Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I was driving my grandfathers tractor at 11 because he needed help on his farm and he taught me the right way to drive it and to be very careful and to shut it off properly too so no accidents were to be had . None of my older brothers or sister were home by then one was younger than me and he had to stay home and my older brothers and sisters had jobs so they had to go to them and grandpa asked me if I could help him and it was best time of my childhood and miss those two old people so much . Time crept up on them way too fast and much to our grief .the most dangerous toy would have had to be an air riffle and my mother did not like that too much so she hid it and I never did find it .
Accidents do happen...hard to tell if because of inexperience but it seems much worse when it happens to a youngster. I had a cousin a year older than me who was helping plow one spring when she was 15. I guess she was "opening" the field and it's somewhat rougher on the edge of the field than once you're inside more. Anyway, the tractor overturned and killed her. Terrible tragedy that her parents and two other sisters had to live through.
I'm 47. My first thought was the chemistry set I got one Christmas in the mid 1970s. But in truth, it would probably be the electric train set. For this set to work you had to wrap bare copper wire around two poles on a transformer. You plug in the transformer and move a lever to send electricity to the bare metal train tracks. The more you move the lever, the faster the train moved. Looking back on it now, how the heck did I NOT get electrocuted or poisoned?! The next dangerous toy was a bicycle. No helmet nor pads. Before I was a teenager I was riding my bike across town sometimes 10 miles away from home.
This is still the type of train set we use. When we were (unsupervised) kids we used to put tinsel on the track that would spark when the train ran over!
Now that I think about it, there was a place you could climb through a fence near where we lived. You could 'hop the train' - get on the platform without paying. But we used to put pennies on the track and they'd get flattened by the train. So, the NYC subway station is probably the most dangerous toy I had as a child!!
LOL - I had BOTH of these!!!
I went through several pairs of "clacker balls", yes that's what we called them. The balls were made of some kind of acrylic material and would shatter. Unless they shattered your forearm or you clonked yourself in the head first!
The Footsie was an instant face plant game. Skip, skip, trip!
Looking back, I must have endured several concussions growing up.
I had both too! I used to wear my brothers football pads on my forearm to try keep it from getting broken. Having one of those balls hit that little protruding bone on your wrist is one of the most painful things I've ever experience. I love this topic!!
I guess silly putty was poison because they don't make it anymore. The stuff they call silly putty now is just soft putty, it doesn't copy anything. Too bad!
My parents once got me a skateboard that was made of a hard resin plastic and the board was very narrow and short. Hit a pebble on the wheel and I went flying. Folks were so happy I never used it again. Roller skates (plastic wheels) were a bit safer. Had a Daisy BB gun. Nope, never shot my eye out. Had the metal point lawn darts. Coming from a family that played horse shoes with metal shoes, we had sense enough to move aside when tossing and watch where they're falling. No one at our home ever got hit by those lawn darts.
I took that skateboard everywhere. Mine was yellow and had an open shark mouth decal right where you put your foot. I remember that my Mother sent me to the store once and I had to hurry because it was close to closing time. I hit a pebble, flew off the skateboard, ripped open the knees of my pants and was bleeding when I limped home. She asked only if it happened on the way there or the way back. Tough time to be a kid. LOL
Best in the What-Were-They-Thinking category is the Mattel Thing Maker. An electric hot plate, in which metal molds filled with toxic goo were cooked. The molds were then removed with a clip-on metal wire handle and cooled by plunging into a pan of water. Electricity, hot metal, water, toxins - what's not to like? Just the thing to keep an unsupervised 8 y.o. busy for an afternoon!
And Lawn Darts were great! As were wood-burning sets!
Stupidity is dangerous Those toys were not dangerous, the abuse of anything is dangerous, drinking too much water at one time will kill you.
Millions of kids played with those toys and had no trouble , helmets and pads give a false sense of security, and people that will be stupid still are stupid.
If parents don't teach their children common sense and personal responsibility, and leave teaching to some one else, of course things will be abused, and some one get's hurt .
People love to blame some one or something else for their own foolishness, going for the deep pocket lawsuit, and it's just plain wrong . But that's the liberal for you. A person and lawyer will put a company out of business to satisfy their own greed, sherk personal responsibility and make every one else suffer .
I had knives and guns and a whole workshop growing up to work and play in since I was 7 . dad taught me the dangers and need to be safe and use the right PPEs while working .
I made a steak knife for my mom when I was 7-8 as well as other knives and things and dad gave me a gun when I was 12 .
No one was endangered in any way by me or the things I had .
Yes there were living examples of stupid that we knew growing up ,but I never felt compelled to be stupid too.
By the time I was 14 dad was letting me learn to drive and at 15 I was driving his 1 ton dump truck not yet even having a learning permit.
Never a collision nor even a scratch on any of his 15 different cars and trucks he had through the years ,no collisions of my own for that matter, and I'm 65.
Yes, by all means, let's politicize this. Those darn liberals who don't have faith in Darwinism to weed out the stupid kids before they breed!
40-some years ago, my father's 11-year-old cousin rode his bicycle out into the street between two parked cars. Maybe he'd have survived being hit by a car if he had been wearing a helmet. But yeah, it was his own stupid fault, I guess.
Was anyone else terribly allergic to Mr.Bubble? I was little, begged for Mr.Bubble for a bubble bath. My mother might as well have washed me in Tide (which I also had a reaction to when mom tried it for laundry).
When I was in the second grade I had a metal toy tractor that literally ignited a small flame when I ran it. I thought it was cool and played with it a lot (though a feminine little girl that loved dolls, I also liked boy toys). I never burned myself once and neither did any other kid that played with it.
The only potential harm I could have done was through throwing plain old rocks. I used them in place of baseballs with a metal pole for a bat (I had imagination).
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
