Dangerous Toys – IOTW Report

Dangerous Toys

Tuesday, 8 September 2020, 11:00 BFH Uncategorized 64

Our private email ring is discussing dangerous childhood toys.

Here are some that were offered up in the emails-

Vintage 1963 Mattel VAC-U-FORM Machine-Molds-Supplies | eBay

Basically, your kid is handling molten hot plastic.

Superlastic Bubble Plastic

This was some sort of toxic chemical that you blew out a tube to form bubbles.

Creepy Crawlers


More molten plastic.

Wood Burning Kits

I pen nib that can burn wood, and the house down.

From TakeJusticeBack-

 The Austin Magic Pistol

In the 1950’s, when BB guns weren’t considered particularly dangerous, it took something special for a gun to stand out. The Austin Magic Pistol managed to do that with its gas-powered combustion. The gun used what the manufacturer called “magic crystals” made from calcium carbide – a hazardous material. When mixed with water the crystals would explode and fire a plastic ball 70 feet or more. 

Gilbert  U-238 Atomic Energy Lab 

Maybe you think it’s obvious that including uranium in a child’s toy isn’t an especially good idea. But apparently that never occurred to the makers of the Gilbert Atomic Energy Lab. Described when it was sold in the early 1950s as “the most elaborate Atomic Energy educational set ever produced” it featured four Uranium bearing ore samples and a preformatted order form for more. Even in an age when science sets routinely came with substances like potassium nitrate (a component of gunpowder) and sodium ferrocyanide (these days classified as poison), the Atomic Energy Lab was positively glowing with danger.

64 Comments on Dangerous Toys

  8. The Defender Dan machine gun. Damn thing shot plastic bullets full auto.
    What made it dangerous for me was when the Old Man caught me shooting ornaments off of the tree Christmas morning. Shit got real dangerous real quick.

    22

  11. As Jeff Foxworthy noted in one of his routines, the wood burning set came with a three foot cord suitable for use near mom’s curtains.

    Except for the Magic Pistol and Atomic Energy Lab, which I now want, we had them all. We also rode bikes without helmets, walked or rode bikes to school, went swimming in whatever pond or creek was available, got BB guns when we were kids, and were instructed to go outside and play unsupervised whenever the weather permitted (and sometimes when the weather did not permit). There were a few more cuts, scrapes and broken bones, but I don’t recall the morality rate being any different than it is now.

    25

  17. I played with dangerous toys like erector sets and tinker toys. I learned to experiment and think outside the box. Very dangerous today. Seriously, we had most of the toys listed and lived. We also played barn tag, where you went anywhere inside of the barn to avoid being tagged “it”. Swinging from hay mow to hay mow on a rope and walking along the 6 inch wide beams 20 feet in the air seemed safe at the time. And no one died.

    20

  18. Wham-o air Blaster, Metal tipped arrows & bow, Chemistry set, Lead soldiers and assorted toys with small parts to ingest or impale a body part with. Oh, and my 2 pride and joy possessions, Johnny Seven OMA and a Thompson machine gun replica that was loud as Hell. Every birthday and Christmas I heard the same old “Now you be careful with that ______.”

    10

  19. @rabbit tobacco; Damn, I thought me and my buddy were the only ones that did that. I continue to be amazed that I got out of childhood/adolescence with the number of scars and concussions I have.

    4

  20. So, the last 30 years or so kids have been brought up by helicopter parents and wrapped in bubble wrap. My deceased Bride would NOT even consider letting the baby boy play football. He did play baseball, jump on the trampoline and skateboard (hence the broken arm) but at least he was allowed to embrace some danger……. FFS! We used to have bb gun wars and shot each other. No helmets, No safety glasses….
    Oh I have scars and have had multiple concussions… but whatever!

    8

  21. We didn’t have money for that stuff. We made muskets using an iron pipe and assorted fittings. Match heads were used for gun powder and lead weights from dads tackle box were our musket balls. Not accurate at all but it would send lead down range. We graduated to pipe bombs from there. I have fond memories from that summer before 6th grade.

    14

  23. Now the little pussies need “safe spaces” from words!

    Ooooooohhhhhh!

    As said a couple of years ago: our enemies teach their sons to cut off the heads of their enemies (us) while we teach our sons to suck each other’s dicks.

    I don’t think it’s all for the better.

    izlamo delenda est …

    15

  24. rabbit tobacco
    SEPTEMBER 8, 2020 AT 11:29 AM
    “Bow and arrows with metal points.”

    …I had this too, but I thought it would be fun to go down in the unfinished basement and tape a cardboard target on the wood framing for the back of the bathroom a half-floor above. This was adjacent to the copper pipes serving the sink for the bathroom, which would have been fine if I could aim.

    Turns out I needed the practice because my arrow went wide, poking a hole in the (fortunately) cold water pipe BELOW the cut-off.

    I went from William Tell to Little Dutch boy REAL quick, sticking my thumb over the hole and only partly succeeding in obstructing the flow.

    I couldn’t move then lest all the cardboard boxes of Christmas stuff got wet, so I had to do that which I most did NOT want to do.

    Yell for help.

    From Dad.

    I had a tough time explaining why and how I was putting holes in the plumbing, and he was even LESS pleased when he had to shut the WHOLE HOUSE down until we could get a plumber out AT NIGHT.

    Not a happy camper, was Dad.

    I lost my indoor range privileges for good that night.

    …and you have to sell a FUCKTON of greeting cards from the mail-order house to pay for ’70s plumbing repairs, let me tell you…

    7

  27. Nobody ever talks about Flexies. Did they only exist in Southern California? Akin to an ice sled but with wheels and steering bar. It did have a brake pad, but after a couple of kids went whizzing down their driveways out into the road, they kinda disappeared. I remember a kid in third grade died when he ran under a car on the road. Really cool, though. Tried it once. Pretty scary on concrete.
    https://www.ebay.com/b/flexy-racer/bn_7024853110

    2

  28. …I had lots invested in Radio Shack breadboard electronic kits back in the day, when crystal radios were still cool and transitors were rare and as big as your thumb in some cases.

    Most of both Radio Shack and Heathkit stuff needed to be soldered.

    And let me tell you a soldering iron can burn you better than a wood burner, and that’s if you DON’T try to solder with the Radio Shack oxy/butane brazing torch which were sold with NO age restrictions whatsoever…

    https://thumbs.worthpoint.com/zoom/images1/1/0316/22/radio-shack-64-2165-micro-gas-brazing_1_2a575112c3ada426bad697a4e54c2081.jpg

    …I have since learned to cut metal with fire for exhaust work, brazing, cutting, and welding with oxy/acetylene rigs, TIG welding, plasma cutting, etc., but this was the misused torch that started it ALL, and also proved that God looks out for drunks and small children that I ALSO didn’t burn (down the house) while I learned, just saying…

    …that’s where I learned skills I make a living with today, both with a torch and with electronics…and maybe where I learned a love for FF/EMS, sort of out of self-defense…

    ..and thank GOD my parents LET me make mistakes, burn myself, stink up their house, and char their furniture while being there to keep things from getting TOO out of hand…they could have just locked me in a Nerfed room for my entire childhood, and I’d probably still be selling greeting cards today if they HAD…

    …which begs the question of where do young mechanics, welders, electricians, and firefighters build a base TODAY?

    On the Internet? With an XBox?

    …which may explain why I can’t find anyone to fix my car properly NOW, so I STILL have yo do it myself…

    4

  29. We were poor, had to make bolt action 22 cal pistols on the lathe in my dads garage. None of us ever got shot till Nam. I did shoot a hole in the bed upstairs, loading mishap (no safety), that Dad blew a gasket over.

    6

  30. Anybody remember The Water Wiggle? We used to have fun with it til somebody would aim and fire a blast of water, (it stung) then send somebody home crying to Mommy and that would end it for the day.

    How did we ever survive our childhood? 🤔 With plenty of scrapes, bumps, bruises and plenty of fun. 😂

    7

  31. Hey SNS–I had to laugh about the solder!I burned up a whole roll of that stuff in my Dad’s lead melting crucible! Got in trouble ’cause I didn’t know it was expensive. Melted a lot of lead type in the crucible, too. Held my head over the bowl watching it melt. Lead fumes anybody? My brother and I would drip it out onto the sidewalk and make “snowflakes”. We also made homemade skateboards with wood planks and old roller skates. Worked pretty good until the skates would wiggle off halfway down a steep hill. Learned alot about intertia and Newton’s laws of motion, though.

    6

  32. My dad had this tiny jar of mercury and I would pour it out and tap on it to watch it break up into tiny balls only to form back into a large one. Wash, rinse, repeat. BTW, dad did say not to touch the stuff, but you know how that goes.

    9

  34. y’all are a bunch of pussies. I grew up on an island. I worked three jobs in the Summertimes to fund my mayhem. Morning paper route, evening paper route and mowed grass in between. I got the idea to go to the police department’s monthly stolen bicycle auctions and buy bikes for $3-5 bucks each; the shittier the bike the better as long as it ran. We’d steal a sheet or two of plywood from a building site – and none of that OSB shit neither! – and place the board on the bulkhead at the street end. One of us would stand guard at the intersection and wave when it was going to be car-free so we could get a head of steam up from a block back and jump our bikes off the bulkhead into the polluted backbay water. I got tired of going thru bikes so I tied an old kapok lifepreserver onto the handlebars so I could swim the fucker back to the bulkhead and re-use it.

    Good times….good times…

    7

  36. …of course, every little boy comes with the MOST dangerous of toys factory-installed just below the belt buckle, and once he discovers it arond 13 or so, generally causes trouble with it for the rest of his life…

    …compared to THAT, there’s really NOTHING more dangerous any toymaker can do to us, that we can’t do more and worse with the OEM equipment, and it’s a HELL of a lot more fun than any Nerf gun, but causes a LOT more long-term damage as well…

    1

  40. @Supernightshade;
    My kids were into Nerf guns and then airsoft guns and both of these units have (had) air restrictors to limit the speed of the projectiles. Thank God for “Instructables” on the web that got them and then they drafted me to assist in removing any / all restriction – allowing the guns to actually be fun – and they creamed the neighbor kids. My younger son was really in to the process and now he is a superb 25 Y.O. Welder and getting better everyday and LOVES it!

    3

  41. Wham-o made a single shot .22 pistol you could order off the back of a comic book.
    The Whamo powermaster .22
    They also sold REAL crossbows, machetes, boomerangs and throwing knives.
    One of the co-owners was a conservative who enjoyed the outdoors, hunting, and sports.
    When he dide, his son, as I recall, eliminated the “fun” stuff.

    3

  42. I have a friend, best friend since we were 5.
    Did everything together, we still laugh about how it seems unreal that we both have all out digits and eyesight.
    We made:
    Gunpowder, check.
    Flash powder, gunpowder with powdered magnesium mixed in, check.
    Mortars that would shoot a D cell a hundred yards, check.
    Zip guns, we had rifles, just not a pistol, we made those, check.
    Chlorine bombs, check.
    Made a big one from an old fire extinguisher, it actually knocked the dock off the pilings, looked like a depth charge going off. Got in trouble for that. We were in a jet path for SAC, lots of sonic booms back then, bombs going off didn’t attract that much attention, the broken dock was another matter.
    Hand grenades, a cherry bomb wrapped in wet clay then dried, shrapnel..
    Wars, using an empty coke bottle, a welders glove and bottle rockets, check.
    Potato guns, made one of those as recently as 10 years ago, heh.
    We bought “sharp tips”, thats what we called arrows, the ones your mother approved of were the dreaded “rubber tips’. Bought them by the gross at Kmart, $25. In the 60s, that was a lot of money, you could buy a rifle for that.
    Jarts, like they weren’t dangerous enough, we tied a string on them and swung them to launch, like an atlatl, you can get one really moving.
    Crackers, (2) 1/2” bolts with a nut in between and cap gun caps in the middle, throw it up in the air on the road and run.
    We would pretty much describe all those listed toys as, “sissy stuff”.

    5

  43. OpenTheDoor SEPTEMBER 8, 2020 AT 1:58 PM

    Ever make a cannon by using a pointy can opener to cut holes in soup cans top and bottom to make a tube, with pointy openings on the sides of the bottom can with the bottom left in and taped all the other jaggedly cut cans together with duct tape, put a tennis ball in, squirted lighter fluid in the bottom can, then lit it with a Bic lighter you filched from your Dad to see how far you could shoot the now-smouldering tennis ball?

    …good times, good times…

    4

  44. Wax paper was real cheap entertainment, we would take a roll to the local park where they had steel slides back in the day, put a piece of wax paper under our rearends, and you would haul butt down that slide, we had some skinned knee’s 🩹 but it was worth it. Such a shame the kid’s today really are missing out on a childhood.

    6

  46. We used to make rockets out of empty CO2 cartridges and a 3/4-in piece of pipe for a launch tube. We would fill them with match heads. An older kid down the street got the bright idea of using the white tip off of match heads for propulsion, it went off while he was loading it, good thing it was clamped in his dad’s vice. Burned all the hair off his face and part of the hair on his head got, the worst sunburn too. Yeah, good times, he had it coming. We all seemed fascinated with making things go fast and being creative. A buddy of mine across the street ended up working on dragsters later on in life, a life dream he always had.
    Pretty sure I’d be arrested probably my parents too if we did that as a kid today. Having a toy gun in your house while you’re doing zoom schooling can get you thrown out of school and probably investigated we live in nuts world.

    2

  47. @ SNS
    We were talking about this yesterday how it doesn’t seem to be very many people wanting to drive heavy equipment that are young, they all want to play with keyboards and computer screens. They don’t want to turn a wrench to save their life.

    3

  48. @MerryMouse:

    Nobody ever talks about Flexies. Did they only exist in Southern California?

    I never occurred to me that my Flexy was dangerous! I had one when I was eight or nine and living in, you got it, Coronado. One Saturday, I decided to ride the thing around Coronado. I don’t mean I meandered around some part of the place, I mean I traveled the whole perimeter of the civilian part, of course traversing a lot of intersections, some of them pretty busy (for 1957). Unfortunately, when my father got his orders to his next station, it was to Argentina and my Flexy didn’t make the trip.

    4

  49. Hey Mansfield, are you thinking of the Rotax?

    When I was 13 or 14, I ordered a set of plans for a little open seat kit-plane, from the back of either a comic book or Popular Mechanics, called the Puddle Jumper. I really, really wanted a Rotax for it, but used snowmobiles were very rare in the TX Panhandle, so settled on a wore out VW Beetle engine, which we overhauled in Shop Class. My buds and I ‘Tom Sawyered’ the wings and control surfaces, from a flipped Piper Cub, off our local FBO’s AgCat operator. Almost had the thing built when my dad found out and exercised executive privilege and canned the project.

    We were devastated, but he might have saved our necks.

    TWD

    4

  50. SNS

    Yeah I practically lived at the local Radio Shack. Still have most of my first irons and various hand tools from there.

    In the early/mid-60’s, I was 9 or 10, my dad had expanded his operations, and started building Heathkit 2-way radios (they looked like CBs, but had greater range, didn’t require FCC Lic like HAMs). We eventually had two base stations, one on the farm, and the other in town at the office, and about fifteen mobile units for the pick-ups and trucks. I was fascinated by the kits, so, out of self defense, Dad took advantage of my OCD and set me to presorting all the components out by type and value. Before long, I was building them. Probably did the last ten, or so, by myself. Went on to build practically everything Heathkit sold, VOMs, Scopes, weather stations, weight scales, couple of HAM setups, the HERO robot. My first set of computers were H-100s, their S-100 based PCs (sold them to local small businesses for about 100 bucks more than I paid. To get an IBM PC, back then, you practically had to mortgage the house).

    Those ‘hobby’ skills continually popped up to good use, across 3 decades of Army svc. I am now a civilian Consulting Engineer for Network Infrastructure and Security. Not so much in the hardware, anymore, mostly designing, troubleshooting, sandboxing, penetration testing virtual networks. All largely thanks to a couple of intriguing boxes containing a few printed circuit boards and a thousand loose components.

    TWD

    3

  51. I took a 1911 Colt to school as a prop for my 7th grade demonstration speech. Pulled it from my bag, went to the front, showed how to take it apart and back together, with suitable narration. Got an A on my speech. No press, no LEOs called, no big deal.

    This would have been about 1978.

    7

  54. Some things I had as a kid:

    Wood burning kit
    Chemistry set (with real chemicals)
    Erector set
    Model cars and planes assembled with glue
    Jet -X rocket engine
    Electric train (not battery powered)
    Leather working kit
    Crystal radio kit
    Transistor radio kit
    Things of Science (a monthly science experiment in the mail)
    .22 rifle

    I never injured or poisoned myself or anyone else.

    2

  56. Graceia
    SEPTEMBER 8, 2020 AT 5:12 PM
    “As best as I can decipher, all the comments came from men about their boyhood.”

    …well, we’d be tickled pink, so to speak, if you ladies chose to chime in…I had sisters, but they were of the bossy OLDER sister variety, and I’m pretty sure I can’t go by THEM since they were obviously part of an alien experiment to torment younger brothers, but maybe you can prove me wrong…

    3

  58. Vietvet, monkey bars were the original kid killers, along with the push merry go rounds and swings that would go 15 to 20 feet up into the air and my brothers would jump off when they reached peak height. And all 4 of us are still here miraculously with all the stunts we pulled with homemade explosives, mortars made from metal pipe with CO2 cartridges filled with match heads that could shoot 2 to 300 yards across the school field. If we did that now we’d have all been in jail. Incredible edibles i got for Christmas one year, Mattel Fanner 50 toy guns that shot rubber bullets with Greenie Stickem caps, lawn jarts etc. etc. But the dumbest thing I ever did was make smoke bombs in my upstairs bedroom that went off and filled the room with smoke and could’ve burned the house down and it was also the last time my dad spanked me for being a dumbass. Somehow we survived all that including inner tubing on the Spokane River with no life jackets in white water led by one of my friends dad who was the biggest kid in the neighborhood. God protect fools and kids with their toys just like he did for me and my brothers. And we laugh about it now like it was no big deal. And we played baseball in my Uncles cow pasture with supposedly dried up cow pies as bases. My dad once fell backwards trying to hit a ball and the back of his head landed in a semi fresh meadow muffin, I wasn’t there but my youngest brother told me it was funny as hell. And the time we were playing football with a bladder out of a freshly butchered cow and my 3rd brother caught it and it burst all over him. Fun times, fun times I wish we could do it all over again.

    4

  59. Had six rolls of string tied onto a kite that thing was up there way above legal zone.
    The jarts were fun you throw them up as high as possible then run or play chicken same way as you used to toss screwdrivers at the side of each others feet.

    In Arizona would wander the desert trying to catch anything moving. Caught a lot of lizards and scorpions luckily never came across a rattler probably would have tried to catch it.

    I never did it but my idiot brother would climb a tree then your friend cuts it and you ride it down messed up his knee doing that.

    Shooting bottle rockets at each other so many other things kids today don’t know how boring they have it.

    4

  60. vietvet

    I got dozens go “goose eggs” and hundreds of “scabs” in ’48 + ’49 on Monkey bars!

    Somehow by ‘5 I mastered Monkey Bars. As BTW did all my friends. We got hurt; we learned! We all developed muscles and coordination!
    I also played marbles on a dirt playground! My grandkids no nothing of these!

    4

  61. Nobody mentioned playing mumbly peg with jack knives like we did did in grade school back in the early 60’s. Every kid had a pocket knife back then. I saw my first praying mantis of the year last week, we would catch those put them in a jar and feed em’ flies and keep them as pets. And pollywogs in the Spring from Cannon Hill Pond we would catch and keep and watch them turn into frogs.

    3

  62. geoff the aardvark
    SEPTEMBER 8, 2020 AT 8:11 PM
    “And pollywogs in the Spring from Cannon Hill Pond we would catch and keep and watch them turn into frogs”

    …we would catch crayfish in the creek, but would sometimes have to back off when a water moccasin came by. We knew not to mess with seek, but didn’t know HOW much bad it would be to mess with these PARTICULAR snakes, but no one ever got chewed, so it’s all good…

    1

  63. My next in line brother caught a 6 foot bull snake once when we were catching frogs and brought it home with him and promptly lost it in an upstairs cubby hole. We never knew what happened to that snake but we did find a bull snake that had been run over by a car on the street in front of our house a while later, don’t know if it was the same snake or not. I don’t think he ever told my parents about it.

    3

  64. I had that exact wood burning set in the early 80s. Got it as a gift from my great-aunt, who I was pretty sure had taken it away from one of her kids in the 60s, hidden it in a closet, found it long later, and regifted it to me.

    Burned the everlivin’ crap out of my fingers, some bits of wood, and a dresser top before my mom appropriated it.

    1

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