaired is available at 1-800-638-8270. Consumers also may write to: Compliance, Consumer Product Safety Commission, Washington, D.C. 20207.

[Hank Rearden]

Ah, M-80s and cherry bombs with waxed fuses so they'd burn underwater. Life was good.

Ever crack the neighbor's swimming pool with a waterproof M-80? I did.

Life was bad there for a while.

[Indy Pendance]

Remember slides? I'm talking 20-30 feet of metal you'd burn your skin on on a hot summer day. And monkey bars and merry-go rounds all on asphalt playgrounds....

[lil'bit]

How many still have their 60's clackers?

[Indy Pendance]

Any of you ever melt crayons in a tin can and dunk your fingers in the wax? Those were cool crayons. Of course, we had to make our own little fire...

[AnAmericanMother]

Why am I not dead?

'Cause "it's the volts that jolts, but the mils that kills!"

Words to live by.

I'm not going to say a word about the huge report shells we made from ultrafine German aluminum and potassium perchlorate . . . nope, not a word.

But all the streetlights on our block thought it was daylight and turned off . . . and the sheriff's deputy was hovering in the area for several hours trying to figure out just what had happened . . . while we were hiding under our beds going, "Gee, I hope Dad never finds out where that came from . . . "

He never did.

[AnAmericanMother]

I'll go ya one better . . . my Siamese Cat used to play "chicken" with the electric train. She would sit dead center on the track at a curve (in the dark) and wait for the train to come around.

Then she would rise up with a horrible scream, wind up her deadly right paw and derail the train! She loved this, she would do it over and over again as often as we would put the train back on the track for her. We even filmed it (in 16mm) "Attack of the Giant Cats . . . "

[Indy Pendance]

I busted mine.

[Vermonter]

You know? I really don't remember playing with crayons. Too busy getting into trouble outdoors, I guess

[Indy Pendance]

It was the fire that was the best part. We usually did it in a secret place.

[InvisibleChurch]

don't forget Dan Aykroyd as Irwin Mainway, who peddled a children's toy called "Bag o' Glass" and fur coats made from nearly extinct animals

[WorkingClassFilth]

They were made by 'WHAM-O' A rubber diaphragm in the bell shaped cone was pulled back in the cocked state and released when fired. The air mass in the bell was compressed and shaped into an air-ball that could hit targets at least as far as 15 feet away.

After shooting everything possible, including pets, with the air-ball, we used to put the muzzle in out mouths and fire the things. It blew out your cheeks like Dizzy Gilespie.
What can I say - kids are crazy.

[GreenHornet]

Remember Dan Akroyd and his Bag-o-glass?

Bag-O-Glass was my favorite!:

"Yeah, yeah, ya see.....ya got all different colors in there, and the kids pretend like they're a rich Arabian Sultan and these are diamonds and rubies and emeralds and stuff.....it's a great toy - the kids love it!"

[tet68]

Yep, we used to get these detailed metal cannon that had a spring at the breach and you could fire little plastic projectiles, well we found out you could put strike anywhere
matches in there head first and the cannon would shoot them and ignite the matchhead at the same time, don't know how many plastic army men we melted into oblivian .

That was before big bang cannons, used to shoot walnuts out of those, ah the joys of carbide.

[mjp]

The kid next door to me had his eye shot out by a BB gun (not by me, the kid across the street did it). He was the only kid in the neighborhood to grow up with a glass eye.
My father had a Tesla coil that actually worked. I never got shocked by it.

[in the Arena]

We had that same Time Bomb toy...it was a tame game until my sisters boyfriend played, he'd hold on to it then just before it went off he would throw a fast ball at one of us...made a pretty neat sound bouncing off my brothers skull...

[2111USMC]

"We used to buy the stuff in huge boxes and probably had enough powder to load shotgun shells"

Ahh.. brings back memories. Used to take an entire roll of caps and strike them with a hammer on the concrete. Made a pretty impressive noise!

[bvw]

The Johnny Seven.

Picture Crdit: http://www.sterlingtimes.org/politically_incorrect8.htm

A couple up on eBay now. Bid at $150 or so with a few days left.