toys with the most danger

[chmsam]

Lawn darts were lame! Real darts rocked!

Chemistry sets.

Wood burners.

Toy soldiers made of lead.

BB guns/pop guns. Pump 'em up and watch those dirt clods fly.

Speaking of which -- dirt clod wars! Pine cone wars!

All sorts of toy guns that shot out pellets and the like (I wish I still had my Fanner 50's with the holsters and ammo -- worth a ton of money now).

I had one construction set that had a 110 volt motor with really crappy wiring.

How about going down steep, ice covered hills on those metal "flying saucers" with about 30 other insane kids on the same hill? You were a wuss if you didn't aim to go between the trees, over the "yump," and then through the ice/slush puddle at the bottom. No real directional control, the handlle/ropes got cut off quick, and a whole bunch of kids aiming for each other on these metal dishes. I didn't walk home until my feet were frozen and had turned blue. I couldn't walk without crying. Thawed them out and went back for more.

After the first or second time sledding down the hill, you learned how to stop before the chain link fence at the bottom. One hill had a wrought iron fence on a stone foundation at the bottom.

Snow balls, slush balls, and ice balls. Oh, my! Icieles and 1/2" sheets of ice made great weapons, too.

I had fire crackers that actually blew Corgie metal cars and trucks (larger and stronger than Matchbox by a huge amount) apart. Not just ripped them off of their frames, blew them a-p-a-r-t. I seem to recall they were 2" Flash Salutes. Fat, loud, bright flash, and a real short fuse that often went out and had to be re-lit. What more could a boy ask for? If one was good, four were much better, right? Blew the top of one toy ambulance about 15' in the air.

"Woah! Cool. Do it again. Nothing, Mom. Musta been a truck goin' by."

 

[ABTOMAT]

I grew making match rockets. Those things were great. I used to be able to get a good 10' out of them with some effort. Somewhere around here there's a little matchbox with my kit in it.

I can't believe you guys forgot the most dangerous children's toy ever made. The gas-powered pogo stick. Didn't remain for sale too long. Kaboom!

 

[The_LED_Museum]

The only toy I had that could be considered even more dangerous than my chemistry set was my bicycle. I accidentally rode it over a retaining wall just below Cedar Park in Juneau AK. and the bike (with me on it) plunged ~15' straight down...ouch!!! :sick2: :green: :sick2:

O and we got a kick out of making "Polish cannons" out of steel pop cans, tennis balls, and lighter fluid. If you soak the tennis ball with lighter fluid before loading it into the cannon, it would usually ignite when the cannon was set off, causing a burning tennis ball to be ejected from the cannon; spectacular at night but surely dangerous. oo: oo:

 

[Arkayne]

I was a child of the 80's so I missed out on the chemistry sets and woodburning kits. There aren't many mosquitos in dry Southern California so I didn't get a chance to play in the pesticide trucks either.

-I sure did like the taste of those plastic bubbles though.
-Entertech squirt guns. They were the same shape and color of real guns. I remember a kid got shot by pointing one at a cop.
-I loved jousting with my neighbors on bikes with broomsticks.
-I loved the cheap fiberglass bow and arrow set with the suction cup on the tip. Bye bye suction cup and hello pencil sharpener.
-I liked sitting in the back of a pickup truck while my bro drives over a speedbump.

There is a growing fad here in SoCal with Airsoft guns. You simply can't tell a fake from real anymore. Not only that, they are very accessible and kids are bringing these to school. Crazy world.

Ahhhh, being so close to Mexico, fireworks and firecrackers were in abundance! I blew everything up. Christ, I must have driven the neighbors crazy.

 

[cbxer55]

Oh yeah, we used to ride our bikes behind those mosquito fogging trucks. Does that count?


And we wonder why I'm a little slow...no we don't.

Born and raised in New Jersey, been there and done that too many times too count! LOL Sometimes I wonder how I survived being a kid? Kids are soo over-protected today, glad I am not a kid! Once I was 11 or so, I was hardly ever home, out riding my self purchased ten-speed 15 or more miles from home, usually hanging around small airports. And , OH MY GOSH, I did not have a cell phone so my parents could find me, GASP!!

 

[zespectre]

ATV bikes (the three wheeled type). I'll never know how we managed to avoid killing ourselves racing through woodchuck-hole strewn fields!

 

[Manzerick]

riding 30 MPH on roller blades while my buddy dragged me in his car.. that was NUTZ!


"porch jumping"... leaping off a 15 foot porch landing "right"... i think that's were my back trouble started. If you landed "wrong" you would lose feeling in your legs... just like a stinger in football...


Rock fights - WOW!


ohh the list could go on and on.... LOL

 

[markdi]

hop rod

http://www.post-gazette.com/healthscience/20010528bowgosidehealth9.asp

 

[CLHC]

I was about to mentioned similar (stilts) to the "hop rods" that markdi posted. What about those wrist rocket launchers. Firecracker powder wrapped in foil with ball bearings. Mystic Smoke and those lead based Crayons. Not a toy but, remember those "PopRocks" with soda pop?

 

[JimH]

Guns made out of wooden clothes pens with strike anywhere matches for ammo. When fired, the match would light, and you would have a flaming projectile.

Didn't anyone grow up in a state where fireworks were legal, when they were legal. I lived in Michigan, but we'd go to Louisiana at Christmas to visit the relatives. There was no restriction on what kind of fireworks you could buy or who could buy them. As a 10 year old I would go to a fireworks stand, plop down a small sum of money, and walk away with a large bag of firecrackers, cherry bombs, M-80's (basically a quarter stick of dynamite), and these boards with fireworks mounted on them.

The boards came in various sizes from 1 to 12 fireworks. You lit the fuse then got back 20 or 30 yards. Each for the fireworks had the equivalent of an M-80 in the base to launch a second firework up in the air about a hundred yards. When it went off it would rattle windows for over a mile away. The fuse lit the fireworks on the board sequentially. It kind of sounded like what I imagine a naval bombardment would sound like.

Oh, and then there were Roman candles (an 18" long 1"diameter tube with 10 to 12 projectiles in it - the flaming projectiles shot out of the tube at the rate of 1 projectile every 2 to 3 seconds). The range of the flaming projectiles was about 15 to 20 yards.

Ahhh, the good ol' days.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

I think the fireworks win hands-down as the most dangerous, even though they weren't technically toys. Those M-80s and M-100s were scary powerful.

Model rocket engines can be dangerous also. I remember lighting one (without a rocket attached to it) and that hot projectile just zig-zagged all over the place!

 

[tdurand]

Vee3 "Super Elastic Bubble Plastic"

Yes!! Like sniffin' gasoline!!
I loved that stuff. Nothing better than a nice resin balloon.

 

[Ned-L]

How about M80's, a pipe, and gravel.

or

I recently purchased an xtreme pogo stick - some people can bounce 7 ft in the air on this pogo stick! Gravity and the thought of crashing on the pavement keep me 1 or 2 feet off the ground at this point.

http://www.vurtego.com/

 

[Manzerick]

that bubble had to take years off my life...

 

[Topper]

I think it was called a sonic blaster a hand gun that you pumped once, the barrel was about the size of a coffee can funneled down to maybe 2 inches.
You cocked it and fired a "SONIC BOOM" all the way down the street. It took us about two "SONIC BLASTS" to load it with rocks.. The Lawn darts were the best dangerous toy I ever played with. I did alot of things as a youngster
and Lawn darts are way cool. We need a "smart" lawn dart.
Topper

 

[turbodog]

We used our compound bows to shoot an arrow straight up.

Not good. We realized what we did after a few seconds. Then we ran.


I loved my pogo stick, until a hit some oil the a car leaked out.


Modern pogo stick: www.flybar.com

 

[Pellidon]

Daisy Powerline 880 BB/pellet rifle. Pump it up ten times and two shots into a 9volt battery at 20=30 feet would almost break one in half. Pre alkaline battery, the kind that had the cell waxy wafers inside.

Spectaculary stoopid was to take a candle sit it next to a butane lighter and pop it with the BB gun.

I had a boomerang and we had it return sucessfully once. As it was returning the collective "S***" and scattering to get out of it's way probably was comical to see. Once it came back to where we had been standing and was still flying fast enough to stick in the dirt we did not try to toss it again. Nothing in the throwing instructions spoke about trying to catch it.

 

[offroadcmpr]

I've used the flybar pogo stick. It is amazing how high you can get off of it!!

I played with something called creepy crawly or something like that. You would basically make rubber bugs by using a liquid rubber stuff, mold, and a little oven thing that the set came with.

Or there was the home made blow dart gun. We found a couple of copper pipes one time. Get a toothpick and wrap some scotch tape around it and it would work to about 30 feet or so. It wasn't too long before I put a needle onto the toothpick and shot my brother! It stuck in his arm, luckly he didn't bleed too much.

 

[metalhed]

offroadcmpr --Question:

Did it smell toxic as hell when you cooked them in that oven thing....those 'Creepy Crawler' things, I mean? Did you have it in the late 60's or early 70's?

That may be the toy I'm remembering that was so noxious smelling. Gave me headaches. Ugh.

Thank goodness for federal regulation of toys, or the unseen hand of the free market, whichever drove that stuff off the market. :laughing:

 

[Manzerick]

i would gather creepy crawlers were late 80's early 90's... I remember wanting them!