Old School Toys That Would Be Considered Too Dangerous For Kids To Play With Today – IOTW Report

Old School Toys That Would Be Considered Too Dangerous For Kids To Play With Today

Friday, 25 February 2022, 17:00 MJA Uncategorized 75

brobible: Back in the day, kids toys were a lot different. Many of the old school toys kids used to play with would be considered too dangerous today.

For exhibits A through Z, see the photo above of a game of lawn darts, or jarts, as they were often called. Why were they called jarts? Because it was short for “javelin darts.”

That’s right. Kids used to stand at opposite ends and lob javelin darts towards one another, often unsupervised, and this was considered to be an okay idea. Seriously, they sold thousands of these sets.

Lawn darts were amazingly still being sold up until December 19, 1988 when the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission introduced a ban on them in the United States.

In the eight years prior to the ban, 6,100 Americans had had to visit a hospital emergency room for some sort of lawn dart-related injury (81% were age 15 or younger).

So, considering adults all over the world considered jarts to be fun for the whole family for so many years, you know, until enough people got killed or maimed, on Sunday, someone on Reddit asked the question, “What toys did you have as a child that would be considered too dangerous to be given to a child today?”

See if any of these responses sound familiar.

SNIP: When I was a kid, I had metal LEGOS and metal Jacks.
My poor feet. LOL!

75 Comments on Old School Toys That Would Be Considered Too Dangerous For Kids To Play With Today

  2. My little brother (age 3 or 4) had a small wooden bench with round holes. There were yellow pegs that would fit snugly in the holes and then he had a little mallet to pound them down. After a few minutes of playing with them, guess what he did with the mallet? He pounded everything in sight. The cats fled.

    19

  8. kids can make a weapon out of any toy. I remember my toddler brother picking up the little low to the ground wooden rocking horse and beaning his cousin with it. My other brother swung my jump-rope with the wooden handles around over his head by one of the handles and let it loose to wrap violently around any object or playmate nearby. Once their dad brought home mini-hockey sticks from the Blackhawks game for my boys. They instantly became medieval weapons of war against each other.

    11

  16. Jeff Foxworthy referenced a wood burning kit with a 3 foot cord – suitable for setting the curtains on fire. Yep, I had one of those. Jarts. Chemistry sets with the ever popular alcohol burner. Realistic toy guns, rubber tipped dart guns and later BB guns, and still later air soft guns. Stingray bicycles with the shifter at crotch level. Thinking back to our Christmas times, I think all of the had some level of danger.

    10

  21. Growing up in the seventies was great. Parents, grandparents, and friends moms driving all the kids around while drinking. I thought you needed a brown paper bag to start the car. We played Jarts at each other all the time.When that got boring we would play hide and go seek with pellet guns in the woods. We were safe, our rules were don’t shoot above the neck unless they hide behind a tree for too long.

    9

  22. We had a swing set that was all busted up…no swings basically just an A-frame left. My sisters and I would stand on a chair and jump to hang on the bar, like a gymnast. One evening, I took some Crisco and rubbed it all over the bar. Next day one of the neighbor girls tried to jump and hang on the bar…let’s just say I’m surprised she wasn’t in a body cast after her fall. My father was pissed…I was grounded for a week.

    6

  30. When I was the Mayor of our little town, I had to meet with the insurance guy about our playground equipment. The big slide had to go, about 30 ft. tall with 2 speed bumps. With a little waxed paper, you could fly.
    When we got to the merry-go-round, he said it needed a skirt under it. I asked him if he thought it should mount it on the ground and cut off fingers or mount on the merry-go-round and cut off toes.
    He didn’t have an answer and we still have a merry-go-round.
    If your to stupid to ride a merry-go-round, just stay home.

    12

  31. My friend had his right eye shot out during a BB gun fight. Fourth grade. He had a clear glass or plastic cup in place while waiting for a glass eye. He would stare at people and freak them out because you could see the back of his eye socket, all reddish pink and squishy looking.

    8

  34. Toys I’ve participated or had
    Creepy Crawlers’ Thingmaker
    Jarts
    Easy-Bake Oven (NOT MINE)
    Splash Off Water Rockets
    Clackers
    Laboratory Kit
    Wood Burning Kit
    Super Elastic Bubble Plastic
    Vac-U-Form
    Estes Rocket
    Jumping parked cars with my bike ala Evel Knievel

    7

  37. @Ted Nougat, just a plain mini bike. Everything was fine until you encountered serious potholes at what I’m pretty sure was about 200 mph to my young brain. I didn’t crash and I have no idea how I didn’t but it scared the crap out of me. I learned the phrase “tank slapper” that day. I think that’s when I took up swearing.

    9

  38. nephew i raised played a game while waiting for wife to finish shopping. basically use anything “off the shelf” to kill the other guy. amazing the imagination of children. no worries he did a hitch in security forces air force and is a fine upstanding citizen. lets hope civility thrives.

    5

  39. pocket knife
    we used to play stretch and mumblety peg as kids

    lawn darts are probably good for aeration of the soil.
    they’re environmental and everybody should use them

    8

  41. Hey WILD BILL
    Same here. Playing war with BB guns and pellet guns in the woods.
    Got hit with a pellet, just between the nose and the left eye lid.
    Went home with it in and Mom had to squeeze it out like a zit

    To this day, 63 year later, I have a divot there. Like a little crater. Actually have to keep it cleaned out so I don’t get any infection, which has happened several times over the years.
    Some of the greatest times of my life

    8

  45. Real firecrackers with waterproof wicks.
    Wrist-rocket slingshots.
    Roller Skates with metal wheels.
    Riding on your buddy’s handlebars all over town, helping him with his paper-route.
    Smoking a cigarette while pumping your gas.
    Dad would give me a 20 to go buy him a roll of Copenhagen, or a carton of smokes at the drug store. I was 15.

    It was a good time.

    5

  48. Different Tim. I had an ice bike almost slide off the ice on Sarnia bay into the river. It was like slow motion. Just kept sliding and sliding and then stopped about five feet from the edge. Crawled out on my belly tied a rope to the wheel crawled back and pulled it in. scary.

    4

  49. Cherry bombs, silver salutes, and M80’s. All terrific fun and any one of them would take a mailbox right off it’s post. Electric lead furnace to make toy soldiers. Would gather a pocketful of lead weights from the bottom of the velvet curtains onstage at school, take them home and made lead soldiers. Potassium nitrate was hard to come by until my older brother’s best pal got a job at the drug store down the street. With the saltpeter, we could whip up a batch of black powder.

    5

  50. We still have a set of Jarts and after some 40 years or more have still not impaled anybody with them. Maybe it’s because we all stand together and throw them at the ring and then we all go to that rim and throw them back to where we were standing.

    You know, kinda like NOT holding a target while your buddy shoot at it and then having him/her hold a target while you shoot it.

    Rocket Surgery it ain’t.

    3

  51. My older brother’s chemistry set came with a vial of mercury. Great fun until the vial turned up empty and mom was sure our little brother had swallowed it. He hadn’t, but we added a few more gray hairs to her head.

    4

  52. My dad worked on the RR and around the 4th of July he’d bring home a coffee can full of rail road torpedoes. They used them to signal trains of problems on tracks ahead. They work on impact between the rail and the wheel. Had a lead strap they used to strap them on the rail so they wouldn’t fall off. We opened them up and broke the yellow cracker inside into 1/4 pieces. A rope and a old ironing board iron and a small chunk of rr rail was used. Hung the iron on the rope over a tree limp and dropped it on the piece to detonate it. My friend Jack thought he’d short cut the operation and used a sledge hammer. Much too close to the blast. His arm was full of tiny holes that looked like he’d been shot with a 12 gauge full of sand. Bled and bled but never needed a doctor, until he got older and lost the hearing in his right ear. Don’t try this at home.

    5

  54. Different Tim and Ted Nougat, ah yes, the mini bike. Had a Taco with a Mac engine. Too fast to be safe. Nearly took my head off when I ran into a pipe gate with my chin. Knocked me out. Lots of stitches in my chin. Still have the scars. More gray hairs for mom.

    5

  55. Here in Mich we went out in the winter to Anchor Bay on Lake St Clair ice fishing. My sister and I had our ice skates with us and it was extremely windy so the ice was blown clear of snow pretty much. We chose in our infinite childhood wisdom to open our coats and use them like a sail. The next thing you knew we were getting out towards open water so we decided to turn back.
    Remember that strong wind I mentioned.

    10

  57. The game we old timers played, even at school: the ever evil and dangerous DODGE BALL.

    Are they allowed to play on a teeter totter, ride a merry-go-round, a metal slide

    What about tag, Red Rover, hide and seek?

    What’s wrong with this generation, sanctioned to be a child until 26 years old? The generation preceding them. That’s what’s wrong.

    7

  63. If today’s kids are allowed to play football, kickball and dodgeball, can they still pick sides? I have a feeling the teachers pick the teams, so everyone is a “winner” and feelings aren’t hurt.

    3

  64. Estes Rockets
    Crosman 1400 pellet rifle, which I sill have
    Bow and arrow
    Wrist rocket
    Caps – we used to buy 1 pound boxes – think of the explosive power handed over to an elementary school kid at the Toys R Us

    7

  65. Toward the end of a long weekend my uncle grabbed the clackers and gave them the heave ho into the neighbor’s impenetrable briar patch. The only mean thing I ever saw him do.

    – riding a bicycle without a helmet
    – roller skating without a helmet
    – riding in a car without seat belts (or baby seats)

    I can’t think of any toys we had that would be too dangerous today. We were dirt poor and our “toys” were things we built, like forts up in trees or go-carts, etc.

    Things that would make a Karen swoon today:

    – climbing very high trees
    – swinging by a rope, high overhead, across the barn and jumping into a pile of hay
    – swimming, rafting, or inner-tubing in a swift river, unsupervised
    – walking the rr tracks and crossing the trestles, unsupervised
    – riding on the tractor’s fenders while granddad drove
    – driving the tractor when you could reach all the controls
    – getting put on a horse with no bridle or saddle and your brothers smacking it on the rear
    – fixing or making stuff yourself with anything that would work, in the tool shed, unsupervised
    – cooking dinner, using the oven, stove top, mixmaster, knives, etc. (you only need to get your fingers caught in the beaters once)
    – using a sewing machine (you only need to put the needle through your finger once)

    The sad part about kids not being able to do anything on their own is they don’t learn important stuff (“life skills”), they can’t judge what is dangerous and what isn’t, and they don’t get to feel the accomplishment of figuring it out for themselves.

    Can you imagine asking an eleven year-old today about the “dangerous” toys he’s played with?

    7

  66. i went digging around the garage and found the JARTS I need to get new fins for them to work. We had bows and arrows there was an empty field about 100 yards from the house so a group[ of us would shoot at the pocket gophers We never hit them we also shot straight up and had to dodge them wh en they came down but nobody ever got hurt.

    3

  70. Swam in the Cannon River, Cannon Falls MN. Then we caught up snapping turtles from the water we were swimming in. Shoved the heads of two turltes together to make them fight. Good times.

    4

  71. @AbigailAdams – you made me think of the swimming hole at the Boy Scout camp just down the road from me. It had a big dead tree hanging over it and boards were nailed to the side of it for a ladder. After you climbed about 25 feet there were some rickety planks that served as a diving board. It was a real test of courage to take the leap.

    4

  73. In the days of my youth a beaver slide was still used to make hay stacks on Montana ranches. We played King of the Hill on them and every kid that was worth a damn had at least one broken arm or wrist from being pushed or thrown off. The other thing on ranches was wind mills that had been replaced by Fairbanks-Morris Hit Miss engines to power the pumps. We played rat patrol on them by lashing our 22 rifles to what was left of the pivot and then ran around the planks blasting away at gophers and jackrabbits. I don’t think anyone ever fell off one though. But the most dangerous thing we had were the original Honda ATC90s. Those bastards sent more kids to the ER than anything else.

    If you don’t know what a beaver slide is you can look it up on a search engine. They still use them in the Avon Valley between Helena and Missoula and a few other places. There is nothing wrong with loose stacked hay if you are going to feed it on site. It’s only a problem if you need to transport it.

  74. Wild Bill — And you reminded me of a similar tree.

    Just below a small concrete bridge below the site of the Olympia Brewery (Olympia, WA), on the Deschutes river, near where the river falls into the beginning of Capitol lake, local dare devils would skinny out to the the limb that placed you over the pool below and jump from there. I never had the nerve, but my high school boyfriend did and I remember how upset it made me that he would do something so foolhardy.

    1

  75. A small mom and pop magic shop within bicycling distance sold tons of great stuff. I must have been in 7th or 8th grade when Tommy and I bought a tin of “cigarette loads.” Tommy’s mom smoked like a chimney and we stole cigs out of her purse all the time. The loads looked like the end of a toothpick, and you could push it, pointy end first, down into the cigarette with a paper clip. Tommy and I loaded a couple of her cigs, not really knowing what to expect. A bit later, she decided we all needed to go somewhere, so we piled into her car. While driving, she lit one up with the cigar lighter. Tommy and I giggled with anticipation. A few moments later, while we were in traffic, it went off with the power of a Black Cat firecracker. Red glowing embers flew in all directions inside the car, and she slammed on the brakes. My next door neighbor was an old salt Marine and dad was an Army vet. They had both served in WW2. When Tommy’s mom caught her breath, she let out a tyrade of profanities so long that it would have made my dad and my former Marine neighbor blush. I had never heard of several of the profanities she screeched.

    2

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