They don’t make toys like they used to! Reddit users have shared a list of 14 epic playthings from their childhoods that would be considered “unsafe” for the namby-pamby kids of today:
14. “Slap Bracelets.”
“Slap bracelets. The old ones had a sharp piece of metal inside them and those f****** HURT. And of course we didn’t just wear them, that was no fun. We had to have full on playground wars and come in from recess with our arms all torn up.”
“That sharp piece of metal, I heard they were made from recycled tape measures.”
“I can confirm that! My sister and I were curious little nuggets in the early 2000s and peeled the foil decoration off one of our slap bracelets to figure out how it worked and it was a piece of measuring tape, numbers and all.”
13. “Metal Tonka Trucks.”
“Definitely a one way ticket to bruised shins and a smashed toe or two.”
“And couple of knots on the head if you didn’t play right with your siblings.”
12. “Merry-Go-Rounds.”
“Literally every time I played on one of the metal merry go rounds, someone got hurt. Never me. I was the queen of surviving the merry go round.”
“This pretty much describes every game that we used to play as kids. Our motto was “It’s all fun and games until somebody gets hurt… Then it’s hilarious.””
11. “M-80 supercharged firecrackers.”
“They were like an extra powerful fire cracker (supposedly 1/8 of a stick of dynamite), we would use them to literally blow stuff up – like sending garbage cans into the air or blowing street signs off their posts. They were really a lot of fun for us early teenage boys!”
“Bottle rockets, too…even the ‘ladyfinger’ firecrackers could do some harm. Lighting them and throwing them up in the air; one boy didn’t throw high enough and it came down into another boy’s shirt and exploded on his back. He had an interesting looking scar from that.”
10. “Trampolines.”
“I’m surprised trampolines are still around, even with the dumb safety cage netting they must all have now.”
“Yeah, I was gonna say trampoline without a net or padding on the edges. So either you flew off the thing and got a concussion or you got your leg maimed when it got stuck between the springs.”
9. “Clackers.”
“I had a set of clackers, and the bruised and swollen wrists and elbows that go along with learning how to use them.”
“Apparently they would also eventually shatter, sending glass into the face of the person playing with them.”
8. “Old Beyblades.”
“The ones with the sharp metal on them and would slice up your hands when you tried to pick it up while it was still spinning.”
“I think certain models of Beyblades were actually banned in my country, or at least they were talked about being banned.”
7. “Creepy crawlers.”
“I still have a scar on my forearm from one of those. Even then I remember my brain telling me those types of toys are dumb…But oh god did I love playing with one when I got it.”
“That commercial campaign was very successful, I still remember the jingle ‘You can embarrass your sister, or scare your dad! You can be a creep without being bad. Creepy Crawlers!’”
6. “Radioactive science kits.”
“I always assumed they stopped this because of the radioactive Boy Scout David Hahn. He built a reactor in his backyard until police found it.”
“My Dad had one! Think he got it from his dad, who was into stuff like that. Still had the radioactive samples. Think it was probably radium but not sure.”
5. “Lawn darts.”
“My parents were cleaning out their garage a few months ago and found the lawn darts my mom had when she was a kid. If you thought they were dangerous originally, just imagine rusted-out lawn darts from the ’60s.”
“I put a lawn dart through the back window of my neighbor’s Ford Taurus and spent the entire summer mowing his lawn.”
“We played on a hill and my grandma made a rule that we all needed to be standing on the same side when throwing so nobody ended up with a dart through the skull.”
4. “Toys that spat smoke.”
“I had an incredibly heavy metal square looking robot that spit smoke it produced from burning oil. It smelled noxious and was heavy enough it could have easily been a…weapon.”
“I had a ninja turtles jet that also burned oil to make smoke. Stank up my bedroom something fierce with it, then thankfully ran out of smoke juice. This was the early 90’s.”
3. “A crayon melter”
“[It] melts crayons and lets you pour it into molds so you could make your own crayons and rings. Turns out production stopped because of a failure to stop the heater from being turned on if the lid was opened.”
“I had the (potentially) even more dangerous version, a mini metal melter to make jewelry, in the late ’90s-early ’00s. Technically, it had a safety latch and wouldn’t switch on unless the plastic lid was closed over the smelter (?)…or a curious pre-teen Penguin decides to jam a pen into it and disable the mechanism.”
2. “A chemistry set.”
“My brother and I were totally unsupervised and never followed the instructions. We just mixed chemicals together at random to see what would happen. I remember one combination turned into this really smelly black foam-like substance.”
“As a kid in the 60s, my uncle looked up “gunpowder” in the family encyclopedia and headed off to the pharmacy with his pocket money. He could barely reach up to the counter, but they were happy to sell him a pound of each ingredient. He now has a PhD in chemistry, and most of his peers have similar stories.”
1. “Playgrounds plunked down onto asphalt and concrete.”
“With metal slides that caused third degree burns on hot summer days.”
“My playground at my school had a collection of telephone poles randomly piled together like giant pick up sticks. Great for climbing on, and falling from great heights. There was absolutely nothing safe about it, and it was the best playground ever!”
“The playground at my school in the 70s was pebbles. I guess that was supposed to be softer than concrete?”
MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS COMING UP:
10 Things Frowned Upon Today That Were Normal in the Nineties
You could get away with all sorts back in the nineties that’d wouldn’t go down well in today’s world! Here are 10 such things you might remember.
10 THINGS FROWNED UPON TODAY THAT WERE NORMAL IN THE NINETIES
10 Typical Nineties Scenarios That Today’s Youth Will Never Understand
Bedrooms were filled with Beanie Babies, Nickelodeon was forever on TV, and your biggest responsibility was remembering to feed your Tamagotchi. Here are 10 everyday Nineties scenarios kids today will never experience.
10 TYPICAL NINETIES SCENARIOS THAT TODAY’S YOUTH WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND
10 Things Folks From the Nineties and Earlier Did Before Bed (According to the Internet)
What did people in the 90s do before going to bed? After all, they didn’t have a smartphone to stare at! Here are 10 pre-bedtime preferences from the nineties, as voted for by people online.
10 THINGS FOLKS FROM THE NINETIES AND EARLIER DID BEFORE BED (ACCORDING TO THE INTERNET)
10 Common Nineties Meals That Kids These Days Will Never Know
Child of the nineties or earlier? Are there any meals you used to eat all the time back then that you never see anymore? Here are 10 that might ring a bell.
10 COMMON NINETIES MEALS THAT KIDS THESE DAYS WILL NEVER KNOW
10 Fascinating Facts You’ve Almost Certainly Never Seen Before
Here’s the second instalment of this popular series, where we pull together 10 of the most popular facts from the “Today I Learned” Reddit community from the last week.
10 FASCINATING FACTS YOU’VE ALMOST CERTAINLY NEVER SEEN BEFORE
Source: Reddit.