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."

Comments

toys with molten metal

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was a lad (50's/60's) we had a toy where you'd melt some metal (lead? or something with a low melting point anyway) in a little crucible over a burner and pour the result into a mold. It would cool and form a little metal soldier figure, whereupon you'd take the two sides of the mold apart and out it would fall.

I'm sure a few trips to the ER were caused somewhere or another due to this toy, but you know, I'd rather not lived in the kind of dumbed down idiot-proof world that comes from trying to save people from themselves. That's a surefire way to breed more idiots.

Re:toys with molten metal

[bill_mcgonigle]

I'm sure a few trips to the ER were caused somewhere or another due to this toy,

I totally burned the shit out of my thumb when I was a kid, by melting some glass with my dad's propane torch and generally being an idiot.

I did it again (to my palm) when I first bought a house and installed a boiler and had my hand directly under a solder joint (yeah, I way over-flowed that joint).

Hot molten shit hurts. A lot. I now have good plumbing gloves (never swung for the third strike after that). Besides learning to buy gloves, I'm now very aware of the dangers of being between the dangerous thing and the Earth's core. It would be great if we could give kids a big list of "don't do that" but humans seem to learn better from experience.

but you know, I'd rather not lived in the kind of dumbed down idiot-proof world that comes from trying to save people from themselves. That's a surefire way to breed more idiots.

Well, that is the point. Idiots are easy to control. When people are farmed as livestock for 'their' tax money, having rambunctious ones just decreases the profit per head. Best to keep them calm, dumb, and in front of reality TV.

So let me get this straight...

[edxwelch]

trampolines, plastic bow and arrows, etc. are deadly, but rifles and shotguns are okay for children?
http://www.crickett.com/

Only in America

Conkers

[sqldr]

Probably not so popular on the other side of the atlantic, but here in Britain, every october is conker season, where we attach horse chessnuts (invariably hardened by baking, soaking in vinegar, hand cream, galvanisation, you name it) to string, then smash them into an opponent's conker (or your own elbow if you miss) until one shatters into many pieces. If you drop it, you have to try to pick it up while your opponent repeatedly stamps on it. Joy and safety goggles all round!

Re:Want!

[hairyfeet]

I think you misunderstand dude, when I say "minibike" I mean with actual gasoline motors, goes about 50MPH. I actually didn't learn to ride a pedal bike until I was 11 because i always had a motorbike. my first bike was a Honda 50 minitrail at 5 years old! Everyone called it the mad bee for the sound that thing made, a high pitched 'meeeeeer' as i whiped through our little town (pop 350 on a good day). Lucky for mom we had a collie or she'd have never been able to get me home! She'd just stick her head out and tell the dog "Go fetch him for supper" and Ruffles would go flying after the sound and when he caught me he'd bark at me and head towards the house. Man I miss that dog, nothing like a really smart dog.

I agree though that parents go too damned far the other way. I had a little girl bump into me and the grocery store and when I said "excuse me little miss" I actually heard her momma say "stranger danger". Well needless to say I went off like an atom bomb on that mom and told her that if she and the other parents would be more worried about teaching their kids good manners instead of being afraid of invisible bogeymen the world would be a better place, all the people in the store cheered. Its sad things have gotten so stupid that when one of the children downstairs held the door open for me when I was loaded down and said "here you go sir" i actually went and knocked on his mom's door just to tell her what a polite and well mannered child she had.

Its just nuts, no wonder so many kids are fat and diabetic, their damned parents won't even let them go play anymore! We rode motorbikes, ran like wild injuns, did we get hurt? Hell yes, but what don't get you makes you stronger and gives you some killer stories to go with the scars, like the time I am sitting in an ER with a nice little puddle of blood in front of me where I did a faceplant at 60MPH thanks to a damned dog trying to bite my front wheel, and I'm sitting next to a kid that is holding the holes in his throat together where he popped over a field into a barb wire fence on a 3 wheeler, and we are both just laughing our asses off higher than kites because the ER doc took one look at the two of us and said "Look I know that has GOT to hurt but we had some kids flip a convertible and couple of them are missing limbs, so if I give you two a shot of morphine will you be alright?" We just looked at each other and stuck out our arms and were laughing like loons inside of 10 minutes, good stuff that morphine.

Kids today in their sterile little living spaces just don't know what fun is. My boys rode bikes (sadly their mother wouldn't let me get them the motor kind after my little face plant, I told her losing a few inches of skin builds character) and went swimming with the fishes in actual creeks, they had FUN dammit! It did them good too, as age may have finally got up with me and given me the family beer belly both boys are lean and trim and the oldest is constantly being asked out by the little campus cuties.