What toys did you have as a kid that are banned nowadays?

[Archae]

We had:

Lawn darts
Thingmaker
Chemistry set
Woodburning
SSP's (Toy cars that raced across the floor fast and had plastic that broke into lacerating pieces)

[jberryhill]

1. The SSPs were banned?

Those gyroscopic wheels were fast, and made that great whine when you pulled the belt.

Clackers.

I’m amazed the fatal flaw in fidget spinners has apparently not been found yet.

[Archae]

2. Some of the spinners have been recalled...

High levels of lead.
Especially in the paint, in the cheaper ones.

I have a black one.

[jberryhill]

3. Behold

[Archae]

4. Yeah! I had a purple one!

It ran into the leg of the kitchen table, (they did NOT work on carpet!) and while it still worked, my Mom threw it out after I cut my finger on a few of the pieces.

[LeftInTX]

5. Creepy Crawlers (I think it's your thingmaker)

I can't think of others. I mostly played with dolls and boring things.
That Creepy Crawler kit melted plastic. I never got burnt from it.

Are oil paints toxic? I took art lessons and would spend the evening in turpentine. I was kinda young for all that stuff. It was messy as heck.

[MiniMe]

7. You never got burned from the creepy crawlers?

I loved them, but got burned quite often. Not badly burned, but I did get burned. I had the lawn darts too

[Archae]

9. Yes it was!

We had 3 sets of molds.

The creepy crawlers

Creeple people (Weird people we would put on pencils)

Some kind of flowers

After several years, we had the dangdest time finding the "Plastigoop."

And remember the edible stuff?

[Dave Starsky]

18. There are companies that still make Plastigoop...

For those that can get their hands on a Thingmaker.

http://www.dr-goop.com/goop

[RobinA]

65. Fun Flowers

We played with them for hours. I can still smell the goop and hear the hissss when the hot mold went into that tray of water. They would never go over today. You had to pay attention to what you were doing!

[Dave Starsky]

17. I loved all The Thingmaker toys.

And yeah, I must have burned myself a half dozen times on that little oven.

We didn't stress out about that kind of thing then.

[woodsprite]

37. You can still get them, but with all the safety features,

they take a bit longer to cook. Also, you can pick up the old molds on eBay (which work with the new units). The old molds are neat because they took less Goop! Some of the newer molds take almost 1/3 bottle of Goop. Also, the old molds had things like flowers, pencil toppers, aliens. I don't think the new ones do.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

6. Chemistry set!

Woodburning kit, EZ-Bake oven, clackers.

[LeftInTX]

8. The still sell EZ-Bake Ovens!!!

https://www.hasbro.com/en-us/brands/easybake

I never got the appeal. I think I made about 5 little cakes in mine.

[MFM008]

11. I had a metal one

Back in the 60s.
Creepy crawlers.....superballs.

[Archae]

10. My sisters had clackers, too.

If they broke, we ducked! :-D

[Skittles]

12. golliwog

[unc70]

13. Cap pistols

[Blue_Tires]

50. +1000

No safety orange stripes around them, either...

[rogerballard]

14. I got this toy in 1965...

My Mother banned it 3 weeks later in 1965... That thing made noise, I loved it. Apparently she did not buy that for me

[TuxedoKat]

15. Whirly Bird

We had a yard toy called a "Whirly Bird". It had four seats and as you pulled and pumped the handles with your friends it whirled around very fast. Great fun!

https://tinyurl.com/yco2gdzz

[LeftInTX]

16. Wow!! Didn't know they had a home model

I remember them from some of the parks. They were so much fun!

[left-of-center2012]

19. Chemistry sets are banned?

Amazon has them for sale (and so does eBay).

Amazon also has Wood burning sets,
Lawn darts,
SSP cars,
and by golly,
even a Thingmaker.

Maybe you're just shopping in the wrong place?

[Ron Obvious]

21. Yes, but those are all lame versions of the items we grew up with. n/t

[rurallib]

24. some chemistry sets in the 50s had a little uranium in them

https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/cyanide-uranium-and-ammonium-nitrate-when-kids-really-had-fun-with-science/

While some substances banned from chemistry sets are not dangerous when handled properly, no one wants to go back to the days when kids were allowed to play with uranium. In 1951, Gilbert released an “Atomic Energy Lab,” which contained three “very low-level” radioactive sources (alpha, beta, and gamma particles), a U-239 Geiger counter, a Wilson cloud chamber, a spinthariscope, four samples of uranium-bearing ores, and an electroscope to measure radioactivity.


Lots more on the fun stuff back in the day at the link

[left-of-center2012]

39. Amazon

[rurallib]

45. OMG!

you really can get anything on Amazon!

[jpak]

57. Thanks Hillary

[DBoon]

58. You should check out United Nuclear

https://www.unitednuclear.com/

They have all kinds of fun things

[NNadir]

32. There are still deracinated chemistry sets, pretty much useless.

I looked at a few when my kids were small and asked myself if they were kidding.

Vinegar and carbonate.

PVP and boron.

That's about it.

[hunter]

49. Our local toy store had a huge rack of replacement chemicals...

... some toxic and/or caustic.

Mercuric oxide was one I remember. One of the experiments was heating it up in a test tube and observing the liquid mercury condensing at the mouth of the test tube...

Our chemistry set had gunpowder recipes too, and all the materials required to make it. But that wasn't really any different than buying cap gun caps and peeling back the paper to collect the gunpowder inside, or grinding up match heads.

Imagine me, my siblings, and friend's joy when we discovered we could buy saltpeter at the drug stores from clerks who hadn't a clue what we were using it for and didn't care.

Imagine our greater joy, as teens, when we discovered we could buy potassium nitrate by the pound at the local ag supply place. That was good for rocket candy.

[RobinA]

66. My Father

tells of playing with mercury he kept in a little bottle.

[Callmecrazy]

20. Verti-Bird...

A small helicopter mounted on a 3-foot rod attached to a drive control. The propeller blades were a sharp, hard plastic that would slice fingers if you got into the blade swath. Ouch! A cat lost part of an ear.

[gratuitous]

22. Toy soldiers lead casts

For some reason, my grades went down a lot while I was making those little lead soldiers.

[Kaleva]

23. M80 firecrackers

[RobinA]

67. Cherry Bombs

My uncle was in the merchant marine or some such and was able to get cherry bombs that were waterproof. We threw them in the creek and thought the ensuing geyser was the best thing ever.

[OilemFirchen]

25. I still have my Vac-U-Form.

Haven't used it since I was a kid, but it was definitely my fave.

Here's a fun little site.

Super Elastic Bubble Plastic? We used to chew that crap like gum!

[jpak]

56. I still have mine

FU eBay

[gay texan]

26. Can't remember the name of it

But one of those toy pistols that used to shoot the discs. Pennies worked just fine

[no_hypocrisy]

27. Gilbert Chemistry Sets

Those idiots even warned that some powders were poisonous.

[Snackshack]

28. The first one on your list.

Lawn Darts.

[NNadir]

29. I actually had a science kit with radioactive polonium embedded in a screen.

It said "See radioactivity." It was a part of a science kit my mother bought for me. It must have been the late 50's or early 60's.

I'm not kidding. I don't know that it was polonium, of course, but I'm guessing that it was, since the thing stopped working after a few years. Polonium is still commercially available - it's made in Russia - for anti-static brushes.

You had to go into a closet and sit in the dark for a few minutes before you can see it by holding it up to your eye. What you saw was occasional flashes of light on a fluorescent screen.

I seem to have survived. I'd imagine that it had a very low amount of activity, particularly since the flashes were rather random and infrequent

I loved that toy, and it was, I think, a great toy. I wish one could still buy something like that.

Of course, I also had a radium painted clock in my room, and I loved that too.

I think that childhood experience may be why I am fascinated by, and rather fond of, all things radioactive.

[JDC]

30. Lawn darts for sure. Jarts Brand? Fun is what they were

[Phoenix61]

31. Clackers! That were recalled and used to make

an off-shore reef.

[lkinwi]

33. A toy iron that got hot enough to iron my doll clothes.

[Poiuyt]

34. Not only chemistry sets, I even had a chemistry book that is now banned

Actually, you can still find it, but it costs about $200

[Kaleva]

63. You can download it for free here

http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/Brent_GBC.pdf

[OilemFirchen]

35. Want!

[gopiscrap]

36. fireworks and dynamite

[Kali]

64. !

[VOX]

38. Toy guns that looked like real weapons, no orange-tippy thing on them.

I mean these were 1:1 scale and looked like the real thing.

[Wolf Frankula]

62. Every boy in My neighborhood had one.

I had a tommygun that looked totally real. Other kids hand similar, or rifles. We'd play 'army', which is choose up sides and fight in the neighborhood. One kid who later went into the real army said we were very good.

Wolf

[fierywoman]

40. When I was 10 my father taught me how to work in a

(photography) darkroom. I mixed the chemicals (developer and fixer) fresh daily.

[teenagebambam]

41. Fisher- Price "Little People" playsets

when the Little People were actually little, and made of wood

[all american girl]

47. I still have those...a kid could swallow the people.

My sister got the next generation, the people were fatter...I had the house and school house...my brother had the barn and plane...loved playing with it. My kids played with it...I'm a bad mom

[BannonsLiver]

42. Toy machine guns

Back then there were no orange tips.

[NightWatcher]

43. We shot at each other with BB guns (1 pump only)

[Archae]

44. Same here!

[rurallib]

46. I didn't have a gun, but my brothers did

I was the target - I am the little brother by about 5 years

[Kaleva]

48. We played army with BB guns and M80 firecrackers.

[LisaM]

51. Spirograph.

They still have it but now it doesn't come with long pins.

[rzemanfl]

52. Wham-O slingshot. Worked great with ball bearings or steely marbles.

Maybe not banned but I don't think a kid today could walk into a store and buy one. Rubber band guns.

[Runningdawg]

53. A microscope with a dissection kit containing a scalpel

I didn't hurt myself with it, but my dad beat my butt good when he found me trying to take a blood sample from a goat.

[OriginalGeek]

54. I recently found a lawn dart set in my grandpa's garage

I remember playing with them when I was little. Still stored in the box but the box has not aged well.

I remember getting a geology science kit when I was like 8 or 9. It had some kind of chemicals in it and a bunch of rocks and tubes of ground up stuff but I sure don't remember what they were. Whatever chemicals and powder you use to geology

[jpak]

55. Mattel lever-action rifle with spring-loaded cartridges and greenie stick-em caps

They would put your eye out.

Series

[emulatorloo]

59. Wham-O Water Wiggle. Loved it!

https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/1978/Recall-Of-Wham-O-Water-Wiggle-Toy/

Recall Of Wham-O Water Wiggle Toy

2
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 13, 1978
Release # 78-020

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Apr. 13) -- Wham-O Manufacturing Co., San Gabriel, Calif., in cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, today announced it is voluntarily stopping sale and recalling its "Water Wiggle" toy. Approximately 2 1/2 million of these toys have been sold throughout the United States over the past 17 years.

The toy consists of a seven-foot plastic hose attached to an aluminum water-jet nozzle which is covered by a bell-shaped plastic head. The toy is designed to be attached to a garden hose for water fun. It retails for approximately $3.50.

Wham-O stated that the recall is occasioned by the death of a four-year-old child in March 1978. The youngster was playing with some other children in his backyard with a dismantled "Water Wiggle," one from which the bell-shaped head had been removed or had come off. The exposed aluminum nozzle became lodged in his mouth and he drowned. Wham-O stated that it had no knowledge of how or why the toy was dismantled or how the nozzle became lodged in the child's mouth.

A "Water Wiggle" was involved in a similar death of a three-year-old boy in 1975. Parents are advised not to allow their children to play with this product. Wham-O requests its retailers to remove all "Water Wiggles" from their shelves.

[flotsam]

60. Creepy crawler/Fighting Men set

Same toy but with molds to make jeeps and weapons and such...

[Codeine]

61. I loved my woodburner.

Looking back, I have no idea why. Kind of a sad, lame toy.

[sakabatou]

68. Not me but a friend had at least two Sky Dancers

[lindysalsagal]

69. Chinese jump rope: big rubber band. Hours and hours jumping.

So cheap. Best toy ever.