Today's dangerous toys pale to those of past

Chicago Sun Times ^ | November 26, 2003 | MARK BROWN SUN

[KneelBeforeZod]

'Tis the season for dangerous toy warnings. The Public Interest Research Group issued its 18th annual "Trouble in Toyland" report Tuesday, while the Consumer Product Safety Commission was releasing its list of toys cited for safety recalls. Last week was the 31st annual presentation of the "10 Worst Toys List" from WATCH -- or World Against Toys Causing Harm.

You know the drill by now: toys that might choke a kid, toys that could put You know the drill by now: toys that might choke a kid, toys that could put somebody's eye out, toys that could poison you if you chewed them up, many of the toys so obscure that you'll never see them on the shelves.

Through ever-increasing levels of vigilance, diligence and litigiousness, we Americans theoretically keep making our toys safer and safer year by year.

I was just wondering then: How do you explain the fact that the world into which we're sending our children to play is becoming more and more dangerous every day?

Is it possible we're spending so much time sweating the little things that we've lost track of the bigger picture?

Unfortunately, I have no answer to these deep philosophical questions.

What I have is a list of my own: Favorite Dangerous Toys from Childhood.

It's a compilation actually from interviews with other guys. It's amazing that we're all still alive to talk about this stuff. Just don't let your kids read this. They'd be jealous.

First off, there used to be toy guns, lots of them.

Let's set aside for a moment the issue of BB guns or pellet guns, which were always a matter of parental dispute.

There was a time when nearly every boy had a six-shooter with a holster. Most of them fired plastic bullets.

The projectiles didn't move fast enough to break a pane of glass, but they could have certainly "put somebody's eye out" under just the right circumstances.

There were toy rifles, too. Spring-loaded ones with big cartridges.

"I had the Johnny Seven," one protective father told me wistfully. "It was seven weapons of destruction in one. You could pull out the Lugar or convert it into a grenade launcher."

Neither he nor I would allow our kids anywhere near such a thing now.

"Don't forget the dart guns," said another product of a pre-PIRG childhood.

Oh, yes, the dart guns with the hard plastic darts and the rubber suction tips. When you removed the tips, you could do some real damage to your little brother, but you had to keep in mind that his chance would come, too.

I was surprised to find one of those dart guns on this year's most dangerous toy list. I suppose the Chinese are still churning them out somewhere.

There were also bows and arrows with the same suction cup tips. Every boy knew that these could be removed and the arrow point whittled down into something more useful.

My friend Pittsburgh John did this one better. He and his brothers were allowed to have toy arrows with actual steel tips that they would let fly at squirrels and rabbits.

"I don't think we ever hit anything. I'm surprised we never killed one another," said Pittsburgh John. That possibility never curtailed their use, but when the boys started using the bow and arrow inside the garage and put holes in the wall, their father had to put his foot down.

The hazard posed by other toys was only slightly more subtle.

Take the Vac-U-Form from Mattel, which used a sizzling 110-volt hotplate to mold small toys from melted sheets of styrene plastic. The Vac-U-Form heating plate was also later used for Creepy Crawlers and Thingmaker molds.

There's no telling how many ways these would flunk the safety tests today. They could burn you. They could burn the house down. There were toxic materials that let off what were probably toxic fumes.

Boy, oh, boy. What a great toy.

"A sense of danger is what makes a toy interesting," observed another very proper father.

This particular father reminded me of the most important rule about toys: You can never keep a kid from using a toy for a purpose for which it was not intended, not that this would deter either of us from trying to anticipate each and every one.

"You can make anything dangerous depending on what you do with it," he observed. "Superman capes were dangerous because then you'd jump off the garage roof, which I did."

OK, he might be a special case.

I received varied opinions on the potential danger from chemistry sets in that time period. Everyone has a story about combining the various chemicals in random ways that they thought might blow up the house. But nobody could cite any example of actually blowing something up that way.

I've got to be careful. Kids really did get hurt with some of these toys. And I don't want to diminish the work of the safety watchdogs. You can't argue with somebody trying to protect kids.

Another buddy, Scott the Jeweler, had a favorite toy cannon that he fired off in a closed garage. It didn't really shoot anything, but it made one heck of a noise, the louder the better as far as Scott was concerned. These days there's a special category on the watch lists for dangerously loud toys.

Come to think of it, Scott is a little hard of hearing.

[Cultural Jihad]

[Vermonter]

My cousin and I were shooting at tin cans sitting on a plow

Plows! We've got to ban plows!

[Tennessee_Bob]

I used to jump a Stingray bike

Did it have the big ape-hanger handlebars and that hug slick back tire?

[Graybeard58]

I didn't put anyones eye out but when I was 9 years old and at the urging of my uncle who was two years older than me, I shot my sister in the back with my BB gun. (I had to do it - It was a double dog dare) I shot at her butt but hit her in the back. When the old man got home his aim was dead on!

50 years later my sister still brings it up from time to time. I remind her that my rear end stung a lot more than a BB in the back could have.

[chadwimc]

We used to buy black powder in the early 70's(pre-teens)at a neighborhood hardware store. I used to tape shotgun shells to the front of my BB gun. I used Estes rocket launcher fuses for all kinds of illegal pyrotechnic displays involving everything from gasoline to bootleg fireworks. Grocery carts could be modified into jitneys. The front forks on bikes could be extended. Fireplugs were made to be opened on 0 degree nights, so the street was a sheet of ice the next day... Darn! Its amazing that I made it this far...

[Tijeras_Slim]

Now Bob... yer showing yer age.

And yes the back tire was hugh!

[Cultural Jihad]

Then there's these modern office supplies:

[netmilsmom]

Crap. I wanted to buy one for Dad!

[Corin Stormhands]

You'll put your eye out...

Speaking of which, my brother shot me in the eye at point blank range with a plastic bullet from our "Secret Sam Secret Agent Kits." I got over it.

[Delta 21]

I love it! The "Midnight Camoflage" Haloween costume was great.

On a seperate note:
Santa came to town last night and threw the switch on teh downtown Christmas tree then gave away goodies to all the kids. You will never guess what he was handing out.

It was too funny and Im sure my kids are scarred for life, but to get over it we strolled over to the country courthouse lawn and admired the nativity scene they have set up there.

No Joke!

[Pharmboy]

[Delta 21]

With a banana seat and a sissy bar too!

[Interious]

Cheery Picker, Lemon Peeler, Apple crate--Schwinn.

I'd buy one now if I could find one.

[netmilsmom]

Jonny Human Torch

[Tijeras_Slim]

There out there, just be prepared to shell out the big bucks.

[Vermonter]

We didn't have access to black powder, but we learned that if you bought CO2 cartridges and punctured them to let that nasty CO2 out, you could then fill them with shaved off match heads.

Pound the match heads in with a large nail and then insert a firecracker fuse, l ight and run like h@ll

Those things would go a city block if you were lucky enough to find anything after the explosion

[RLK]

In the '40s we had firecrackers equal to quarter sticks of dynamite. We would take the powder out of several of them to make a big bomb. The noise would echo from the hills on the other side of the river three or more miles away.

[KneelBeforeZod]

I remember something from the early 80s called an "air blaster"

big goofy pistol that had a red tip and black body. mostly just made a pop noise, but blew a pretty good amount of air...

[Proud_texan]

Caps? Of course, we used to whack the whole roll with a hammer to get more of a bang when fireworks (!!) were out of season.

But forget the toys, think about the other stuff. No car seats, heck, no seat belts! No thingies over electrical outlets, open flame heaters (way cool when the cat caught it's tail on fire and went zipping around the house like the Tasmanian devil), no child proof caps, no child proof lighters, no hooks on kitchen doors so you couldn't guzzle down a quart of lye or snort some Comet cleanser.

Actually those weren't a problem, we got near that sort of stuff or acted up in the car we got whacked and learned pretty quick there were some things not to be messed with short of serious repercussions.

Ride a bike with a helmet? Even if they had been invented and I had worn it when I put wings on the bike and rode it off the barn everybody would have called me....a name.

Damn, I had fun.

[Tijeras_Slim]

I shot some CO2 cartridges with a .22 once. They peel open like demeted ninja throwing stars and fly all over the place. Nearly scalped myself.