Toy aint what they used to be

[Just call me Rob]

I think the flaming hacky sack is akin a set of burning juggling clubs.
Perfectly safe* when used properly but bloody dangerous to give to children.

As a resourceful child we never need dangerous toys, we could improvise with safe ones.
I had a toy bow and arrow, a flimsy plastic bow and plastic arrows with suckers on the end.
It was rubbish.
So I searched the garage and swapped the bow string into a wooden metre ruler, which gave lots more twang – but the arrows were pretty poor and broke quickly.
So, I searched the garage again and found some 5mm doweling rods – excellent for arrows, but the suckers wouldn't fit . . so I found an old set of darts and borrowed the dart heads.
I could bury the entire inch of dart point into the wooden garage door.
Although, it wasn't very accurate.

Later in life we discovered that a metal tube, a campfire and soda stream canisters make a pretty damned good mortar.


* for a given value of safe.

[chironex]

Chinese-made Aqua Dots, small dots which were constructed to make colorful images, were recalled after the date rape drug GHB was found inside the product. There were reports of slowed breathing and heart rate in children who licked the dots.

Does anyone ever get the impression that maybe, just maybe, China does this sort of thing deliberately?

I remember seeing a current affair story on TV and hearing how a 10yo girl swallowed some and got sick, and wondered "why in the name of all that is putrid is a ten year old swallowing little plastic bits?"

[Capt. Dirigible]

As a kid there was no more exciting place to play than a building/construction site. Yes we weren't supposed to be in there and we often got chased off by a watchman/security guard (and sometimes dogs) but that was all part of the 'frisson' of playing there. I mean..where else could you give each other  'funfair' style rides inside a cement mixer?
One of these, I mean..not the big trucks. If you were small enough you could scrunch up inside and hang on for dear life as a pal spun the drum wildly round and round and through 360 degrees...

As November 5th approached we would buy packets of mini rockets and after blocking up one end of a  'J' shaped piece of lead plumbing pipe would drop a lit rocket into the pipe and aim them like guns at..well anything really...targets drawn on freshly painted walls..windows, bottles...trees..each other sometimes.

I remember on one memorable occasion myself and a slightly older boy called Danny were wandering round a site and came across a large unmarked tin of something. We tried prising off the lid to no avail..so Danny found a sledgehammer and hit the tin sqaure on the top. I could see what was likely to occur so I was well hidden behind a screen. The lid buckled in..there was an almighty wet sounding gloomph!! and Danny stood there covered head to foot in creosote!

Ahh happy days! We made our own entertainment in those days..you kids today with your Wii and X-Box..you don't know you're born!

[barb dwyer]

I don't know how I missed out on the set on fire kevlar thing...

oh yeah. Kevlar wasn't invented yet.

We set plenty of OTHER things on fire, however.

I, too had clackers -
they weren't glass.

How many people's parents had those godawful grapes
that did nothing but lay on the piano (at my house)
or on a table somewhere?
I even remember some of them
had lights inside... *shudder*

Well anyway, my parents made them.
Along with those things called 'trivets'
that were supposedly to guard tables
from hot pans (although I never was given a meal from a pot on the table)
and almost always had seashells stuck in them....

"See? They look like butterflies" 

It was all the rage in the sixties
and came from a crafting company
called LeeWard's or something like that.
They were a type of epoxy
and were exactly the same material
used for clackers.

I can still recall that smell to this day.

Kinda freaky but I *had* a good many of these older toys.

I mean, 'Wham-o' wasn't just the company name...
it was what most of the stuff they made required.

[Lady Ashgrove]

It is surprising that more children didn't die of there "play toys" than did.

I had Jarts .... nuff said

[Alptraum]

I envy you lot growing up with power tools, engines and explosives.... It would have been awesome and immensely dangerous for me to have had those when I was a kid...

[groomporter]

Never had any "accidents" with Jarts, but a neighbor's psycho 6 year old thought it was fun to purposefully try to throw a couple at me. Fortunately he had poor aim...

[Lady Ashgrove]

Never had any "accidents" with Jarts, but a neighbor's psycho 6 year old thought it was fun to purposefully try to throw a couple at me. Fortunately he had poor aim...

Daddy almost ran one through my foot one night...

We still played with them though

just had to back ***really** far away from the hoop

[Xenos]

Back in the late 70s, a little known TV show called "Consumer Probe" did a Christmas special report on unsafe toys:

Hulu - Saturday Night Live: Irwin Mainway

I love Mr. Maniway's "Bag O'" line of toys, Bag O' Glass, Bag O' Nails, Bag O' Bugs, Bag O' Vipers...

...

Bag O' Sulfuric Acid...

[bicyclebuilder]

I remember the "plopper". I don't know what they call it in English, but it was a rubber half dome that you could flip inside out and it would stay that way until you threw it on the floor. That released the tention and made the plopper flip up.

Unfortunately, some kid put the flipped plopper on his eye socket and popped out his eye... So they say. After that, they made a hole inside the plopper to enable the suction of the toy. This caused the plopper to rupture fast.

And what about the pogo ball? A regular plastic ball, pressed into a disk.

Safer than a pogo stick (with the teeth smashing bar). Until the ball has lost some air. That's when the ball shoots up and hits you in the face.

[Capt. Dirigible]

Unfortunately, some kid put the flipped plopper on his eye socket and popped out his eye...

It's all fun and games til someone loses an eye, eh?

[rovingjack]

I remember the "plopper". I don't know what they call it in English, but it was a rubber half dome that you could flip inside out and it would stay that way until you threw it on the floor. That released the tention and made the plopper flip up.

Unfortunately, some kid put the flipped plopper on his eye socket and popped out his eye... So they say. After that, they made a hole inside the plopper to enable the suction of the toy. This caused the plopper to rupture fast.

I knew a highschooler who pressed one onto his forehead  and had a comical panic attack when it so firmly suctioned on that he struggled to get it off for a minet. He had a hickey (suction bruise) on his forehead for the rest of the week. The look of panic in his friends eyes when he proceeded to make fun of the event by pressing it to his own head and suddenly realising it was stuck, that will stay with me for a long time.

Unfortunately, some kid put the flipped plopper on his eye socket and popped out his eye...

It's all fun and games til someone loses an eye, eh?

Then it's just fun.

[Capt. Dirigible]

Then it's just fun

..that you can't see!

[dweorg]

Anyone remember lawn darts? One silly little brain injury and they went off the shelves. I remember my parents actually sending me out to get injured. They said it "toughened me up". I played with knives, built things out of scrap lumber with rusty nails in, and at the tender age of 9 had my first motorcycle. They weren't worried about scrapes and bruises, they saw it as a part of life, and I am sure that the paint in our house and on my toys had incredibly high levels of lead in it. Parents today are so worried about their children that they are keeping them from being kids.   

Hey, we didn't report the mild concussion I gave my brother with one of those!  (It was a glancing shot after all, didn't even bleed ... much)

NB:  No, I am not kidding. 

I think I owned 4 or 5 of those toys.....

[Rockula]

Lone Star cap guns.

They made Webley's, Colts, Mausers, Smith & Wesson .38's...

Try finding one now. Not even on eBay.

And I wish I still had my 'Johnny 7'. Think of the modding potential.

[greensteam]

As a kid there was no more exciting place to play than a building/construction site. Yes we weren't supposed to be in there and we often got chased off by a watchman/security guard (and sometimes dogs) but that was all part of the 'frisson' of playing there.Ahh happy days! We made our own entertainment in those days..you kids today with your Wii and X-Box..you don't know you're born!

I'm with yoiu Capt D. The top play place where I grew up (inner London) was known as "dead cars" - presumably stolen and largely burnt out. Kids swarmed amid the sharp edges and piles of broken glass.
Goggling found a similar experience: http://hoffman.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/urban/G0000HlhuzpEFo5w/I00000pDkOAbt9jg but then I realised it was from only a few years after I had stopped doing that, so perhaps kids dont do that any more.

The other thing I have fond memories of were the first "adventure playgrounds" in the 1960s. Then they consisted of a fenced off area with logs, baulks of timber and lengths of rope, tyres etc for kids to do what they would with. No adult supervision. No safety surfaces other than the ordinary earth. No health and safety rules.

[bicyclebuilder]

Going with the story's about mishif. When I was a kid, we used to make fortresses inside corn feelds. The game was not to get caught by the farmer. We've got pretty good at it after a while. That was until it was time to harvest. You shure know how to run when a harvester comes your way. 

Also, blow darts made from leaflets. An electric wire pvc tube for blow gun. I've got good at twisting the darts. At one point a friend timed me. 12 darts a minute. One day, a buddy got hit in the eye and our parents made us stop. A couple of days later, we convinced out parents we would wear goggles for protection and we promised we should never shoot at anyone else, but the kids who played safe.

[Wormster]

Oh crikey!! the days of childhood!

I grew up in Oxford one of the best places to play was "Rock Edge" in Quarry (on our trackie bikes), or going up to Shotover hill and building huge dams in the sandpit and then blowing them up with home made explosives (T'owd man used to encourage that sort of thing). Drinking from the hosepipe, licking the paint off our homemade lead soldiers, riding our "trackie" bikes around, digging tunnels down "the bottom of the garden" - playing "out" for hours at a time, family "days out" to the local rifle range, digging the spent bullets out of the sand trap - taking them home and smelting the lead out of them.  My brothers had a BSA bantam that we converted to a scrambles bike - regularly that would be ridden round the track at the bottom of the garden, air rifle fights across the neighbours gardens...........all manner of childish fun.

This time last year I was living in a field in zummerzet, the kids and I used to enjoy going out with the air rifle and shooting the heck out of our "Downtown Jizlamabad" target range - we'd make up a narrative about what was going on and just who had to be sniped at for the good of mankind! with a bit of prompting they'd happily go off armed only with a lighter, some string and a knife, make their own dens, build small fires and then invite me over to "Their Place" provided I bought a kettle full of water, teabags, and cups etc for a brew up!

I suppose that in the late 60's / early 70's things were a lot more basic, and as children we had more freedom, parents (and I can include myself (somewhat)) these days are more aware of society's dangers, that coupled with the fact that children these days are more inclined to be "taken" with the latest techno gizmo (sometimes its all I can do to get number 1 son (coming up on 13)) to put down the Nintendo DS and actually get out in the fresh air!! - number 1 daughter (10 years old) is far more creative and will happily spend hours with pens and paper amusing herself. 

I'm trying to instill in my kids some sort of independence from technology and doing things for free outdoors, at the moment I'm hampered with injury (healing collarbone) so at the moment these sorts of things are a little out of reach, but, when I'm fully recovered I intend to once again challenge them to all sorts of mayhem! When they're at home with their mum (we're divorced and live about 150 miles apart) entertainment comes in the form of electronic gadgetry, or, being ferried about to places where they pay to do things, that as kids we used to do for free.

[citizen_erased]

Wait, they discovered there were drugs in the toys because children licked them? ..what? i know I ate plants as a child, but, seriously?

I see it with my sister though, her children are being raised with television and safe toys and she`s in a constant dilemma. But pushing them outside to go and play there won`t do much good if all the other children are kept inside. (she`s not doing it yet anyway, the oldest is about 16 months old XD)
I do like how everytime my nephew (who is just starting to walk) falls over, my sister just says "boom!" and either laughs because of the silly face my nephew pulls, or ignores whatever happened. And then he starts wailing and she sighs and goes "ugh, men." XDD

Can`t wait to brainwash him with science *_*

When I was a child, I often got shoo-ed out of the house, just to end up at the neighbour`s house to watch pippi longstockings.

...well...at the moments I wasn`t climbing in trees or running around with my dad`s tools (like the drill: "look! it`s like a gun!") or attempting to teach myself martial arts through watching dragonball z or reading a gazillion books (I easily read 4 to 5 books a week - drove my mom insane, because I kept wanting more books from a higher level than my children-library pass allowed). There was also a small hill with a tower-thing on top of it, so we were either climbing the tower or finding another way of getting down that hill that did not involve using your feet - avoiding the cyclists and trees down the hill along the way. I`m guessing this is where I became good at dodging things.

I don`t think I set things on fire that often, but I was very interested in watching how the neighbourhood kids screwed things up, got punished by their parents, and all I had was a new bit of information and the joy of not being the one who`s getting punished.
(we had a corn field nearby, and some of the boys liked putting a balloon at one end of an empty toilet paper roll, and then shoot off corn with it. One boy got hit right next to his eye - his entire eye was swollen for a couple of days).

ah, childhood. It definitely had its good parts.

[ForestB]

Kids are raised "safer" nowadays, but that doesn't stop my oldest child from figuring out dowel + pencil sharpener = arrow... But he's one of a kind.

[LizerSparkes]

I used to play in a freaking creek near my house with my brother and a couple neighbor kids. the path down was almost nonexistent, and we had to be careful where we put our feet if we didn't want to slip and fall.  When I was in early elementary school, the playgrounds were METAL. Cuts and scrapes happened, but it was generally accepted that that was part of being a kid.  Heck, I got stuck in a snow fort one winter, because I was the biggest/tallest kid on the playground and had the broadest shoulders...  I've been run over by sleds, and beaned by softballs, baseballs, footballs (took one to the nose one time) and dodgeballs.  Fourth grade, we got a new playground that was mostly plastic... within the first two weeks of the school year, I had fallen off of it and broken my arm.  "safer" isn't always 'better'.

[Capt. Dirigible]

During the seventies when I was in my early teens there was a 'craze' that somehow got started around the flats I lived in and every summer..possiblty through bordom..someone would kick it off again. Elastic bands and staples. You know..the  'U' shaped metal, double headed nails..about one1/2 to 3/4 of an inch in length..these things. You could by a bag of  500 from the hardware staore for about 20p. You then tied several elastic bands together, put the ends over your thumb and forefinger and, like a catapualt, fire the staple. Many the summer I remember  being covered in tiny 'U' shaped welts  on my thighs and upper body. My wounds from long battles. Those things really hurt! Our parents went mad as 'you could lose an eye!' which I had to admit was a strong possiblity. In the finish..as I was always too scared of firing the staple into the palm of my hand..I built a basic crossbow. Two bits of wood..with a clothes peg at one end..two small nails in the edges of the cross bar. Stretch the 'lacky band between the nails..pull it back and hold the staple and nail in the jaws of the peg. When you saw you target, you could  just  release the pressure on the peg and 'twang!'..'zzzwwiip!.. thwack!!..."OWWW!!" . Using the crossbow left one hand free to hold a dustbin lid as a shield (although re-loading could leave you a little vunerable). My crossbow proved so succesful that within days every other kid taking part in this foolhardy and possibly lethal past time had fashioned a crossbow of sorts of their own. Living five floors up I had a great 'sniper' view of the 'combat zone'. Often I would see one of my fellow combatants walking slowing around, eyes fixed on the floor searching for spent/reusable staples. I'd wait until he'd bend over to pick one up and 'twang!'..'zzzwwiip!.. thwack!!..."OWWW!!" .

You know..when I look back on the stuff we did 'for fun' as a kid it's nothing short of a miracle that I didn't lose an eye..break or lose a limb..be burnt to a crisp or fall to my death!

[elShoggotho]

You know..when I look back on the stuff we did 'for fun' as a kid it's nothing short of a miracle that I didn't lose an eye..break or lose a limb..be burnt to a crisp or fall to my death!

Natural selection in action is half of the fun! Better get that out of your system while you're still young enough to heal quickly.

[SeVeNeVeS]

I must say that my dear old dad has been a huge influence on my life (I grew up in the late 60's early 70's.)

As a nipper my dad simply encouraged and showed an interest in almost everything I wanted to do, the first, as far as I remember, was the good old fashioned mamod toy steam engine. We could play for hours with that in the shed, constantly trying to invent different things for it to drive with a rubber band on the fly-wheel.

We tried pewter casting, motor repair, welding and a little later on, as a bit of a maker himself, he helped (well OK, I helped him) make catapults, crossbows, throwing knives, throwing stars and allsorts of lovely "dangerous" contraptions to take out and go play "war" on  some of the remaining bomb sites and abandoned houses in the area.

I always came home with some kind of minor injury, scrapes and grazes but no-one died.

I think it was around 14 I discovered the combination of fire and pressurised containers and home-made pipe bombs using fireworks but that is another story.......

~SeVeN~

[Xenos]

I think it was around 14 I discovered the combination of fire and pressurised containers and home-made pipe bombs using fireworks but that is another story.......

~SeVeN~

11 years old I was caught on fire (the first time) when my brother accidentally set of a smokebomb I was making, while I was still working on it.

Three years later (14, for those keeping score at home), my mum sent me to burn a bag of old magazines-she did not tell me there was a hairspray can in the bag, so when I tossed it onto the raging inferno I had built, about 30 seconds later there was a loud BOOM, flames went higher, and my shirt had a flaming hole through it where the top of the can had flown off!

Your story reminded me of those good times...