Since that poor kid in Oregon nearly died from ingesting 37 Buckyballs, all I've been able to think about is that old Saturday Night Live skit about unsafe toys -- remember? "Bag O' Glass" and "Teddy Chainsaw Bear" were my favorites. The premise was hilarious as a comedy sketch, but there have been way too many deadly toys on the market over the years. Buckyballs are the latest, sure, but they certainly weren't the first.
Indeed. Who can forget such lethally dangerous playthings as these ...
Aquadots: It REALLY freaked me out when the news broke about these things, because they were actually in my kids' playroom at the time. Aquadots were supposed to be cool because the colorful little dots were stuck together with water to make pictures ... they turned out to be very not cool because they contained the date rape drug GBH. Whoops! Roophied 5-year-olds = major recall.
Jarts: Metal lawn darts. Need I say more? Metal. Lawn. Darts. For kids to throw. I never had these as a kid, but I did have the original Slip n' Slide (the one with the big metal brackets stuck into the ground at either end ... ouch!).
Shrinky Dinks: Let's all melt plastic in our oven and inhale the toxic fumes! As I recall, the only way to get rid of that unavoidably nasty Shrinky Dink-er's Headache was to lie down and take a nap for at least 3 hours.
Easy-Bake Oven: Of course you weren't supposed to stick your fingers through the oven's burning hot metal door thingies to get your "cake," but what else could you do when you lost that other grabber/pusher thingie you were supposed to use? I'm still shocked at the amount of damage the heat of a lightbulb can do to human skin.
What's the most dangerous toy you played with as a kid?
Image via Anathea Utley/Flickr
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Comments 9
Clackers. Glass balls on strings that you banged together. Late 60's. Endless fun.
WTF are Buckyballs?? I've never heard of them. I remember when slap bands were the cool thing and my step-brother and I used to whack each other with them. Just about every toy we ever had as kids--and even now--had the potential to be dangerous.
I had an easy bake oven, but I guess I was smarter than some kids... I never stuck my fingers in there, but I did stick in a pencil to grab the cake thing. Then again, my mom was showing me how to use a scroll saw at age 7. Yes. A saw. With a motor. And I STILL have all my fingers! The worst damage done from a toy was when my step sister was using a Skip It and slammed it into my legs. A weighted ball on the end of a strip of plastic with a loop that went around your ankle. You tried to twirl it on your foot and jump over the plastc strip. Like a one person jump rope thing.
Anything can be dangerous.
Buckyballs are Magnets in small marble forms.
I find your name slightly ironic there Skyhook.
I had clackers, too, and I was born in 82.
I remember those too Jessie,
I think the most 'dangerous' toy I played with as a child was the only one that actually hurt me, and that was a power wheels. I was passenger in it and my friend drove us into a wheelbarrow of bricks that fell down and I broke the growth plate in my thumb.
However I think I played with a fair amount of dangerous toys, sleds, scooters, bikes, pogoballs/sticks, darts, horseshoes, creepy crawlers, easy-bake... I echo anything can be dangerous.
Those were Skydancers, Leah.
Skip it was awesome, but yeah my shins had permanant bruises ;)
The worst toy when I was a kid was the school jump ropes! They had plastic pieces along the length of the whole rope and god forbid if while you were skipping you missed and hit yourself with it...it hurt!