Toys that you had as a kid that would be banned today.

[Maddy McCall]

My favorites were Klackers:



Here's today's version of Klackers:

[Stephanie]

1. Cap guns!

I was a little cowgirl with a holster with two silver capguns that fired a little burst of gunpowder. Incredible. I was probably five.

*edit* I had a clacker too - loved that thing. What a weird toy! But I think mine had a stick attached.

[TheCentepedeShoes]

64. My daddy made sure

I had the best pair of cap guns in the neighborhood.

[Fiona]

2. almost all of 'em

It's amazing we lived. Remember Vacuforms? Creepy Crawlers? Both involved REALLY hot metal.

Hell, even my EZBake oven got burning hot.

[Stephanie]

6. Mine made plastic FLOWERS

Remember that? Flower power flowers - creepy crawlers for girls.

[nicolemrw]

10. i had a dragon-maker

oh my brother and i had fun with that. one of the best toys i ever had!

[intheflow]

19. Wow! That sounds cool!

My parents never would have approved of such a boy's toy for their tomboy daughter. I got that stupid EasyBake over instead.

[nicolemrw]

31. not such a tomboy toy as all that

the illustration on the cover showed a boy and a girl both playing with it. but yeah, it was the best. really unlimited scope for creativety because what it made was different segments that you could attach together in all different ways. my brother had a set of alien toys (one from each planet, rubbery action figures) but there was none from mercury, so we decided the dragons were from mercury, and played aliens. my brother was really remarkably patient about playing games like that with his younger sister, now that i think of it! i'll have to thank him next time i see him.

i also had one that made plastic flowers to make jewlery. that was fun too, but not in the same league.

[nicolemrw]

thye make 'em now

that don't get so hot but take longer to make things. (thats the plasti-goop things i'm talking abuot. i don't know anything about ez bake ovens)

[Maddy McCall]

12. My son has a Crayola Maker that melts crayolas into boiling wax...

in metal forms. :-)

[madinmaryland]

53. They still make the ezbake oven.

My daughter has one.

[mitchum]

81. Those were the first ones that sprang to mind...

also:
woodburning sets (for ages 6 and up)
chemistry sets (with toxic chemicals and alcohol lamps)

Between those toys and my teenage drug use, I'm amazed that I'm still alive :)

[sniffa]

3. asbestos

man, that was fun to pLay with. we'd write our names in it

[ronnykmarshall]

7. Explosive rat traps!

Oh the fun we had with those.

My little cousin "Nubs" would always fall for that little bit of cheese we'd put in ti.

[sniffa]

20. how 'bout

baby's first pLastic bag?

[intheflow]

17. industrial sludge

The roads around my house weren't really paved. The DPW used to spray this tar/industrial waste goop on the roads and then lay a thick layer of pebbles over it. The pebbles would sink into the goop and harden into a kind of pavement after a few days.

On hot summer days, though, the sludge would bubble up, making mini tar pits. Man, I loved playing with that hot, bubbly goo!

[no name no slogan]

45. They used to spray dioxin-laced used oil on our dirt roads

They used to spray that crap on the dirt roads around my house to keep the dust down in the summer. It used to stink to holy hell for a few weeks after they did it, too, so going outside to play became a real treat.

They finally paved the streets when I was about 8, so that was another potential childhood danger averted.

Ah, to be young and ignorant in the 70s...what could be more fun?

[Mountainman]

51. They still spray oil on the dirt roads where I live. I don't know if it

had dioxin in it. It takes a few weeks before it hardens enough not to get all over you car or truck. First they spread something like decomposed granite then they cover it with oil.

[ronnykmarshall]

4. I had so many bruises from them things.

Remember how we'd get them going REAL good and sometimes they's shatter??

It's a wonder I have both of my eyes.

[Maddy McCall]

13. EEK! I never saw a pair shatter!

You must have been a wiz with them. I thought *I* was good at Klacking! :-)

[ronnykmarshall]

34. Didn't shatter complete

but I had chunks fly off of one pair.

[BigMcLargehuge]

5. Man I remember those!

my first trick was breaking my wrist and thumb! KLACK-KLACK-KLACK-CRUNCH-YOWCH!!!

[Maddy McCall]

8. LOL!

I still have mine. They are in my office. I threaten students with them. :-)

[nicolemrw]

18. i still have mine somewhere too

they are beautiful deep clear blue with golden glitter added, like a night sky with stars.

[intheflow]

9. Jarts

aka, Lawn Darts. Used to be deadly weapons to fling into the hard earth. Now they are just another wimpy bean bag game.

Also loved my clackers. They were banned for their weapondry uses, yes, but also because they had a nasty tendency for exploding into sharp shards.

[Kire]

15. My roommate in the hospital when I was 12 had a jart stuck in his...

...yup, you guessed, it, stuck in his head. It actually pierced his brain.

He got the coolest toys, though. What I wouldn't have done for those Voltron action figures with the lions that snap together.

Well, I wouldn't have done that...

[Amaya]

30. My brother got one stuck in his eye

had to go to the hospital and have surgery. He didn't have any permanent damage, but damn!

[Midlodemocrat]

11. My brother gave himself a tonsillectomy

...with a lincoln log! And, they are still available today.

I have to tell you, that was an interesting morning.

[flvegan]

14. Battlestar Galactica toys with

eye-removing projectiles. They actually were banned from the marketplace.

[AlCzervik]

16. Bag O glass

and my "Growing up Skipper" doll, you turned her arm and she went through puberty and grew boobs. I'm pretty sure they doll would be banned today.

[Debi]

41. I had one of those!!

You pumped her right arm and her boobs got REAL BIG and yet the rest of her body stayed small kinda Dolly Partonish.....

[AlCzervik]

44. I'm glad to hear others had that doll as well

i don't think it was out very long but i can only imagine the reaction that doll would today with the "Morals" crowd.

[gollygee]

43. I had the Growing Up Skipper doll

That was hilarious

[warrens]

62. Jonny Danger Eye Surgeon kit

OK, that one didn't exist, but for sure the Civil War trading cards I had. They only detailed the bloodiest, most disgusting events of the war. In glorious painted color. I loved 'em.

[RUDUing2]

21. I loved my clackers!..also had metal jacks....metal yard darts..

the original skateboards...

[Maddy McCall]

28. I tried to find some metal jacks a couple of months ago.

You can't buy them anywhere. Guess I need to try ebay.

[txaslftist]

22. M-80s. No wait. Those were illegal even then, weren't they?

[Union Thug]

23. We had Ricochet Racers (spring loaded gun things), that were intended to

shoot little toy cars across the floor. It wasn't log before we figured out that blocks of legos worked pretty well, too. The upstairs of our house often erupted into lego gunfire when the parents weren't paying attention.

[flvegan]

24. Happy Fun Ball!

-only $14.95-

* Warning: Pregnant women, the elderly and children under 10 should avoid prolonged exposure to Happy Fun Ball.
* Caution: Happy Fun Ball may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds.
* Happy Fun Ball Contains a liquid core, which, if exposed due to rupture, should not be touched, inhaled, or looked at.
* Do not use Happy Fun Ball on concrete.


Discontinue use of Happy Fun Ball if any of the following occurs:

* Itching
* Vertigo
* Dizziness
* Tingling in extremities
* Loss of balance or coordination
* Slurred speech
* Temporary blindness
* Profuse sweating
* Heart palpitations


If Happy Fun Ball begins to smoke, get away immediately. Seek shelter and cover head.

Happy Fun Ball may stick to certain types of skin.

When not in use, Happy Fun Ball should be returned to its special container and kept under refrigeration...

Failure to do so relieves the makers of Happy Fun Ball, Wacky Products Incorporated, and its parent company Global Chemical Unlimited, of any and all liability.

Ingredients of Happy Fun Ball include an unknown glowing substance which fell to Earth, presumably from outer space.

Happy Fun Ball has been shipped to our troops in Saudi Arabia and is also being dropped by our warplanes on Iraq.

Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.

Happy Fun Ball comes with a lifetime guarantee.

Happy Fun Ball

ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES!

[proud2BlibKansan]

25. Every 4th of July

We got these little rocket launcher like things. They were about the size and shape of a hammer and they had a cap on the top with a feather in it. You would put paper caps in the top and then put the feather cap on and slam the hammer down on the sidewalk and that feather would go flying. They were a blast but I know they scared our parents to death.

I'm sure they are illegal today.

[Union Thug]

29. We would use our bb guns as bottle rocket launchers...

and unfettered fun ensued. You should have seen the poor person who just happened to be floating by on their inner-tube at the lake one day as a small division of bb-gun toting, bottle rocket soldiers opened fire from a grassy knoll.

Yeah. Good times.

[proud2BlibKansan]

35. We set a kid's head on fire

with a bottle rocket. It hit his hat and it burst into flames. We were yelling at him but he thought we were trying to distract him and he ignored us.

He had to have quite a bit of his hair cut off.

[Maddy McCall]

54. LOL! We used to climb up of the roofs of neighborhood houses...

and have BB gun wars. Recently, one of my kid combatants came back to town to visit. He was 30 years old and still had a bb under the skin of his cheekbone.

:-)

[Archae]

59. We played "war" with BB guns too.

Back in the 70's, we'd use those 10 year old BB guns we'd find at garage sales, we got sick of playing "war" where we'd argue about getting shot or missed or just winged.

With the BB guns, we knew! :D

"Owww!"

"Got ya!"

[WilliamPitt]

26. 'Lawn Darts' and toy guns that looked 100% real

I had an Uzi squirt gun that looked like the real thing. None of that orange paint to give it away.

Lawn darts were just hilariously dangerous. Lawn mortars, more like.

Then there was my Gai-King fighting robot that actually shot missiles.

[no name no slogan]

42. Lawn Darts aka "Jarts"

I remember you could buy them at Sears. Those things were GREAT fun. Whoda thunk that a sharp pointy thing you toss in the air and stick in the ground could be dangerous? :shrug:

I bet there's still a set of them in my mom's garage, somewhere...

[bleedingheart]

68. I loved Lawn Darts...

my brother and I played with the elderly couple next door almost every weekend of the summer...it was great...

[Ladyhawk]

74. Aw, man, you took mine. :)

We used to play them in the backyard at the grandparents' house. My grandmother from Missouri would yell out the backdoor, "Now you'uns better be keerful with them thangs!"

"Don't worry, grandma, we will." :evilgrin:

[Jackpine Radical]

27. Bombs & rockets.

We made our own ordnance with stuff ripped off from the chem lab.

Zinc-sulfur rocket fuel, another rocket fuel made from melting sugar & KNO3 together, various kinds of bombs made with a super-gunpowder in which we substituted KClO3 for KNO3.... One of the more dramatic displays was a Molotov cocktail set up on a tree stump with a flaming wick that my buddy detonated with a shotgun blast.

Added on edit:

And potato guns. How could I forget potato guns? A 1-foot length of 1.5" iron pipe with a cap on one end & a hole for a firecracker fuze. Fancy ones were mounted on a crude wood stock. You shoved a spud down the barrel, letting the barrel trim off the excess like a cookie cutter, then you unscrewed the cap & put in a firecracker with the fuze sticking out the hole, screwed the cap back on, & fired the thing by lighting the fuze while pointing it at your target. Range was up to about 200 yards.

Funny any of us grew up still wearing heads.

[DBoon]

32. Chemistry sets and all the other "Boy Scientist" stuff from the 1960's

Including a kit that explained radioactivity and even included a small bag of uranium ore (pitchblende)

[nicolemrw]

36. oh gawd yes

just found two old chemistry sets i had as a kid. some of the stuff in that is out-and-out poisonous. it did have warnings on the package, but still...

[UncleSepp]

65. I had a late fifties chemistry set...

problem was, I had this fun toy in around 1978. God only knows what the stuff inside had turned into but the glassware and the alcohol burner were awesome.

[Union Thug]

33. anyone remember Vertibird?

Those blades caused a few bruises and gashes... More good times!

[tk2kewl]

37. yeah...

but didn't it have a ring around the outside to protect you :eyes:

[paula777]

38. Squigly Wiggly. You hook up this hard plastic face to a hose

and turned the water on and the water pressure would cause the hose, that now had a hard plastic (I think a dog face) thing to it and it would squiggle and wiggle WILDLY and your job was to avoid getting knocked in the head with it. My sister got a conscusion from it and I got my tooth knocked out. Ah what fun

[Kire]

39. Water pistols that looked like real guns.

I actually had a couple of Tommy Guns.

Now they have these crazy yellow, orange and green colors and futuristic looking designs. Sure, they can shoot 50 feet, which is cool. But, I can't pretend I'm holding up a bank, now. :-(

[Debi]

40. We had a neighbor who made klackers for us kids to play with

do you think she secretly hated us? :wtf:

[gollygee]

46. Mercury

Quicksilver I think it was called. I think it was a plastic maze and you had a little ooze of mercury in it that you tried to get through the maze. I will have to google a bit.

Found a picture and a description at http://tv.cream.org/extras/toys/index.html



Of all the toys in our list, this is the one we can guarantee they'll never bring back. The kid's-plaything equivalent of the CFC-coolant fridge or leaded-petrol engine, the Quicksilver maze was so-called because it contained a measured blob of everyone's favourite poisonous liquid metal, mercury. . . .

[Maddy McCall]

48. OMG I had one of those! I forgot about them!

Thanks for the reminder...unbelievable today that Mercury was once a toy!

[gollygee]

49. I remember in science class in junior high

the teacher poured a little mercury into our hands and let us play with it. LOL

[Maddy McCall]

52. In Jackson, Mississippi, just recently, a woman had a cupful of

mercury, and gave it to some kids to play with, and they microwaved it. It made everyone in the house sick, and the house, I believe, had to be condemned--no way to get the mercury residue out of the house.

[gollygee]

57. Oh WOW!

That's amazing!

[Ladyhawk]

77. HAPPY FUN BALL!!!! n/t

[hyphenate]

47. I wasn't exactly a kid

but a Star Trek fan, and they had those guns that shot out little plastic disks that kinda looked like 45 record converter things. The little ones that when you lost that damned center thing, you could use the main spindle for 45s without the warping. (Yeah, vinyl, for those of you too young to remember it).

My goodness--please don't make me remember those days too much--I'm getting old as it is.

[no name no slogan]

50. I had one of those too

We used to have huge fights with them back in the day. Many close calls with those things hitting eyeballs and such. My mom was still vacuuming those things up from underneath the furniture into my teenage years. Good times, good times...

[HEyHEY]

55. Two litres of Kerosene and a lighter

[HamdenRice]

56. Great Garloo ...

Well, maybe not. But in the red states, surely Great Garloo would be considered to be some kind of satanic symbol and boycotted.



Great Garloo was a motorized robot that moved forward and backward and also opened and closed its arms, in response to a wire-connected remote control. Pretty advanced for the early 1960s.

The real reason I think Great Garloo would be banned is because of a single frivolous lawsuit that would have been filed by a distant aunt. See, around 1963, this aunt stayed over with us for a few days after Christmas. She was getting kind of annoying and my parents even for some reason had to let her sleep in their bed. One night, she went out and came back very tipsy and woke up with a raging hangover.

My Dad helpfully suggested that we serve auntie her morning coffee in bed, but let Great Garloo take it into her. We put the coffee in Great Garloo's hands, hid behind the door and sent him in with the coffee. From behind the door we gently called her to wake her up.

After we tracked her down in her nightgown somewhere down the block, she resolved never to stay with us again. This would have led to a frivolous lawsuit today.

[maveric]

58. "MIghty Mo", a scaled down howitzer, spring loaded.

A hard plastic ball with a hole through it, slid down the shaft in the barrel behind the spring. It shot that ball really hard.
I nailed my dad in the back one day and it left a mark for weeks.

[hickman1937]

60. Do they still sell sling shots?

The really heavy duty ones that take birds out tall oaks when loaded with your brothers prized steely boulder from his marble collection?

[amazona]

61. good lord the klackers

I'd almost forgotten about them. Yeah, one of our teachers wanted all kids with klackers suspended...trouble was, this would have meant suspending ALL of us. Everyone had klackers!

[-..__...]

63. Gilbert Atomic Energy Lab

Ok, so I didn't have one of these when I was a kid, but I did see one about 10 years ago at some roadside garage sale. It was missing a few items so I didn't buy it (seller only wanted something like $10.00 for it).

FWIW, I did have Clackers, Jarts and various toys that launched projectiles.



http://members.tripod.com/glenthorne/gilbert.html

""The most spectacular of our new educational toys was the Gilbert Atomic Energy Laboratory. This was a top job, the result of much experimentation and hard work. We were unofficially encouraged by the government, who thought that our set would aid in public understanding of atomic energy and stress its constructive side. We had the great help of some of the country's best nuclear physicists and worked closely with M.I.T. in it's development.

There was nothing phony about our Atomic Energy laboratory. It was genuine, and it was also safe. We used radioactive materials in the set, but none that might conceivably prove dangerous.

There was a Geiger-Mueller Counter. It was accurate; a carefully designed and manufactured instrument that could actually be used in prospecting for radioactive materials. The Atomic Energy lab also contained a cloud chamber in which the paths of alpha particles traveling at 12,000 miles a second could be seen; a spinthariscope showing the results of radioactive disintegration on a fluorescent screen; an electroscope that measured the radioactivity of different substances.

It caused quite a sensation at the Toy Fair and received a great deal of publicity. But there were difficulties. It had to be priced very high--$50.00--and even at that price we managed to lose a little money on every one sold. The Atomic Energy Lab was also the most thoroughly scientific toy we had ever produced, and only boys with a great deal of education could understand it. It was not suitable for the same age groups as our simpler chemistry and microscope sets, for instance, and you could not manufacture such a thing as a beginner's atomic energy lab. So we had to drop this wonderful new addition to our line of educational toys--and toy has never seemed to me to be the right word to apply to such things. We adapted some of its features so that they could be added to our largest chemistry set--using the spinthariscope, some radioactive ore, and the atomic energy manual."

[Contrary1]

66. The Shmo Game (1959)

Required the players to do idiotic things while reciting "I'm a Shmo".
Might cause today's children to develop a severe inferiority complex.
We sure loved that game. My brother found one at a Goodwill store
a fews years back and gave it to me for my birthday.

[maveric]

67. Thingmaker

My favorite too.
A mini hotplate that cooked plastigoop into creepy crawlers.
I got some nasty burns from that one.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

72. We had one of those!

I remember loving it!

[nicolemrw]

75. i had the dragonmaker

(theres a post above about it)

that was the _greatest_ toy ever.

[Cornjob]

69. Erector set (with big, exposed-gear ac motor)

Loved my erector sets, but I can vividly remember getting my fingers caught in the drive gears. The big motors could really crush your skin.

[guitar man]

70. A Fanner 50!

This thing was cool. It had shells that shot plastic bullets using "Greenie Stickum" caps. 4 or 5 caps stuck together would really zing the plastic bullets out the barrel. I think I was 5, maybe 6 when I got mine. The kid next door was an irritating spoiled brat I couldn't stand. He decided he wanted to play quick draw and wound up pulling a regular old roll type, non projectile-hurling cap pistol on me. BIG mistake. He went home crying after I had drilled his ass. :evilgrin:

[Kathy in Cambridge]

71. Chemistry Set

I almost blew up the house and set myself on fire mixing some bad ass chemicals. It said something about adult supervision, but it really should have been for college-age and not 10 and up.

[RetroLounge]

73. JARTS!

Seen people get hit with them.

Ouch!

RL

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

76. The cosmic dildo....

[-..__...]

78. Slip n' slide.

(forgot about this one).

It looks like it might still be around? (I'm a bit surprised). It should be called "Slip n' Sue".

[BigMcLargehuge]

80. we have one

it's new too, for my son. He loves it.

[jmowreader]

79. One that should have been banned even back then

This thing was every boy's dream toy and every mother's worst nightmare: your own foundry, one that melted real metal. Forget the plastigoop shit, this thing got up to 500 degrees F and melted lead for casting.

You can still get these, but now they tell you "this is an ADULT hobby, don't let your children set up their own foundries!"

And to think I was gonna introduce My First Laser Cutter, My First Arc Welder and My First Forty Ton Press. Suitable for ages 6 and up!

[mitchum]

82. LSD

[borlis]

83. We had these and my Mom was really good at making them

go really fast. They did prove to be dangerous though. Once when my Mom was showing just how good she was at this Klacker business, one flew off and hit one of our neighbors really hard in the chest. Don't remember if he was hurt or not. :shrug:

[Bouncy Ball]

84. A WOODBURNING kit!

Complete with woodburning tool that got up to VERY high temps and had a really short cord! We used it near the drapes!

We also used to beat each other with spatulas, have "sword fights" with the big butcher knives and have marshmallow roasts over the open gas flame on the range using our mother's good silver forks for the marshmallow holders.

Ah yes, the 70s.