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Looking back, it’s pretty miraculous that I’ve lived to be as old as I am. When I was born, my mom brought me home from the hospital in her arms, not a car seat. The playground equipment at my elementary school was surrounded by asphalt, not mulch or woodchips. Bicycle helmets were strictly for Evel Knievel, and seat belts were an expensive option on most cars. The toy industry only fueled our penchant for danger; take a look at some of these commercials:
1. Sixfinger
My younger brother had one of these, and I’m here to tell you that that tiny gun had some serious firepower – those little plastic bullets hurt like heck! (You think your average seven-year-old boy is going to pay attention to the package disclaimer that warned against aiming the Sixfinger at human targets?) One of the bullets could be equipped with a cap, which exploded on impact if fired at your big sister’s shoe just so.
2. Swing Wing
The Transogram Company had been producing mainstream toys such as tiddly-winks and doctor kits since 1959. Then one day in 1965 the vice-president of product development, whose brother-in-law was an out-of-work chiropractor, came up with the idea for the Swing Wing. (OK, I made that last part up.) Nothing says “fun” like a cerebral hemorrhage, so Swing Wing was eventually pulled from the market, leaving kids searching for a new fun way to get their spinal injuries on.
3. Slip ‘n Slide
Wham-O introduced the Slip ‘n Slide in 1961, a time when neighborhood swimming pools were few and far between and water slide theme parks were non-existent. The idea was to cool off and have fun at the same time by running up to and then belly-flopping down on a water-slicked length of vinyl. Wham-O sold millions of Slip ‘n Slides over the years, and if a kid broke a toe on one of the stakes that secured the mat to the ground or left most of their epidermis on the driveway because they slid too far, well, as Mom always said “It’s your own fault, don’t come crying to me.” It wasn’t until the more litigious 1990s that words like “spinal cord injury” and “death” started appearing in the lengthy list of warnings included on the Slip ‘n Slide instruction sheet.
4. Johnny Seven One Man Army
No wonder kids today get in so much trouble – it’s those no-good video games they’re always playing. Nothing but shooting and street fighting and an overall culture of violence. Not like the toys of the 1960s. Back then we had wholesome products like the Johnny Seven One Man Army, which was the biggest-selling boy’s toy of 1964. Johnny Seven came equipped with a cap pistol, rocket launcher, and “armor piercing” bullets, along other with a few other features necessary for stopping Communism dead in its tracks. Johnny Seven weighed about four pounds fully assembled, so a kid got a good aerobic workout when he ran around toting one outside in the fresh air and sunshine. Topper Toys used a unique tactic to give Johnny Seven maximum exposure; instead of only stocking it in toy and department stores, they also made it available in grocery stores, a place mom usually dragged her kids to at least once per week.
5. Water Wiggle
It looked innocent enough, but if your neighborhood had good water pressure and some joker turned the hose on full blast, Wham-O’s Water Wiggle turned into a semi-lethal weapon. It danced and bobbed erratically and wrapped around you like a boa constrictor. And that plastic head was heavy — but bloody noses and chipped teeth were a small price to pay for some cool fun in the summer time.
6. Creepy Crawlers
An exposed hot plate combined with potentially toxic fumes equaled fun in 1964. The Thing Maker was a gadget you plugged in and then waited until it heated up to 300°F. Then you poured “Plasti-Goop” into the creepy insect-shaped metal molds and waited for them to heat-set. Ideally, you were supposed to wait until after you’d unplugged the Thing Maker and it had cooled off before removing your Creepy Crawlers, but who has time for that when you want to put a fake spider in your sister’s bed before she gets home? Burns and blisters were a fact of life in the plastic bug business, and you simply sprayed the injury with some Bactine and hid it from Mom so she wouldn’t take your Thing Maker away. Plasti-Goop was marketed as “non-toxic,” but that was in 1964, before the dangers of little things like melted PVC and lead paint were well known.
7. Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab
I’m sort of sneaking this one in, as I don’t know if it was ever advertised on television, but it’s too good to pass up. In 1951 A.C. Gilbert, the man who invented the Erector Set, introduced a brand new educational toy: the Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab.
Gilbert worked closely with physicists at M.I.T. while developing the kit, and also had the unofficial approval of the U.S. government, which thought that such a toy would help the average American understand the benefits of nuclear energy. The Lab came equipped with a Geiger-Mueller radiation counter, a Wilson Cloud Chamber (to see paths of alpha particles), a Spinthariscope (to see “live” radioactive disintegration), four samples of Uranium-bearing ores, and an Electroscope to measure radioactivity. It also included a comic book featuring Dagwood Bumstead (the man who couldn’t leave his own house without knocking the mailman down) describing how to split an atom.
The Atomic Energy Lab’s main drawback, other than possible radiation poisoning, was its price tag: a whopping $49.50, which would be over $300 in today’s dollars.
How did you flirt with disaster as a child? Did you own a set of Klackers? A BB gun? (Did you put someone’s eye out?) Tell us how you lived on the edge!
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Comments (99)
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I was waiting for Klackers to show up! That was the first to come to mind when I saw \Dangerous Toys\! I remember playing with those like it was yesterday…
posted by SailrsGrl on 7-6-2009 at 1:32 pm
Great post! I’d love to see an article about Jarts (those darts that you’d throw and try to get in the little hoops — and hopefully not kill anybody).
How many casualties did Jarts cause? Are they really illegal? Are any subcultures of Jarts enthusiasts still playing in secret leagues somewhere?
posted by Gregg on 7-6-2009 at 1:32 pm
You waited until the very end to mention them! Klackers! Jeez! It’s a wonder I didn’t break my hand or someone’s head with those things. What a stupid idea! But I sure had to have a pair!
As kids, we couldn’t be bothered with store bought danger. We mostly created our own. One was a swing strung between two trees too far apart. It could launch the little neighbor kid right over the fence!
posted by Hyacinth on 7-6-2009 at 1:35 pm
My friend and I totally tried to kill ourselves every summer on the slip and slide, even putting soap on it (you know you did, too) to make the ride more enjoyable. The great thing was, we were actually encouraged by our parents to do so, and they usually stood around laughing and clapping.
Surprisingly, the “toy” that injured me the most was the trampoline–I once busted my lip trying to cut a flip, and I fell off quite a few times as well.
And then there was the go-cart that my (same) childhood friend had, which went very fast, had no seat belts, and… no brakes.
And no, we didn’t wear helmets.
posted by Heather on 7-6-2009 at 1:36 pm
My grandparents had a mostly borken tommy seven OMA in their basement. We would still play with it even though most of the thing was gone. Never truly knew what it was till now. Awesome.
posted by Benji on 7-6-2009 at 1:43 pm
I had the 90s version of the Creepy Crawler machine. That thing was awesome.
The best Slip n Slide placement was at the top of a hill so you could slide down to the bottom at top speed into a big puddle of mud.
posted by nihil on 7-6-2009 at 1:48 pm
The dangerous toys that were a craze at my grade school in the early 70’s were “Clackers”: two metal or glass balls (larger than a golf ball, smaller than a tennis ball), attached by an embedded cord, with a metal ring tied halfway between the two orbs. The idea was to hold the ring in one hand and to “clack” the balls together with sufficient force to make them bounce off each other, both at the top and the bottom of a circle arc. Sufficient force also meant shattered glass shards flying through the playground, or suddenly broken strings sending metal spherical projectiles hurling through the air… What fun!
posted by Karl on 7-6-2009 at 1:50 pm
My brother used to duct tape tin cans together to form a canon, load in a tennis ball and dump in rubbing alchol. Add a burning and match and watch the flaming tennis ball fly. It’s a wonder any of us made it to adulthood without burning off a hand or setting fire to the neighborhood.
posted by CM on 7-6-2009 at 1:58 pm
How about the ‘crocodile mile’? Not only did you slip and slide down the plastic sheet but they added a jump. I don’t know how many times I hit the jump the wrong way and went flying off the side or into the plastic bars they had put right next to the slide.
posted by Sam on 7-6-2009 at 1:59 pm
Yep, I had Klackers, too. And we rode our bikes without helmets. And cap guns. And tire swings (not sure how much danger we could get into, but they swung pretty high up).
This article reminds me of the Saturday Night Live episode where Dan Akroyd was a sleazy promoter selling dangerous kid toys like the “bag of cut glass” – good stuff there…
posted by Anne on 7-6-2009 at 2:01 pm
I can’t imagine any kid from any decade watching that Swing Wing commercial and thinking “Man, that looks FUN!!!” It’s the most awful thing I’ve ever seen. And now I have the song stuck in my head . . .
posted by EV on 7-6-2009 at 2:09 pm
I also had the 90s version of Creepy Crawlers! I loved that thing so much and even had to get a goop refill kit. I remember bringing them into my first grade class for show and tell.
My sister later had a similar machine that made dolls and their clothes from goop. Not nearly as cool.
But yeah, those plates got really hot.
I was never allowed anywhere near a slip and slide or big trampoline, as my dad worked for an insurance company where he saw the reports of how many people got hurt on them.
posted by Amy on 7-6-2009 at 2:15 pm
metal slap braclets (now illegal in illinois, too many slit wrists)!!! along with that fun invention….skip it!! or as it should be called, fall-on-your-face-and-chip-a-tooth-it
posted by Dayna on 7-6-2009 at 2:16 pm
I had a Flexi Flyer when I was a kid, on wheels not the snow sled. You lay down on your stomach on the thing with your head pointed down hill and had only marginally affective hand breaks to stop with. Lots of fun, lots of grand wipeouts.
posted by Susan on 7-6-2009 at 2:18 pm
Yes just because kids these days don’t have these toys doesn’t mean they can’t get them. Lawn Darts had long be discontinued when I was a kid seeing how they would fit in a crossbow bolts on a battlefield. However, I found a set at a yards sale and after a day of using them on my college campus I had them taken away. And six fingers are still available today.
posted by Daniel on 7-6-2009 at 2:22 pm
I just told my son, niece and nephews (ages 10, 11, 14, 16 & 17) about Click Clacks this weekend, right after they totally demolished a Slip n Slide I bought for $2.00 the end of last summer. We put it on the grass with a “slight” incline and they had a blast. Of course we didn’t pay any attention to the “up to age 8, 5′1”, and 100 lb limitation on the box. They were a muddy mess at the end of it, but had a great time.
I had a thing maker with a couple of kits – creepy crawler, creeple people and fun flowers. I also had a monster wax/candle maker that I used a few times but don’t remember much about it, other than my friend and I dipping our fingers in the melted wax before we poured it into the mold.
posted by Sue on 7-6-2009 at 2:28 pm
I had a Daisy Red Ryder BB Gun when I was a kid (just like the one in “A Christmas Story”). My dad gave it to me for Christmas when I was about 8. I was actually disappointed, because I was hoping for a real gun. And no, I never shot anyone’s eye out.
My sister also had an E-Z Bake Oven, with the clear lightbulb that got up to about a zillion degrees. I can’t remember how many burns I got on my fingers from those things.
Good times, good times.
posted by AmyD on 7-6-2009 at 2:36 pm
I totally agree EV. how was the Swing Wing meant to be any fun? the kids in the commercial just look like dorks.
made me laugh though.
i had a Clacker. and my parents had lawn darts. and i used to wear slap bracelets. i totally lived on the edge.
posted by the creature on 7-6-2009 at 2:39 pm
We were to cheap to actually buy a slip and slide. We found a really really long piece of heavy duty plastic, placed it on the small hill we had in the yard, placed the hose on low at the top and created a small pool at the bottom. We would come in just covered in mud and road rash but had a blast.
The real slip and slides are not long enough in my opion – they need to be much much longer to get a better ride.
posted by Beth on 7-6-2009 at 2:49 pm
I’m surprised it took so long for the Skip It to get mentioned. I actually had friends in elementary school break their ankles on those things!
Even though I was slightly afraid of trampolines forever, I wanted one desperately. The movie Big made that ten times worse. My grandparents got me an exercise trampoline. FAIL.
posted by Angie on 7-6-2009 at 2:49 pm
I still have my Slip n’ Slide from the late 80’s. I loved that thing so much, especially since our backyard had a slight incline that would give you great speed if you landed just right. One time we added a bottle of dish soap, and my cousin went so fast she skidded 10 feet after the end of the slide and right into my mom’s rose garden. She still has a scar on her right thigh.
You just can’t buy good times like that anymore.
posted by Arcadia on 7-6-2009 at 2:54 pm
Does anyone remmeber the Pogo Ball? It was banned from my elementary school after the inevitable head crackin’ that ensued….
posted by Karthik on 7-6-2009 at 3:07 pm
Wre had kalckers at our school until the spoilsport principal banned them :-(
No one thought to ban the Whammo Air Blaster – (I think it was Whammo). You know – you pull the lever down to prime the gun then fire a blast of air KAPPOW!!
Of course you were told to NEVER aim it at a person’s face or ear…which made you try that stunt to see what would happen (ouch!)
posted by JFS in IL on 7-6-2009 at 3:21 pm
I loved most of these toys but my favorite dangerous toys were a BB Gun and sling shots. We also used to get or make our own bows and arrows (definately made our own arrows) and have wars. Although in the right hands, the most dangerous toy was your standard two-wheel bicycle, especially in the 70’s after Fonzie’s famous jump. There were ramps for jumping all over the neighborhood, some as high as 10 feet. Yes, the good old days!
posted by Dave on 7-6-2009 at 3:22 pm
A lesser-known hazard of the Slip n’ Slide — putting it on a lawn that also had black walnut trees.
See, by the time the weather (around here, anyway) would get nice enough to use the slip n’ slide, all of the fruit from the black walnut trees covered the ground. And by fruit, I mean walnut shells. The walnuts are round and about the size of a billiards ball, and their shells would split into four equal sections, making for some extremely hard and sharp sensations underneath the vinyl. I think we only made it down our Slip n’ Slide once. :)
posted by Bob on 7-6-2009 at 3:22 pm
Lawn Jarts…..I have to check. I think my Dad still has a full set up in the Garage…:)
And we had the Creepy Crawler maker & the EZ Bake Oven. Hell, my dad would give me nails & a hammer & a board to “play” with, we used steak knives to cut refrigerator cartons into clubhouses (dad was a butcher). He would barrel over snow covered country roads with a toboggan tied behind the Chevy pickup with all 4 of us kids on the dang thing. How did we ever survive?
posted by Paula on 7-6-2009 at 3:35 pm
Did anyone else have Moon Shoes? I had thought they were the coolest things until I actually put them on and felt like I was going to break a leg or ankle if I took a step.
posted by JD on 7-6-2009 at 3:48 pm
I bought my son the 2000 version of Creepy Crawlers. Man, what a piece of c**p. There’s so many safety features built in, that’s it’s just about as fun as watching paint dry. The kiln is powered by a light bulb. The door locks when you put the mold in and won’t reopen until the temp drops. And, the entire thing will shut down when the temp gets too high.
I remember playing with the original Creepy Crawlers for hours at a time. We’d test the heat of the kiln by spitting on it. \Yup, the spits boiling; it’s hot enough\.
I also had a set of Klackers. Mom wouldn’t let me play with them in the house. Not because they were dangerous, but because they made too much noise.
posted by Tom on 7-6-2009 at 3:55 pm
I bought two sets of Jarts (lawn darts) on eBay right before they were banned from the site. They aren’t super sharp or heavy…plus most of the time you play in a large, open area…getting hurt by one would require really bad (or really good) aim. Horseshoes, on the other hand, would hurt MUCH more yet people play that all the time. Go figure.
posted by Mike James on 7-6-2009 at 4:00 pm
We have an park by our house that sports the old playground equipment. The slides are about 20 feet high with no railing..danger makes it twice as fun!
posted by Marty on 7-6-2009 at 4:17 pm
I got shot w/ a BB gun in the wrist, which just happened to be covering my face, so who knows how close I came reading this article w/ an eyepatch.
My “friend” started pointing his BB rifle at me, and it had the desired effect. I ran and hid behind his deck, which had slats, so I put my hands over my face in the gap between the slats, and wouldn’t you know it, he got me right on the wrist. It was winter (musta been Xmas) so I was wearing gloves, but it still hurt thru the elastic band.
We also had Jarts and someone had a slip and slide.
posted by Jonny on 7-6-2009 at 4:18 pm
I had the original Thing Maker (I hadn’t even thought about it for decades). It was fun for a while. We’d (my brothers and I) put it away for a while, then pull it out and go wild for a couple of weeks.
I also had a lead casting kit, including a heater, hot pot (made of iron), and dozens of molds. I still have the molds and a few dozen of the cast lead figures. — Anyone know where I can get the heater and the pot?
posted by Izzy on 7-6-2009 at 4:22 pm
Something about Paula’s survival story reminded me of this:
My friends dad used to hit us “hot smashes” w/ a baseball bat and baseballs, off the street, which had a crown and was the oil/pebble variety, leading to unpredictable hops. Plus we lived on a street w/ a slight incline, and he always stood uphill of us. No wonder I never wanted to play baseball.
The last summer this would have occured, I was in between first and second grade. Nothing like an adult hitting “hot smashes” off pavement to a 7 yr old.
posted by Jonny on 7-6-2009 at 4:24 pm
My sister and I got an Easy-Bake oven for Christmas one year. The little lightbulb took way too long to cook anything, so we took the little metal tins and put them in the microwave. Bad idea.
posted by LB on 7-6-2009 at 4:36 pm
When I was eight or nine I got a geology science kit for Christmas,and included was a chunk of real asbestos! Those were the days!!!
posted by chris radus on 7-6-2009 at 4:41 pm
i wonder if the 6 finger shooter came in any other color besides white?
posted by Austen on 7-6-2009 at 4:42 pm
I had a Vac-U- Form(?) You’d heat up small sheets of plastic them press it down over a mold, pump a handle to suck the hot plastic sheet over the mold. Lots of burns and cuts trimming the plastic to put the car or plane together or whatever you made.
posted by Sparky on 7-6-2009 at 4:49 pm
Forgot to mention the Chemistry set. I always mixed anything together just to see what happened.
posted by Sparky on 7-6-2009 at 4:50 pm
I was bitten by my pet rock once!
posted by Doflitchit on 7-6-2009 at 4:55 pm
Child O’The Sixties checking in!
Not only did Topper display their toys in supermarkets, but they also put the displays in the produce section, turning the most kid-boring part of the store into the kid-catching equivalent of a chum slick. They also didn’t just put boxed toys out there-Topper would send them these cardboard-and-cellophane dioramas showing the toys in all their glory. And that glory was considerable, all Topper toys were uniformly ENORMOUS (somebody at that company studied Piaget, I’m sure.) They used to have to send a box boy over every fifteen minutes to mop up the drool kids would leave on the floor.
posted by Joe Maz on 7-6-2009 at 5:23 pm
Clackers are enjoying quite a comeback in Eastern Europe – I saw those things for sale in markets everywhere in Croatia and Slovenia, and you couldn’t escape the incessant click click click while you were trying to relax on the beach… ARGH.
When I nannied in Europe a few years ago, I brought a slip n’ slide with me for the kids to play with during the long boring summers at their summer house. They LOVED it, but the overprotective grandmother was very upset that I’d introduced this dangerous toy to her precious grandchildren and demanded that some ground rules be set – including no running starts, turning off the hose in between turns, emptying out the pool of water at the end regularly, and placing it UP the slight hill so getting any momentum was impossible. Of course all those rules went out the window when Grandma went home, and the kids loved me for it.
posted by dangermouse on 7-6-2009 at 5:30 pm
My parents buried my Skip-It in the back yard of a house we lived in when I was 9….they didn’t tell me this until I was 17….I lived that damn thing but they were convinced that my ankles are bad because of it…..I still want to go dig it up one day
posted by Kim W. on 7-6-2009 at 7:00 pm
I just saw the Slip ‘n Slide for sale at WalMart last night!
posted by Deena on 7-6-2009 at 7:07 pm
I just bought a slip and slide with a skim board for my kids the other day. We haven’t used it yet, but I’m hoping they like it as much as I loved slip and slide.
And we all had clackers only they ended up draped around the power lines most of the time. I did see a game at the beach the other day where you threw what looked like clackers at a set of rails and you got points depending on which railing the clacker wrapped around. Anyone know what that is?
posted by Karen on 7-6-2009 at 8:01 pm
I do, Karen! That’s Ladderball.
posted by Joe Maz on 7-6-2009 at 8:16 pm
I used to love these “Magic Rocks” my dad always got for me (in the late 70’s). I don’t know if that’s what they were really called but they sure were cool, it was a little packet of powder you mixed with water in a glass and there were these little brightly colored “rocks” you dropped in the liquid. Wait a few hours or overnight and they grew into these really neat-looking stalagmite sort of things. I probably ruined several dozen of my mom’s glasses with them and they were probably toxic but were they ever cool!
posted by dooflotchie on 7-6-2009 at 8:17 pm
Skydancers. Does anybody remember those? (Mid nineties toys). You’d pull a string several time and this fairy looking doll would launch off of it’s launcher and spin around with this incredibly hard plastic wings. Depending on how many times you’d pull the string, the higher it went, and the faster it fell. I had a bump on my head for a week after that thing hit me. The blades/wings also left crazy marks and bruises! We used to launch them at the boys on my street.
posted by Maz on 7-6-2009 at 10:37 pm
I had a thin called a ‘roller racer’ it was triangular and had three wheels and a bike handlebar thing. you could either sit on it and shift the handlebars from side to side for momentum, but what we usually did as put one knee on it and kicked with the other foot. cracks in te sidewalk were out mortal enemies.
i also had a scooter that was just a skateboard with a stiff handle added to it. you steered like you were on a skateboard…it just had a handle. my brother used to remove the handle and just plain skate on it. i broke the bride of my nose because of that…
easy bake oven. it may have been a light bulb, but those mother effers get hot. hot enough to bake corn bread, and cake, shoot.
my brother alos had boomerangs. i’m sure they got hurt with them somehow…
posted by Meister Jazz on 7-6-2009 at 11:08 pm
I had the Cabbage Patch doll that had a motor in it’s mouth to eat food. I even remember watching the report on TV about how the little girl got her hair torn out. My mom thought that made it even more valuable so we never sent it back! Although it did have a pretty gung-ho motor for a children’s toy.
posted by Rachel* on 7-6-2009 at 11:26 pm
You can’t really claim this latest generation is coddled to the point they are denied dangerous toys, consider: Heelies. Though I am too old to ever have had a pair, I appreciate the appeal of turning any surface into a makeshift skate park for eight-year-olds. No helmets or pads in the department store for these kids, either, just a dropped nickel away from concussion-ville. After all, I’ve never seen a sign outlawing Skip-Its or Creepy Crawlers from an establishment, whereas Heelies are liability on wheels.
posted by Lynnie on 7-6-2009 at 11:45 pm
Our neighborhood had a steep hill leading up to a water tower. We’d pile three people into a wagon, push off, and careen down the hill with no way to steer or brake. We’d also do that lying down, headfirst, on a skateboard.
We also had bike-jumping ramps all over the neighborhood, along with huge mounds of dirt left over from construction that we’d ride over. We didn’t even need expensive toys to put ourselves in serious jeopardy! But we did have a Slip N Slide, an EZ Bake oven and a Pogo Ball. “Unsafe” wasn’t really in our vocabulary back then.
posted by Karen In Japan on 7-7-2009 at 1:40 am
we used to drag the kiddie pool under the sheet metal slide on our swing set and set the hose on top… the slide eventually started to rip (yeah SHEET METAL EDGES) and we had to stop using the thing. We also tried to jump off the swing into the pool. We always played outside with minimal supervision… almost would be considered child abuse these days.
posted by Carolyn on 7-7-2009 at 1:46 am
LAWN DARTS!
posted by Cynburghleah on 7-7-2009 at 9:17 am
How about the Vac-U-Form. That was a hot plate where you softened up a sheet of plastic, flipped it over a dye and sucked the air out around it. I also remember getting an Uncle Milton Ant Farm. In it was a coupon to send away and get the ants. I loved getting mail, so I opted to do that rather than collecting my own. What they sent me was a tube of Red Fire Ants that stung the crap out of me!
posted by Alan on 7-7-2009 at 9:19 am
Do you guys remember Pogo Ball? It must have come out in the mid-to-late 80s, as I remember being about 8 or 9 when I got one. Basically it is a four-square type ball with a platform on it, giving it the appearance of the planet Saturn. Anyway, the object is to use your balance and coordination (two things I did not have then and still do not have now) to hop up and down on the ball. Needless to say, many a skinned knee ensued, but it could have been MUCH worse!!
To tell the truth, no childhood toy could be more dangerous than that old favorite game, Red Rover- I totally broke my arm when my team sent over this bruiser of a girl and she knocked me flat onto the blacktop.
posted by Alana on 7-7-2009 at 9:31 am
Slip n Slide on a hill in my front yard. if you slid about 1o ft past the edge of the mat, you were on a sidewalk. I always remember myself as being a pretty bright kid, but now that I think back, maybe not so much
posted by Vince on 7-7-2009 at 9:44 am
Now that my friends and I are adults…ish, we miss the slip and slide so we have several hundred yards of tyvek waiting for the opportune time/hill to see how many 20 and 30-somethings we can send to the hospital at the same time.
I also recall an apartment party involving a slip and slide down a hall way, covered in laundry detergent. The neighbors below didn’t like the dripping water so they put a stop to it…bummer.
posted by C on 7-7-2009 at 11:52 am
Roller Racer! Man, that toy thing was awesome. If they made that in grown-up size, I’d still play with it!
posted by Angie on 7-7-2009 at 1:02 pm
I taught my kids (ages 7, 5, and 2) how to stair sled a few weeks ago using the matress out of the 2 year old’s crib. They had a blast.
posted by Anthony on 7-7-2009 at 1:12 pm
My grandfather made me a gun that would shoot rubber bands across the yard. Those hurt when they hit you. As a physician now, I see lots of injuries due to Heelies and trampolines. No matter what we do though, kids will still find a way to hurt themselves.
posted by Kirsten on 7-7-2009 at 1:23 pm
What they sent me was a tube of Red Fire Ants that stung the crap out of me!
===========
Alan, that is freakin’ hilarious! What kind of moron company sends out fire ants to a kid!? I am absolutely LOL!
posted by Hyacinth on 7-7-2009 at 2:25 pm
My brothers had a set of Smash-up Derby cars. The idea was to load the cars onto a plastic track with a jump at the end. If you lined the cars up just right, they would crash into each other sending small,sharp bits of plastic everywhere. And that was the idea!
My brothers also knew how to make “guns” with wooden clothes pins that could shoot white navy beans. They and a friend had a gunfight in the house and DESTROYED several of our Mom’s ornaments. Of course she took away the guns but the new ones were as close as the clothes line. Oh, and we used green chokecherries as ammunition when we couldn’t get navy beans.
posted by Donna on 7-7-2009 at 3:30 pm
What about the70’s era, always fun, always eye threatening – Water Rocket!!! The little red plastic rocket you fill two thirds with water, and then attach it to the pump? Anyone else remember that sucker? My brother could always make that thing go so high… I only remember it because he pumped it up so much once, it wouldn’t release properly… Until I was standing over it looking down. POW! right in the eye. Thirty odd years later, I still haven’t let him live down giving his baby brother his first black eye.
Ahhh, the good old days…
posted by John on 7-7-2009 at 5:31 pm
@Meister Jazz..I remember those! My sister and I would put it at the top of our front walk and push ourselves off. Then we’d turn into the driveway and careen into the grass. We couldn’t do it too quickly or else we’d fall off and hit our heads, or if someone parked the car in the way.
posted by Sara in AL on 7-7-2009 at 11:40 pm
Those “Swing Wing” thingies look RETARDED!
posted by Sara in AL on 7-7-2009 at 11:44 pm
trampolines are so dangerous. a friend of mine was jumping next to another girl and her two front teeth went right into the top of the girls head. but of course trampolines are so fun that never stopped us from going on them time and time again.
posted by riley on 7-8-2009 at 12:01 am
The Swing-Wing looks like it would be _really_ popular on the short bus! What a stupid commercial. Did anyone actually buy these? I miss our slip and slide. The way ours was set up, you would slide off the end and after a while the grass would get wet and you would end up hitting the fence, which was a concrete-block wall. We also rode our bikes everywhere, and live in an area with steep hills and cliffs. One time I took my brother for a ride and he crashed going down a steep road to the ocean. He broke his collarbone and my dad really punished me for that! Ouch.
posted by David on 7-8-2009 at 6:28 am
Does anyone remeber the spoonriders that used to be prizes in cereal boxes? They were made to slide on to your spoon and keep you company while you ate the cereal. I also remember getting some of my first records off of cereal boxes and magazines/comic books – thin vinyl discs or squares that I played on a funky old fold and play portable record player.
posted by David on 7-8-2009 at 6:31 am
Ya know, looking at that Johnny OMA – I kind of started wondering something. When I was in the Army (late 90’s) the government was spending huge wads of taxpayer dollars on a thing called the Objective Individual Combat Weapon – OICW. It was a battle rifle prototype launcher that had a range-finding scope. The top of the rifle was a semi-automatic 20mm magazine fed grenade launcher and under that was a 5.56mm detachable pistol. The thing was wicked cool and wicked heavy at some 20 pounds as I recall. The whole program went to crap after spending millions on it. But, it makes me wonder if one of the designers had a Johnny OMA as a kid. They even look a little bit alike.
posted by Eric on 7-8-2009 at 9:42 am
I had the clackers, bb guns, cap guns, and creepy crawlers, too. If you didn’t want to use the caps in the gun, you could take a hammer and smash them out on the sidewalk in front of the house. The only helmet I ever had was a plastic army helmet, and carseats hooked over the top of the front bench seat in the car.
posted by Elizabeth on 7-8-2009 at 11:09 am
My siblings and I had a Flexi Flyer (a sled on wheels, basically). We lived at the bottom of a fairly steep hill, and got our excitement by piling as many kids on top of one another as we could manage and speeding down the sidewalk at ridiculous speeds. The things had no brakes to speak of (even less so when 7 or 8 kids’ weight in the equation) so we’d steer onto my front lawn and and tumble on top of one another in order to stop. If we actually made it to the bottom of the hill, that is.
One of my sisters lost a tooth or two and my brother broke his arm, but we were never told not to ride the flexi in such a manner. In fact, my folks would sit in the yard and watch us nearly kill ourselves. Repeatedly.
That’s when a parent could be a parent…
[ReCaptcha: "come zoned"]
posted by PJ on 7-8-2009 at 1:45 pm
Thank you for that post Alana! It’s been driving me nuts trying to think of the name of that Pogo Ball. I got one of those for my birthday one time. Could never seem to really get it off the ground. I still remember the commercial…”pogo ball is what you fall it when you’re hoppin and a boppin’ everywhere…” LOL!!! Yeah right!
posted by SailrsGrl on 7-8-2009 at 3:05 pm
Ah, those good old days! I was fortunate to have been raised in SoCal so we were always outside (my grandmother would kick us out of the house during the summer). We used to throw snails in the street and watch cars drive over them and make a huge CRUNCH. But my favorite will always be the Creepy Crawler Thingmaker! And like everyone else here, we received a few rather nasty burns (it just makes you try to be more careful the next time)! Too bad lawsuits had to destroy the fun we used to have!
posted by Mel on 7-8-2009 at 3:22 pm
I’d just like to make it clear that I’m JOE Maz (not simply “Maz,” in the above post (small world!). I’ve never once launched a fairy at a boy. The closest I’d come is swing dancing with a girl dressed as Tinkerbell.]
posted by Joe Maz on 7-8-2009 at 6:04 pm
Thank you so much for the commercials. I got a Johnny 7 OMA for Christmas 1963. I loved that thing to pieces. Playing army was one of our favorite games back then, and that thing made me REALLY popular.
So many of the games and toys mentioned played such a large part of my growing up days. The one thing I remember about the Vac-u-Form was the smell of the melting plastic. To this day, I can still remember it clearly.
As for trampolines, several of the small towns I lived in had trampoline centers. The tramps were in pits so the surface was at ground level. This is probably why I got mostly bruises and bumps instead of broken arms and ankles. Still, I want one in my back yard. I’ll dig the pit myself.
posted by Steve in the TC on 7-9-2009 at 3:34 pm
My dad actually did get hit in the eye with a BB gun.. The thing that the entire family considers unfair is that he still has twenty-twenty vision in both eyes.
posted by Heather on 7-9-2009 at 4:26 pm
Before they had airsoft guns (toy guns with small plastic balls for bullets), we used to have BB gun wars. We had the foresight (and thus still have the gift of sight) to wear cheap plastic lab goggles, but would go out into the yard with real BB guns and play Delta Force or the OK Corral (i.e., shoot each other as much as possible). My dad played with us on occasion, and suggested we play without shirts on so that “the welts will look even cooler”. We’d be shrieking with every shot but we loved playing, and it was rare that a BB would embed itself under the skin. But hey, that’s what tweezers and a pocket knife are for, right?
posted by Nathan on 7-10-2009 at 12:13 pm
I remember Pogo balls from elementary school. Some kids were able to jump on one and use a jump rope at the same time. Luckies. My cordination STILL sucks so that even if those things were still around, I still couldn’t do it. I haven’t seen “Heelies”, even for sale in a while.
posted by Sara in AL on 7-11-2009 at 4:38 pm
What about Lawn Darts!!!!
posted by Carl on 7-12-2009 at 5:24 am
given what we used to play in gym class, red rover was the least of our problems. my gym teacher decided that us running around in sneakers on the gym floor playing floor hockey with sticks and a hard field hockey ball just wasn’t dangerous enough, so he shortened the sticks and put us sitting on scooters. he said this way we won’t trip or something. instead, we were WAY closer to where the ball (and sticks) was flying around thanks to our eight year-old disarray of hockey skills.
i loved that game…
posted by Id on 7-12-2009 at 12:56 pm
I don’t remember the exact name but I had this thing that was basically a soldering iron & you would use it to burn patterns & pictures into small pieces of wood – I bet lots of fires started with THAT LOL
I remember being a child going to the local community pool & the pool had 2 diving boards; one regular one & one that was a “high dive” that as a kid looked like it was 3 stories tall. I remember many kids falling off the ladder on it etc. – you don’t even really see diving boards of any kind at public pools anymore.
posted by AL in NC on 7-13-2009 at 5:22 am
Gues i was deprived as a kid. Grew up in the 50’s. During the long hot summers in central California, the grass on the hills would turn brown, brittle, and slick. Us kids would take a cardboard box, the bigger the better, and get up on the top of the hill, then get in the box and slide down the hill.
Sometimes the ride was short, but after the grass had been matted down after a few runs, we could get up pretty good speed. Now these runs could go for over a 200 – 300 feet, sometime longer. Pockets, drop offs, etc. just made the ride more thrilling. Of course, we tried to stop before the barb wire fence at the bottom, but if we knew we were going to hit, we, just pulled up the front of the cardboard to make a \safety shield\.
Man, some fun.
posted by Dave on 7-13-2009 at 10:45 am
Or ice blocking down hills? Yup, creepy crawlies were awesome (jealous of my brothers who got it). Slip-n-slides were a way of life. Klackers…total fun. But the best was jumping off swings from their highest point. You could really fly! And we had this may-pole thing at school that you hung onto the end of and everyone ran in the circle with the idea you’d get enough momentum to fly up in the air (like becoming a teatherball). It was so fun to play that at recess!
posted by Christa on 7-13-2009 at 4:12 pm
Yeah, I had a slip and slide, but my friends and I were civilized. We had a ton of fun, and no injuries!…
(But the darned thing should have been twice as long, and my parents were too cheap to buy a 2nd one…)
I also had a water wiggler, again, no injuries…..
A neighbor had lawn darts – no injuries… (well that was pure luck…)
I had the genuine red top, white bottom, butyrate plastic (went to the moon w NASA) air pumped water rocket, and again, no injuries!
(One of my favourite toys!)
But I broke my finger playing king on the hill, in a school gym, 3 adults supervising, and enough mats to equip a small army. Go figure!
We never knew Oleanders were poisonous. We used the flower buds as ammo, instead of BB’s with our air guns. (Got shot about 3 billion times!)
Also had throwing sticks, like short spears. No injuries. (Again pure luck!)
But I got a severe ankle sprain (nearly tore my foot off), playing soccer, with 5 adults watching, and a “safety talk” too! Go figure!
Even worse, than the Johnny Seven, was the Defender Johnny Magumba sub machine gun. With real plastic bullets. They were a medium soft/hard plastic. about 100 to a belt. They would shoot about 30 ft, with reasonable accuracy. The thing used springs, and I think batteries. You could use caps too, and it ate rolls of caps like Garfield eating lasagna. When you got shot with one of those puppies, you knew it!
And there was another Mattel toy that made EDIBLE creepy crawler stuff. It was an edible plastic or something. Delicious! At least 60% pure sugar! I ate about a ton of the stuff….
Excuse me, I must go sue Mattel. I just figured out why I am diabetic today. (I am 5-11 and weigh only 178 lbs.) And I was not an active child.
Oh, wait, my bad, I was born over 3 months preemie in 1956. The kid in the Guiness Book> Born a week younger than me. I lived in an Isolet for 6 months… If an Incubator is a Cessna, an Isolet would be a space shuttle in comparisom…
Still here at 53. Today’s kids only know video games. No wonder they are 5-6 and weigh 250 lbs. …
And… they will never know the joy of a playground whirly gig.
Imagine: 8 kids, all trying to spin an 8 ft diameter, 200 lb circular metal frame. The central axis is 3 ft high. The whole sheebang spins 8 inches off the ground. When maximum speed (maybe 10 mph) is reached, all jump on to ride, and eventually fall off dizzy, about 5 mins later. They are banned now as unsafe.
How did we survive?
How will today’s generation survive?
posted by Pierre on 7-13-2009 at 11:12 pm
i had lawn darts for about 3 weeks until one went right into the siding on the house. this was about 15 years ago and the hole is still there.
my sister’s e-z bake oven caused many a burn
posted by mike on 7-15-2009 at 12:38 pm
I’m laughing so hard people in the office are starting to stare over the cube partitions.
Are you serious! I loved my pogo ball and roller racer and am fairly sure they’re still tucked away in my parent’s basement up north.
I had moon shoes and am still amazed I never broke an ankle and Crocodile Mile… I hit that jump wrong everytime.
posted by Lisa on 7-15-2009 at 12:52 pm
construx: they weren’t necessarily dangerous by design, but we made sure that we used them in the most dangerous ways. we used to make “grappling hooks” with the construx, thread a rope through the little blue connector pieces, then throw the “hooks” up in trees and climb with the help of the rope. we broke a ton of ropes and sustained lots of bruises.
posted by mike on 7-15-2009 at 1:00 pm
Wrist Rockets — In SoCal in 70’s, my older friends had the banned ‘wrist rockets’ – slingshots with metal loop braced against your forearm for maximum power..Ready and able to do serious damage.
Homemade tennis-ball cannons, homemade fireworks from caps powder..
posted by John W on 7-15-2009 at 3:21 pm
Nothing says brain damage like the Sit and Spin. I would spin until I puked and then fall into something
posted by Brandy on 7-16-2009 at 12:40 pm
When I was young my mother ordered boxes of clackers to sell to the neighborhood kids. We sold quite a few but then they were banned and we were stuck with about a hundred which she eventually took to the dump (mid-west term for landfill). I would kill to have those now.
posted by Don on 7-16-2009 at 9:23 pm
Wow. Reading all of those posts brings back so many memories. How we didn’t die from all of those things, I do not know.
I got shot in the leg at close range by my friends BB gun and survived.
We would slide down the slip and slide until we had rubbed ourselves raw.
We would use pine cones as ammunition for our slingshots. I got hit in the eye and lived to tell about it.
A friend of mine took out his mini bike without permission. It fell on top of him and branded HONDA into his leg backwards. He couldn’t wear shorts for the rest of the summer, because he was afraid his parents would see it.
None of us ever got injured from Jarts!!!
We used to play tag in my cousin’s basement/garage in the wintertime. One night he put his hand through the car outside rear view mirror. He still has the scars.
We set up ramps for our paperboy bikes. Before we did the jump we would put the klickty klacks on our spokes or use playing cards with clothes pins to hold them on. Paperboy bikes are not too good for getting airborne!!!!
We used to ride mini bikes and motorcycles with no helmets. My cousin did get a concussion one time when he stood up and then went over the handlebars. We did not even think to take him to the hospital until that night when he didn’t know who we were.
I remember helping my cousins on the farm in the summer, and I would sit on the wheel fender of the tractor as we went down the road. Luckily I never fell off. The whole time the wheel would be right next to my hand.
Did anyone used to ride on the tailgate of a pickup? We would sit 3 or 4 across and swing our legs as we went down the highway. No one ever fell off. There were a couple of close calls though.
What about firecrackers? Ever have one explode in your hand as you were trying to throw it?
We used to play war with Roman Candles. Ever get hit by one of those flying balls????
When it got dark outside and we had to come in, we would play electric football for hours on end or we would set up the electric train set and crash the electric race cars into the trains!!!
Did anyone jump off the playground swing to see who could jump the highest? How we didn’t break any bones doing that, I don’t know.
What about smear the qu###? Did anyone play that when you didn’t have enough guys to divide up in to two real teams?
How many people rode on the bicycle handlebars of their friend? My neighbor got his foot caught in the front wheel of someone’s bike, but that never stopped us.
Did anyone used to do wheelies in the street with their bikes to see who could go the furtherest on 1 wheel? A couple of my friends smashed in to cars because they were too focused on the wheelie.
I could go on, but I am getting tired. I cannot believe that I remember half of that stuff. The kids today have no idea of what they are missing. Sitting around playing stupid video games does not come close to doing that stuff!!!
posted by John on 7-19-2009 at 12:07 am
I still have some of the creepy crawlers I made back then.
posted by David H. on 7-20-2009 at 10:47 am
I had a friend tell me once that he got shot in the eye with a bb gun, but had to come up with a story on how he hurt his eye. He told his mom a branch hit him while running thru the trees. As his mom was inspecting his eye over the sink, the bb fell out. Needless to say he was caught, but very lucky… no permanent damage.
posted by TR on 7-20-2009 at 7:43 pm
Oh yeah – we had the Hot Wheels race tracks where you would connect several 3 foot pieces of plastic track together to form a race track for your little cars. Watching little cars take a 2 second trip down a hill will only keep a boy’s attention for so long… Instead, we would use the plastic track pieces as “swords” and start swatting the cr@p out of each other… Heck yeah – now THAT’s fun! We were constantly going to school with Hot Wheels welts on our cheeks and neck!
posted by DougieD on 7-22-2009 at 4:07 am
Ah, those damned Slip-n-Slide stakes… So many stubbed toes. And yet a dish soap-slicked slide made the whole thing worth it.
I actually didn’t know it was possible to hurt oneself with a Skydancer. Sure, they amounted to airborn, bladed weapons, but they weren’t that heavy (unless you got the huge, 1-foot tall version, but I think those had wings made of foam rather than plastic.).
Being born in the early nineties, we didn’t have access to most of the toys you lucky old folks did. We had to create our OWN danger.
My neighbor’s dad worked for a company that gave him a whole bag of promotional pocket knives. So us kids each got one that we used to pick glass shards out of the asphalt of our street and carve our names into tree branches (after climbing up to the top, blade in hand, of course) or whatever else we pleased. I still have that thing, though now I use the tweezer function more than anything.
We also used to dip our fingers into hot liquid candle wax and make long stalactites out of the hardened wax. Then, I’d take my pocket knife, superheat the tip in the candle flame, and look for stuff to brand or melt.
Electrical currents were fun too. I remember one camping trip in which we got ahold of a tennis racket-shaped bug zapper and took turns touching the metal and getting zapped (although, to be fair, I’m pretty sure I wussed out).
When I was young, a concrete wall (about 7′ tall) was added behind our house to separate our property from the elementary school’s sports field and basketball court. And so, I learned a lesson in trespassing in the summer when my cousin and I would climb it to use their playground (endorsed by my parents, no less). Before that, I had used it for more wholesome activities, such as jumping off of it in an attempt to parachute using oversized plastic shopping bags. And true, seven feet may not be a big deal now, but when you were six, you might as well’ve been standing on the roof.
I think the only permanent harm that ever came to me in my youth was on my ZAPPY electric scooter in a relatively safe game of “scooter tag”. My opponents, armed with Razor scooters, were much faster with better maneuverability, and could lift their scooters over obstacles. It is not possible to obtain high speeds on an electric scooter through dirt and grass, so when I encountered the brick walkway on the side of my house, it just didn’t have the juice to climb the three inch difference between the ground and the brick. It tried, though. And when it failed in its endeavor, the handlebars kicked back into my face, at mouth level, and jammed my front tooth about half an inch back into my gums (which was kinda neat because i could fit a straw through it). Braces (mostly) fixed it, but I still have a tiny chip as a souvenier.
I also used to get in trouble for using sticks and poles like swords and injuring the other kids. Their parents would always confiscate them. Not a problem, though. In South Florida you’re only one hurricane away from a brand new stash of cut tree branches. it was at that point that I started carving them into swords with my trusty pocket knife. But my dad, good parent that he is, noted that it would take too long to use my dull little knife and I was allowed to use his switchblade instead. That worked out pretty well for me, because the neighborhood parents couldn’t take my weapons away because I had “worked SO hard” on them and I got to learn how to play games involving tossing the switchblade across the yard.
None of this stuff could ever compare to the original dodgeball, though. There’s nothing more satisfying than imprinting that pattern into some kid’s face or leg with those rubber balls. Words cannot describe how much I miss that game.
posted by Savannah on 8-19-2009 at 8:47 pm
Thank you Lynnie. You reminded me of probably the most dangerous shoe on the market. Heelies. The commercials always say to wear a helmet and knee-pads. Come on, people. Do you really think a kid is going to wear a helmet and knee-pads wherever he goes?
posted by Carli on 9-29-2009 at 4:17 pm
Even though I’m too young to have killed myself with any of these awesome toys (believe me, I would have), I’m still probably in danger of lead poisoning. Yay! I had lots of those foam bath letters that stick to the tub. Man, I loved to suck on those. I’m sure they were full of lead.
posted by Carli on 9-29-2009 at 4:31 pm
Unfortunately, I’m too young to have killed myself with any of these awesome toys (believe me, I would have). The only toy mentioned that I had was the Easy Bake Oven, and when I used it, my mom sat next to me to make sure I didn’t burn myself. *sigh*
posted by Carli on 9-29-2009 at 4:34 pm
Remember the toxic tube of rubber cement that you would put a gob of it on the end of the supplied straw and blow through to make your own balloon? I remember getting my first high off of that at age 5. Why my parents didn’t just buy me a package of balloons?
Not really a toy, but remember the first Pop-Rocks candy? I remember the large pop rocks would seemed to have enough force to blow up a tooth.
posted by Phil on 11-19-2009 at 2:14 pm