thepackratsattic
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posted on September 7, 2001 09:39:08 AM
One of the threads here made me laugh so hard when eBay cancelled an auction for GI Joe hand grenades because they were "dangerous". If we look at what is happening via the legal community (IE:inventing lawsuits), and the never ending avalanche of government intervention to "protect us" from ourselves, we need to get concerned!
As an antique and vintage toy dealer I took a look around the shop and am SO thankful the legislators and attorneys prior to 1980 found something more productive to do with their time than getting "dangerous" toys banned or sued out of existence!
For those of you OVER 30....think back to the things that WE played with and wrote to Santa for, that would never in a gazzillion years get past a toy department legal staff today:
THINGMAKERS: Yeh, right! Let's give a six year old a 500 degree heating element and 5 metal molds to make sizzling plastic goop with....can you spell BIG BUCKS in the eyes of a hungry attorney?
BUDDY L: There isn't a single child out there who didn't manage to slice open a finger or leg with these pressed steel toys & the occassional sharp corner that existed on them. But instead of mommy kissing away the boo-boo and putting a band aid on the cut today, we run to the cell phone & speed dial our favorite TV attorney to cash in on OUR chunk of a class action suit!
ERECTOR SETS: Attorneys PRAY these will be reissued! Steel; sharp edges; wheels with holes big enough for small fingers; wire & rope; nuts & bolts that fit into mouths ears and noses perfectly.....to the legal profession today, an erector set would be better than holding a winning lottery ticket!
TEDDY BEARS w/BUTTON EYES: We all had at least one....and probably all pulled or chewed off at least one eye just to see what it tasted like. But today, grandma won't ever have to worry about showing us how to sew one back on since all the stuffed animals are surgery proof...thanks to those cautious legal departments!
PICK-UP-STIX: Let's see....6" long hard plastic, sharp pointed sticks the size of a #2 pencil lead and hyperactive kids....anybody got Melvin Beli's phone number?
Many customers and visitors to my shop comment on what GREAT toys they had as kids (whether they are 30 or 90 now), and that TODAY'S youth have NO idea what REAL toys were like! It is my personal belief that a BIG part of that is the litigious society we have come to live in and the fear many toymakers attorneys have planted in the production departments! (Wait until find the right kid to figure out how to stick their tongue deep enough into a Playstation cartridge slot yet so they can sue THAT toy out of existence!) Our toys of past may never have met today's "safety standards", but then again....we learned PERSONAL RESPONSIBILTY back then also!
Flashback to YOUR younger days of playing in the sandbox and add one of those "dangerous toys" mommy and daddy proudly bought you to this list! Make it a FUN Friday!
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decpage
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posted on September 7, 2001 09:53:57 AM
You remind me of Irwin Mainway, that character Dan Aykroyd used to play on Saturday Night Live.
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peiklk
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posted on September 7, 2001 10:07:08 AM
The problem with society today is that those toys were banned a generation ago.
Used to be many of the really stupid children killed themselves on these toys and never had a chance to reproduce.
Now we're living with the dummies who didn't get this chance to get out of the gene pool. How Clinton managed to survive childhood, we'll never know. 
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holdenrex
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posted on September 7, 2001 10:15:14 AM
Don't forget vintage metal lunchboxes! There was never a national ban on them, but so many states banned them (out of fear of kids getting tetanus from being whacked over the head with a rusty box) that it was no longer economically viable for the companies to keep releasing them. They switched over to plastic lunchboxes which only result in lumps and bruises when whacked over the head. Maybe the problem wasn't really with the lunchboxes at all...
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newguy
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posted on September 7, 2001 10:17:52 AM
Very funny. Would you like tell my aunt that her 8 month old daughter was too stupid to survive choking on a button from a teddy bear.
Makes you wonder how Dumbya survived.
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thepackratsattic
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posted on September 7, 2001 11:05:51 AM
I figure the ONLY toys that GW got to play with were either plastic bags from the dry cleaners or LOTS of tubes of the original Testors modelling cement....you know.....the GOOD stuff!! Billy-Boy on the other hand just spent way too much time looking under Barbie's dresses!
Come on folks...this is meant to be a FUN thread! Let's relive our childhood days with ALL those dangerous toys that will never see the light of day again except in antique shops!
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hopefulli
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posted on September 7, 2001 11:22:01 AM
Well, bicycles haven't been banned yet, but as I kid I once thought it would be fun to ride my bike down a set of cement stairs in a parking lot. I still have the scar on my knee to prove how idiotic that was. Wait...I should have sued the owners of the parking lot for not having a sign up warning me against this.
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harmonygrove
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posted on September 7, 2001 11:29:17 AM
Let's not forgot that look of joy on mom's face as she steps, bare foot, on the wood burning tool you left laying around after she has told you a gazillion times to put your toys up!
Now that brings back memories. Mom still has the scar...and so do I!!!!
Great thread!
HarmonyGroveAntiques
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kiara
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posted on September 7, 2001 11:39:14 AM
Our parents would buy us the plastic models and put us in a small room so we could sit together building them.
After a couple of hours we would get the giggles and they would comment on how well we were getting along with each other.
We did well in school and we run our own businesses now. But we do wonder if the glue destroyed any brain cells. 
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reader99
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posted on September 7, 2001 01:47:57 PM
I remember metal roller skates, the kind that adjusted to fit your shoe with a key. And would suddenly let go and fly off at the toe while you were skating...
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paintpower
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posted on September 7, 2001 01:56:55 PM
It sort of makes you wonder how we managed to grow up without seriously injuring ourselves. I remember those woodburning sets. Was ALWAYS burning myself with them. How about those LiteBrites? Let's plug in something electric and then push pins into it!!
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kathyg
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posted on September 7, 2001 04:04:34 PM
I remember my brothers and I blowing up our GI Joes and Barbie dolls with M-80 firecrackers. It's a double-edged sword - the wonderful memories vs. what these toys might have sold for on eBay.
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mapledr1216
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posted on September 7, 2001 06:13:22 PM
I'm ancient enough to have had one of the original Easy Bake Ovens and stuff really baked in it. Not long ago I bought a new one for my niece and it takes like 6 hours for it to get hot enough to kind of cook something.
Same thing with the new Thing Makers. I had Creepy People, Incredible Edibles, AND Fun Flowers as a kid and those things got HOT! As a joke my sister bought me a new one and I "played" with it once. You put the goop in, go read "War & Peace" and when you come back your little creatures may finally be cooked!
I didn't have one but I remember you could get toy table saws that actually worked! Hoo boy, imagine the lawsuits today!
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barbkeith
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posted on September 7, 2001 06:40:12 PM
And how about the time that I thought it would be cool to tie the throttle on my minibike so if would go as fast as possible and race along the railroad tracks. I still have a black spot of coal on my knee to prove it. And the ditches!!! Boy could you get airborne jumping them. And I'm a girl. When I burnt up the throttle on that one I got another one. Helmet, what's that? And I survived to tell the tale.
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mipakaco
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posted on September 7, 2001 06:50:12 PM
How a bout "Verti-Bird" helicopters. Nothing like the purr of a 5000RPM helicopter blade inside the house. And for outside, what 10 year old kid didn't love flinging those steel pointed razor sharp Lawn Darts. It's all fun until someone pokes an eye out!
[ edited by mipakaco on Sep 7, 2001 06:55 PM ]
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kathyg
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posted on September 7, 2001 08:51:56 PM
mapledr1216: I hope you realize that this is how the whole thing started: those 'dumb" kids were putting Plasitgoop into their Incredible Edible molds and eating the results.
While most of us realized that that Plastigoop was meant only for making Creepy Crawleys, and never meant to be consumed, a small minority ruined it for the rest of us.
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peiklk
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posted on September 7, 2001 09:36:28 PM
I loved my VERTIBIRD!
I'd get it around about two times and then instead of rotating, the thing would flip up and over banging the spinning blades into the carpet!!!
They are OUTRAGEOUS on ebay now.
I also had some toy, cannot remember the name. You used these little plastic "rivets" and melted them into the holes, building some car (mine was a motorcycle). Anyone remember the name of these?
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outoftheblue
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posted on September 7, 2001 10:44:31 PM
Here's a question that just occured to me. If a person was to sell some recalled/banned toy on Ebay and a child was hurt by it, could they be sued?
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thepackratsattic
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posted on September 8, 2001 08:16:42 AM
Unfortunately you can be sued for just about ANY reason anymore. That is why I mentioned the idea out of our past called: PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY.
Look at what all is happening today. If you have a wreck, you just claim that it never would have happened if the lid on your McDonalds coffee hadn't been defective and slipped off while you trying to dial your cell phone in rush hour traffic on the freeway. When the coffee (which is expected to come HOT!) spilled into your lap, you yelled in pain which caused the cigarette to fall from your lips and drop into the lap of your polyester dress slacks which immediately began to melt to vital areas, which caused you to use both hands to attempt to put out smoldering fiber(&flesh!) which allowed your 4 ton, 8 MPG SUV to swing across three lanes of speeding traffic before hitting a school bus (withOUT seatbelts of course!) loaded with kids. Who is actually at fault? McDonalds? Marlboro? Nokia? Brooks Brothers? Ford? The school bus manufacturer? The freeway engineering firm? Heck, a good attorney will check to see if you had Firestone tires first and pray one is blown! There is NO personal responsibilty being taken today...it just makes it bearably funny when we flashback to what we were allowed to play with as kids.
Remember that short of putting out your little brothers eye with a Red Rider BB gun, cuts and scrapes and a little blood were just a NORMAL part of playtime!
(I still have a scar from one of the burning model/M-80 tricks! OUCH!)
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chococake
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posted on September 9, 2001 09:56:52 PM
Oh boy do I remember those skates coming apart. Lots of scrapes from hitting the side walk. But,I broke my arm at the roller rink. That was too funny because I was 10 and my cousin was 14, her parents made her take me. She was just getting into liking boys, and didn't want me cramping her style. So when I fell she told me to go sit in the lounge by the heater and move my arm around. It was winter, and I couldn't get my arm into my coat on the way home. The bus ride was long and people kept bumping my arm. You can imagine what my arm looked like when we got home. I went to the hospitol and she got grounded for a month. Yep, shoulda sued!
Now we bundle the kids up in protective gear until they look like the Pillsbury Doughboy. All the years I rode a bike, and when my kids did, no one I knew ever got a brain injury or died from falling off their bikes. I know you might say there are kids that have, and they need the protection of helmets. But, I'm sure glad I didn't have to wear one when I was a kid, and I'm still here. You should see what I let my grandson do when his parents aren't around.
Look at all the stuff on eBay selling for the protection of us all. Some of those helmets are really expensive. I think the scooter sales have slowed down because everyone has one by now. I wish I knew what the next biggie will be so I could have them in stock for Christmas. Does anyone have an idea what toy's will be popular this year? I can't believe it's Sept already!
[ edited by chococake on Sep 9, 2001 10:05 PM ]
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