[Vermonter]

Could we have a show of hands for anyone who knows someone who put someone else's eye out with one of these toys from back when?

I'm sure it happened, but not to anyone I ever knew or heard of

(let's not forget slingshots and electric trains for the dangerous toy list)

[KneelBeforeZod]

I shocked myself a couple times with my train set. of course it was nothing serious...

[Tijeras_Slim]

I have it on good authority (my Mom) that the fellow in the back left of this group got that cool eye patch as a kid with a BB gun. Small town fun.

[GreyWolf]

Could we have a show of hands for anyone who knows someone who put someone else's eye out with one of these toys from back when?

I'll go you one better. I darned near blinded myself with a BB gun once. My cousin and I were shooting at tin cans sitting on a plow. A BB hit the plow frame and bounced back perfectly hitting me in the right eye. Fortunately, it missed the eyeball and lodged in the corner of my eye socket. Neither my cousin nor I could tell anyone for fear of losing our BB guns. My eye turned red and almost swelled shut. Finally my Mother noticed it in spite of my trying to keep it hidden and made me fess up. A trip to the family doc confirmed that the BB was no longer there. So you see, Mom and Dad are always right.

[Graybeard58]

I didn't put anyones eye out but when I was 9 years old and at the urging of my uncle who was two years older than me, I shot my sister in the back with my BB gun. (I had to do it - It was a double dog dare) I shot at her butt but hit her in the back. When the old man got home his aim was dead on!

50 years later my sister still brings it up from time to time. I remind her that my rear end stung a lot more than a BB in the back could have.

[Indy Pendance]

Klackers.

Klackers came on the market in the late 60s and lasted into the early 70s. They were constructed of two acrylic or glass balls on a string with a ring or small handle in the middle. The point was to get the two balls clicking against each other.

If you got really good you could do fancy tricks with them, like build up momentum until they were hitting on the top and bottom in an arc . . . and make a hugely annoying racket.

Kids loved them, but doctors and teachers weren’t so impressed after a frightening succession of serious Klacker accidents.

Unfortunately they allegedly had a nasty habit of shattering or exploding in a shrapnel-like shower and were promptly banned from every school in the western world - but kids all knew it was really a conspiracy from grown-ups because they hated the sound they made!

[Damagro]

Lord knows we tried to put out eyes. Never saw it actually happen though

[Irene Adler]

"You'll shoot your eye out, kid". Yes, my little sister actually DID get shot in the eye by a neighbor boy's toy arrow. She got taken likety split to the eye docter, and her eye eventually healed completely.

[Jeff Gordon]

Could we have a show of hands for anyone who knows someone who put someone else's eye out with one of these toys from back when?

When I was in the second grade a kid poked his eye out with a pencil. He was using the pencil to get his shoe string unknotted. Do pencils come with warnings?

[kegler4]

I don't remember the shooting toy involved, but, yes, a friend of mine named Steve lost his left eye in fourth grade.