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.

[boris]

There are still some about. I bought a friend's kids some toy helicopters. You pulled a trigger, which spun up the blades; releasing the trigger released the copter. One kid immediately pointed it HORIZONTALLY at her face, incorrectly assuming she would get a nice breeze.

Her mom and I both yelled "No!" and started across the room to prevent disaster. She let go of the trigger, launched the helicopter directly at her face. One of the blades cut her lip.

She hadn't had the toy more than one minute.

Over the years I've bought them unicycles (think of the injury potential), pogo sticks (a ticket to the emergency room) and sundry other toys that make it easy for kids to hurt themselves. In fact, the local joke is that I shop at "the Department of Dangerous Toys."

--Boris

[Orangedog]

Thats what I liked about NI3. Plenty of concussion, but no flames. Besides, if you're caught with it, the average middle school history teacher wouldn't have the slightest idea that some nasty looking purple goop in a jar could cause any mayhem....until it dries.

[Orangedog]

PLEASE share with the group! I'd like to know what this is, in the name of science, of course!

[Barnacle]

The Ronco “Iwo Jima”. That’s what I wanted.

[Fresh Wind]

An aerosol hair spray can and a Bic lighter were almost as good!

[Orangedog]

My hat is off to you, sir! And here I thought that surplus weather baloons were just for attaching lawn chairs to.

[dalereed]

"thought that surplus weather baloons were just for attaching lawn chairs to."

Never thought about attaching them to the neighbors lawn chairs filled with hydrogen and sending them to some unknown part of the city!

[Barnacle]

An aerosol hair spray can and a Bic lighter were almost as good!

Going to the store now.

[AnAmericanMother]

Yeah, but once that stuff dries if your cat tiptoes past the area it will go. Don't like that. Reminds me too much of red phosphorus and chlorate (ask the guy who wrote the "Militant's Formulary" how he lost all the fingers on his left hand. I met him once, his lab safety procedures left a lot to be desired.)

[NewRomeTacitus]

“The "Lawn Dart" was a great toy for the whole family. Jarts!”
Was seeing how high I could throw one. Little sister had to run by and “THUNK”. “Whaaah!” Stuck straight up out of her head, slightly to the right (thank God it didn’t hit where the plates join). Great fun not being able to sit down for a week.
“What? No toad interrogations?”

It was only one, I swear he didn’t feel a thing going off in a cloud of pink and green at 100 feet. I didn’t know he was related to James Carville.

Other tidbits: Little gray plastic submarine propelled by a mystery tablet.
Barbie got a Corvette and her owners all over America got over with boys for the first time in their lives because of it.
SST cars powered by a “Rip Cord”. (I had the Black Widow).
Clothespin + baseball card + bike spokes = Lots of noise.
Crystal radio sets.
The Visible Man & Woman (Update! Visible Democrat: no guts and you can see right through it.)
Plastic model kits from Aurora (scalpels, flammable fluids, tiny parts, risk of hallucinations: these babies covered a lot of ground).

Happy Holidays!

[jaime1959]

>> "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."


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.
<<

I had the Johnny Seven gun when I was little and the Creepy Crawler maker, plus a chemistry set. Surprised I'm still here with all my limbs, eyes, etc.

The Johnny Seven WAS really cool!!!

[forsnax5]

... and put a straight pin in the nose.

Well, yeah.

:)

We put kitchen matches in the nose, as well. They made a satisfying pop when they landed on tarmac, and a fine bit of smoke.

Placing small firecrackers inside with the fuse threaded out to the match head was another interesting concept, but it was rarely successful.

[Orangedog]

Then you obviously missed the 1997 Darwin Award honorable mention! Granted, he was using helium, but you get the idea.

http://www.aps.org/apsnews/0198/019814.html

[gitmo]

My brother and I used to grab onto the electric fence, grit our teeth, and wait for the neighbor girls to walk by. The trick was to look non-chalante as each jolt of electricity jerked through your body. A simple touch on the back of the neck, and boy would they wail.

In Cuba we used to kick over small cactuses, pick them up by the roots (gloves were helpful), swing them around and throw them at the opposing army of kids. Of course, they were doing the same to us.

[AnAmericanMother]

Gosh! My best friend's little brother used to mow down entire regiments of little plastic soldiers with Alberto VO-5 and a cigarette lighter . . .

[Vermonter]

Long time no see dale.

Seems some guys I knew would borrow a rope from someone's flag pole and then go wait at a bus stop. While someone asked the driver for directions, someone else might tie the metal litter basket to the back of the bus.

Sometimes this litter basket would follow the bus down the road ;-}

[Delta 21]

I was thinking (uh-oh!) about posting my own thread with a few digital pics of our downtown Christmas scene and throw in the tidbit about the candy cigs as a zinger just to see how many Freepers I could get fired up. I still might.

The plains of Kansas can certainly feel like 1958 at times. and I can use all of that I can get. TVLand had "The Munsters "marathon just the other day and my three daughters were glued to the tube.

[Fresh Wind]

An aerosol hair spray can and a Bic lighter were almost as good!

Going to the store now.

Just moments ago tried this with a can of Lysol. Works great!!

[dalereed]

"Then you obviously missed the 1997 Darwin Award honorable mention!"

That's hillareous! Don't know how I missed it in the news or for that matter from just talk since I lived there and am also a pilot.

[Orangedog]

Well, the faint of heart can always use the store bought straight ammonia cleaners from the grocery store. Takes a lot of the punch out of it, but if you just flick a bunch of it off a paint brush onto the kitchen floor, it makes good entertainment when someone walks across it. Not that I'd know anything about that either.