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The Most Dangerous Toys of 2011
theodp writes "If you've procrastinated on your Xmas shopping this year, fear not: Gawker's just published its tongue-in-cheek 2011 Top Picks for Gifts That Maim or Poison Children. Until President Nixon enacted the first national safety standard for playthings with the Toy Safety Act in 1969, the toy industry was pretty much anything-goes. As a result of the legislation, children may live longer, but they'll never know the joys of many beloved-but-dangerous classics, including Zulu Guns, Jarts, and Clackers."
I recall accidentally starting a fire in the kitchen with an old chemistry set. Pinched fingers. Injury due to hard objects striking the body. These were the norm. BB guns were considered toys (they are currently classified as firearms in the city I'm living in) I learned to operate lawn mowers, drive tractors, and handle chain saws by my early teen years. You learned to respect things. Kids today are taught to be scared of machines that are safer than "toys" we played with as kids.
Now they're worried about foam darts. Not to mention the velocity difference.
Many of the toys on this list aren't very dangerous. I'd go as far as saying that a pencil is more dangerous than every single one of them. I can't fathom why this article appeared on this website.
In Soviet Russia meme tires of you!
I RTFA just to make sure it would be as lame as I expected. It is. The Gawker sites are just a horrible waste of space. Less of this crap please!
http://www.acetonestudio.com
BB guns were considered toys (they are currently classified as firearms in the city I'm living in)
They don't quite get the 'fire' part, do they?
Frankly a dartboard set is far more dangerous.
My God, it's Full of Source!
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Funny how that works. get rid of chemistry sets, and hobby chemistry becomes an endangered species.
It doesn't help that buying things as simple as labware probably get you thrown on some 'suspected meth cook' list, either.
If things were always like that, I imagine we'd still think there were only four elements.
Sent from my PDP-11
No they don't; but, there was an unfortunate accident involving a child shooting another child in the head, with the result of the second child dying. It happened and the reaction of the city council was to lump airguns firing metal projectiles under the same grouping as traditional firearms. It was easier than creating a separate classification with its own enforcement rules, I guess.
'cept a .22 cal air-powered pellet gun that shoots pellets at 1100 fps might as well be a firearm.
Oh don't forget lawn darts, the "Hey lets throw sharp stakes at each other!" toy for the whole family, hell they even had a "Mr Atomic" chem set, I wonder if those kids glow in the dark now?
This reminds me of the old SNL bit, anybody remember Akroyd getting grief over his company's toys like "Johnny switchblade" or the "human torch" costume which was just some gas soaked rags and some matches?
But compared to the stuff we had when I was a kid the stuff on the list is a fricking joke! heck when I was a kid we all had minibikes starting as young as 5! Nobody wore helmets, everybody had ramps, the answer to every injury was "put a bandaid on it" and we all drove like maniacs! I can still remember buzzing around my small town at 8 with a giant 8 track duct taped to the handlebars so I could blast Kiss Alive II as I scared the neighbors dogs. We all had lawn darts and played with fireworks and yet we all managed to survive just fine!
I have to wonder if this isn't just "the march of the morons" at play here, as we at least had enough common sense not to do things REALLY stupid. Nowadays it seems like we are trying to babyproof the planet, are kids really THAT much stupider than when we were kids?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
are kids really THAT much stupider than when we were kids?
I don't think so, but the parents are that much dumber. Or less attentive (same thing, really.)
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
I got my first BB gun at six, my first rifle (still have it, a nice little straight-shooting .22) at ten, and my first shotgun at eleven. Hell, I'm still using the 20-gauge shotgun I got at thirteen - Winchester ran a pretty neat deal, you bought the gun with a short "youth" stock and you sent in a coupon for an adult-sized stock a couple of years later. It's an absolute pleasure to use on the sporting clays range.
Guns are lots of fun, you just have to respect that they're inherently dangerous objects. Kids who grew up with guns are, in my experience, a lot less likely to do stupid stuff with them, because their dad took them out when they were six and blew a watermelon into a fine mist with one and said "that's what it will do to your head". Those who meet guns for the first time at 19-20 are a lot more cavalier.
Or even harder, recognizing that some accidents are really freak events. They couldn't have been foreseen, probably won't happen again, and suggest no particular preventive action.
You don't need "tools" or "toys" - when I was 5, I tested what this "it's HOT! you'll BURN YOURSELF!" stuff was all about with my index finger on an iron. Lost the fingerprint on the tip of that finger - and yet, I lived.
And sadly enough, it would be a completely different story for a kid today. The mother would scream her lungs out and floor it to the ER in her SUV (endangering tons of people along the way). Once there, she would scream at the charge nurse for having to wait behind a multiple-GSW patient who is bleeding into his lungs. After finally seeing a PA, she would get the same advice most people used to take for granted - put some ointment on it, keep it cool and dry, and make an appointment with the family doctor if it doesn't get better in a couple of days.
Oh yeah, and you better believe she would call for a MASSIVE lawsuit against the manufacturer of the iron because it was "too hot" and her precious little snowflake is now "permanently disfigured."
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
But compared to the stuff we had when I was a kid the stuff on the list is a fricking joke! heck when I was a kid we all had minibikes starting as young as 5!
Today kids have that too. My almost-three-year old daughter has a bike that rides like the devil himself is behind her, and sometimes get some nice bruises from falling. She wears a helmet (hey I'm not stupid) and more clothing than average, and we try to watch her all the time, but she's pretty independant. More than I was with her age - she uses the bathroom, can count to 20, can sing whole songs, recognize some numbers, can use the fridge and pick her food, can go to the cabinet and pick silverwear without picking the knives, can say many words, and - since I've been showing her some american Sesame Street videos, she can say some english words. And when she plays outside, she sometimes eats dirt. :D
In contrast, I have some fellow parent friends with children of the same age that don't eat solid food and live in constant fear of germs. Everything must be sanitized. Who do you think is the bigger kid?
The problem is that my parent's generation was too laxing (mercury? eat it, is good for something or it wouldn't be in your food), and the current parents are too misinformed (everything is a threat and will kill your child! with mercury!), and there's no middle ground. And parents are such an easy prey for marketing pitches...
and they ban the things? what a bunch of psychological marshmallows we've become. The body count for hot dog chokings goes into the thousands, bicycle made corpses would stack to the stratosphere....
I remember when my dad first saw me walk into the house a bloody mess and clean myself up, no crying, no help. He was so proud. I think I was six.
I remember lawn darts. We lost a lot of stupid kids with that one.
As life gets better it becomes more valuable, and smaller and smaller dangers become unacceptable. That's progress for you.
I am trolling
To tell you the truth... yes. Go look up some casualty statistics for yourself. It's not unusual to see rather young kids walking around carrying their own rifles when up in hunting country. And yet accidents are exceptionally rare.
Now, if rifles shot candy 90% of the time, and live ammo 10% of the time, you'd have a real point... There's a big difference when you're talking about a dangerous tool, versus a toy that is supposed to be safe, but which sometimes does maim (or kill) when used (at least mostly...) as instructed.
If this is falling on deaf ears, and "gun" is just a scary word to you, many parents also give their kids knives, matches/lighters, hatchets, axes, etc., etc. at fairly early ages. If you're still aghast at the very idea, all I can say is that life in rural areas just doesn't resemble life in the city, and kids learning how to be responsible and take care of themselves at an early age is actually a good thing. You're worried about the kid innocently walking around carrying his hunting rifle, I'd be more worried about the kid without one, walking through bear and cougar territory.
With the majority of people living in cities, and the ratio only rising, I can't help but wonder what's being lost. On the other hand, absolutely everybody moving out to the country would be devastating, so it's actually a good thing for the rest of it.
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