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Dangerous toys from your childhood?
Posted: Nov 19, 2007
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Recent warnings about lead-infused toys have caused me to reflect on some of my childhood playthings that were pretty dangerous in retrospect. I once had a slip-n-slide accident that left me with stitches in my knee, even though we had combed the yard to remove rocks and sticks as instructed. This was before the edges were inflatable, so it was just a long strip of wet, slippery plastic on a hill, usually haphazardly aimed towards a tree or worse, the street, for maximum injury potential. My little brother could make almost any toy dangerous. Micro machine launchers morphed into weapons that sent small, dense metal cars flying towards people's faces. Not to mention the damage done to a bare foot when you step on a micro machine in the middle of the night, making your way to the bathroom in the dark.
Do you have any good stories about the most dangerous toys from your childhood?
I got a black eye from Klackers. Anyone remember Klackers? Two big, heavy balls (like huge marbles) attached by a loose string, you try to click them together going faster and faster until they click at the top and the bottom? Very dangerous for the uncoordinated!!
Card board boxes slidin' on leaves,sticks,rocks,buckets of mud&homemade bike ramps were the kind of toys we had down in B.C. growing up.
Well, the obvious one from my youth ... and what caused the destruction of many windows ... was my BB gun (hey, I grew up in Iowa, OK?)
The other trip down memory lane was the Super Elastic Plastic stuff, which I swear was the beginning of my brain damage.
I liked model rockets.Sometimes we wouldn't point them up at the sky.
Yarts.
Yarts? How about Jarts.
My brothers and I used to have BB gun fights in the orchard at my grandparents farm - until the day I hit one brother about a 1/16 of an inch from his eye. That was the last shot.
Sword fights with sticks, skateboarding (the original ones with steel wheels when they were invented in the 60s) while holding onto a rope behind cars and bikes, and combined chemistry sets.
Yarts.
Yes, those were very dangerous. One of my elementary school classmates was struck in the head by one. Luckily, she was fine, but they shaved her head the summer before 6th grade (middle school), mortifying enough at that age.