Brit Reacts to America's Most Dangerous Toys Ever Made! 

My family had a set of glow-in-the-dark lawn darts..... because apparently playing lawn darts during the day wasn't dangerous enough 😅

Hell... I'm 68. Those toys are nothing compared to the stuff we used to BUILD! We made bows and arrows and wooden knives. Made sling-shots, put cherry bombs in pipes to make cannons, took the powder out of caps and re-created mine-fields for the plastic soldiers we had... Damn.... Some things I did as a 10 year-old, I'm afraid to put in this comment! Let's just say, things dissolved, incinerated, flew, or went BOOM on a regular basis. That was just normal playtime for my friends and me, in America, back in the 60s. Frankly, I'm glad I got to experience it!

😂😂😂 The plastic balls shattering isn’t why Clackers got banned. It was because we kids would whip them around our heads like a medieval flail and attack each other with them. 🤣

In the 70’s tennis balls came in metal cans and we made tennis ball cannons. Two cans, a tennis ball, duct tape, rubbing alcohol and matches. As an adult I asked my mom why she let us kids do something so dangerous. She said “Well, at least I knew where you kids were. I could here that buumph! all over the neighborhood.” 🤷‍♀️

Note that most American kids would get a bb gun for Christmas at 8-12 years old.

keep in mind that kids back then weren't like kids are today. kids back then would look at kids today with a puzzled look, turn to their parents and ask "are they stupid?" Parents actually were parents. Had my own BB gun, and I first went target shooting with a .22 rifle when I was 8 with my dad. It was a different time, different sensibilities, different expectations. People aren't expected to be intelligent or responsible for their actions anymore, it's always someone else's fault. were these things dangerous? everything is dangerous if you're a moron and have no intelligent adult supervision.

I'm Gen X...if a toy didn't have the potential to cause some kind of serious physical harm, we weren't interested! We'd just go back to jumping our bikes on makeshift ramps or jumping off roofs swinging on weeping willow branches. Creepy Crawlers were my absolute favorite but I also enjoyed a good game of Jarts!!

I loved my Erector Set, in fact, I had 2 sets so I could build more. I would build for hours, and that is why I'm an architect today. My clackers never broke, and my friends and I played with them all the time! We still have our Jarts from 1975 in the original box! No one ever got hurt, and we still play at our family picnics.

That is not a tool box, it is an Erector set, a construction toy.

"A toy for kids has been classified as an actual fire arm. This is Crazy." Crazy? This is America!

5:00 the "caps" are little blisters of black powder that pop when struck with a hammer. They usually came in a paper roll with a blister every half inch. A "cap gun" would hold the roll inside and feed the paper out through the hammer, so every time you pulled the trigger, the hammer would smack a cap and make a loud BANG sound. There would also be a wonderful smoke smell coming out. The paper with the spent caps would come out the top of the gun and be torn off occasionally. And just like the cowboy movies, a cap gun could make 50 shots out of a six-shot revolver. Caps were pretty harmless. They could hurt your ears if fired right next to the head, but they didn't propel any projectiles and I've never known anyone to get a burn from one.

When I was a kid absolutely noone had a helmet to ride their bicycle. We would play army with our toy guns. Everyone's dad was a WWII vet at the time, so we were taught the correct way to crawl under fences and wire. We had tree forts and dug underground forts. I climbed up our birch trees in our yard, really high. Kids just had fun and were left to their own devices. Somehow my dad always knew where I was and what I was doing.

I grew up in rural Alabama. When I turned 8 years old my daddy got me a RedRider bb gun for my birthday and turned me loose with it. By the time I was 10 I was hunting in the woods by myself with a 4/10 shotgun. The 80's were a great time to be alive!

We were trained to be quick and smart, or get good at first aid. Anything can and will be turned into a weapon by a human.

We were taught to be careful. Then some kids who were candidates for the Darwin Awards ruined it for us. 😂

Erector Sets were the bomb. The rest of the toys is what made kids from the 50s to the 70s badasses. It is so much fun watching you react to American classics.

To me the Hover board is way more dangerous than anything I grew up with, although I remember getting burned a lot making Creepy Crawlers, Fun Flowers and Incredible Edibles....no scars!

As a 10-year-old kid, I went wild with my Creepy Crawly insect and worm and snake maker. I turned out a couple dozen plastic creepies one weekend....got the small step ladder, dental floss container and Scotch Tape and hung my creations at varying levels from my bedroom ceiling. It totally freaked the daylights out of my younger sister (one way to keep her out of my room). My mom wasn't too happy either with all that tape stuck to the ceiling.

A neighbor kid took a lawn dart to the head, but he lived. We had so many dangerous toys that cut us, burned us, maimed us, but we loved them all, and it taught us to be more careful. We also walked over a mile to school, or to the store, etc. We played in unsupervised all of the time. I miss those days.

Toys back in the day gave out the Darwin Award, if you was stupid you didn't make it lol. As a kid in the 70s we was gave a sack full of bread, cheese and a roll of bologna. Go find something to play with boy, and don't lose your lunch. Your buddies brought condiments and pops. To the woods we go!!!!!

Man, those were the days. We didn’t realize how dangerous these things were, but we learned to handle them with care.

This is why growing up in the 50sn 60s and 70s was survival of the fittest and smartest. Quite often the dumb kids didn't make it. We had an erector set, lawn darts clackers, glass blowing kit was my big sister's favorite and my brother's had the chemistry set. They blew up all kinds of shite😂 Oh and a pogo stick and we had cap guns. My brothers wanted the blow gun but no go. I bought lawn darts for my grandson in 2018. Lol. A skydancer went onto our fireplace first pull of the string.

@01:42 Erector sets were the jam!! They totally are a toolbox lol. Personally, they sparked an interest in engineering that has never died.

I grew up during the 50's using my older brother's chemistry set. Can't put a count to the number of times we had to open the windows and evacuate the house. 😊

I am an old man, 68, and up to the 80's, I had all of thous! what a cool time to grow up!

Kids are SOOOO over protected today. That's why they have no "common sense". Toys are not just for fiddling around with. They're for engaging with. If parents spend so much money on it they should be engaging with it. My dad used to be almost poetic about playing with the old things. Toys never had "child safe" on them until post war. My husband use to have great races with the lawn darts. Run fast or you lose!! The little kids were playing with the targets as hula hoops. My dad taught me how to use adult electric tools when I was 6. Also, a .308 rifle! Kids are not taught common sense which is why they don't have any!

Growing up in the 60's and 70's I had a chemistry set, a pogo stick, lawn darts, clackers, Slip and Slide, and Creepy Crawlies (and I still remember the smell. My sister had the girl version that made flowers. She burned her hand and still has the scar. 50 yrs. later.)

I grew up in the 60’s and had most of those toys. And there were no warning labels. We lived thru it all…. well most of us. Playing Cowboys & Indians with BB guns and bows & arrows. Then it was playing army soldiers with M-80’s for grenades. If you got hurt you had to wait for mom to unlock the door to patch you up. Those were some of the best days of my childhood.

Once worked at a hardware store...my co workers and I made blow darts out of pvc pipe, galvanized nails and the ad mailer(fetching for the "darts"). Once we figured out the correct length of pvc, nail weight and length, we had a blast out back...could hit a target from 20'+.

The lawn darts and Creepy Crawler Thing Maker are still stored somewhere up in the attic of my house. I also remember playing with Klackers and my cousins had those little tools and an Erector set that we used to play with. Nobody got hurt, but we weren’t careless. I also remember I got a woodburning tool with different tips in an art set one year for Christmas.

BECAUSE PARENTS USED TO PARENT! Gun safety was a normal part of growing up in the old days. Kids were taught to respect danger. “The kid that swallows too many marbles doesn’t grow up to have kids of his own!” ~ George Carlin

As a kid these toys taught you common sense. You knew not to stand in the ways of lawn jarts. You knew what would happen if you got too close to the sprinkler.

Yeah we played with that stuff. We more than survived those days, we thrived and now we're almost bullet proof lol

Asbestos is one of the best flame retarders and is in a lot of older American buildings. It also causes mesothelioma and lung cancer.

I'm 70. My brothers and I had the buckle gun, jarts (lawn darts) vaccu-form, chemistry sets, played army with BB guns, slip and slide, metal tops and we made our own blow guns. The kid next door played with rockets and would mix and compress his own gunpowder. Oh yeah, lets not forget the hand pump water rockets. There was no internet or video games then but we managed to keep busy and somehow stay alive.

The problem wasn’t that these toys were especially dangerous, the problem was that there a small percentage of stupid kids that did stupid stuff and got hurt. Most kids weren’t stupid and had endless fun with these toys. Due to the overprotective world we live in today, most kids today probably would get hurt. Sadly we aren’t making the world safer, we’re making the world stupider.

I was prepared for anything but that baby cage stuck out the window just cracked me up.

When I was in high school chemistry, we had a "Chem Club" that met before school. We got to do all of the fun experiments that we couldn't do in regular class, like blowing things up and making a still in the lab room. The alcohol wasn't drinkable, but we had every jock in school volunteering to try it.

My dad’s family was so big that we drew names for Christmas. One year I got my boy cousin (6mths older than me) and we got him a chemistry set. Ahhhhh the early 70s!! 🧪🔬

I had an alcohol train engine, an erector set, a chemistry set that had cobalt, asbestos in the sheetrock of all the walls, paint for naval & aeronautical models with lead paint, cap pistols, dart games, BB & pellet gun, even filled a battery powered M16 water pistol with gasoline (petrol for you UK guys) and lit the end of on fire to shoot flames, etc... I'm still here. 😂

Back in the 80s when I was a teenager we would make our own blow tubes and darts and when the teachers were not looking, we would shoot the darts up into the ceiling tiles in the classroom. As for lawn darts, best outside game ever! It not only taught you accuracy, but also increased your situational awareness because there was always that one neighbor's kid who couldn't toss the dart with accuracy or they intentionally tossed a dart at you just to mess with you. Good times...

I had several of these toys growing up. I loved the creepy crawlers. You could mix colors and make unique bugs. I would take the bugs to school and sell or trade them for all kinds of things. What doesn't kill you makes you smarter. Placing age restrictions on potentially dangerous toys is a good policy though.

Toys back then taught us Science, Electronics, Engineering, & trade skills benefitting them for life. Kids today only play games on their phones learning NOTHING. That's why the last 2 generations have been getting dumber and dumber.

“You guys would play with these as kids?!” haha no. Mind you, most of these toys (in the beginning) are 1960s and before. By the 80s and 90s, they’re not sold anymore. Majority of us have never played with them. So I’d imagine that no living American now was a baby in a 1920s window cage 😂

That is the reason we have warning labels . Silly squid was the one that got me . The one we had came with small brass fittings that maintained the pressure and made its arms wave around . It was fun until you got hit in the face. Another problem was when the parents saw what happened, they rushed over and in a panic turned the pressure up instead of off that was a beating I remember to this day

I remember when I was six or seven, my eldest sister (early 20s) thought it was a good idea to get the youngest brother (who had just turned 12 or 13) a chemistry set for his birthday. As I was the 'baby' of the family, he thought it was funny to get me to mix things which would explode (not badly enough to seriously injure me) or catch fire. That is until our mom caught him and took the set away from him. The '60s were an interesting time to be a child, if you could survive them.

I loved my clackers. Walked around with bruises all up and down my arms from them but wow that noise they made when you got it right and they were moving fast!😮

The kids in my neighborhood made our own danger just riding our bikes down the hill behind our houses and without helmets or any kind of pads. As an adult I see this as an insane thing to do but none of us ever fell. We could have easily broken limbs or worse doing that.

Dang we had fun. We never thought of molten lead or plastic as anything really dangerous. I played with many of these toys and had a blast. The only time I was ever scared was when a group of us were playing with jarts and my mother decided she wanted to give it a try. We weren't paying much attention as she threw it hard... straight up... and it landed in the center of about 5 of us standing close together. 😮... it was the last time we invited her to play.

My dad has one of those Erector sets. He used to help us build stuff when I was young. It was really fun. He also told us about playing with that chemistry set when he was little, so I know he had that too. His whole family is very bright, so he had lots of educational toys. My family played with the lawn darts regularly, and my brother had the missile launcher. Flung them at cats.

I had a Gilbert chemistry set as a kid. The walls in my old bedroom still have spots from a chemical concoction that went wrong and "exploded under pressure". It was not an explosion in the sense of gunpowder but of a mixture heated past the ability of the flask to contain the pressure. The walls have been painted countless times but each time, the old chemical stain pokes through. I remember fondly many toys of my youth that the lawyers would have a fit over today. Most of us survived, though, and developed a pretty good sense of self preservation and what is actually dangerous. Too many young people I see today seem to have never developed a sense of "what can happen". Many of them just assume that everything is a lethal hazard. FWIW, I eventually got a degree in chemistry, although that was an academic accident. I never worked in a chemistry related field though the education has sometimes come in handy for strange reasons.

Did anyone ever have a Vac U Form? I had one and it would get super hot to melt plastic sheets and you would hand pump it to create a vacuum. It would mold race cars, jets, funny faces etc. it had no safety override in case you left it on. I loved that toy.

6 kids in my family we had a lot of these toys. We got pellet guns, BB guns by age 9-10. We had pogo sticks w/handles, Jarts, click-clacks, swing wings, Creepy Crawlers, Missle Launcher. But we were never caged in a window lol. We had the Slip n Slide, spring Bouncing space boots, the toy hooked to the garden hose that shot all over when you turned on the water. My brothers all had Big Wheels. We all kept our fingers in tact, and had a blast growing up. We grew up tough as nails!! 😊

I used to trip while running down the sidewalk. Big scabs on my knees all summer. If you are clumsy it doesn’t take much to get hurt!

I had several of these toys as a lad in the 1950's. Got my first BB air rifle at age 6 and my first .22 rifle at 14 which was a gift from my grandfather and still have it. My friends and I hunted squirrels with our .22 rifles in our early teens and spent many days roaming the woods. We also caught and kept snakes, even a venomous one that we had to hide from our parents.

I think homemade bogeys/carts were excellent and stilts. We had steam engine toys, but we never used them inside. Toys in the bygone days were more educational. My son is in chemical engineering, it baffles him even today, we were good in science fields, most of us didn't blow ourselves up, or poison ourselves.

Erector Set, Check Chemistry Set, Check Pogo Stick, Check Toy guns, Check Lawn Darts, Check Clackets, Check BattleStar Galatica toys, Check Slip N Slide, Check Trampoline, Check . . . And the most dangerous and delicious sandwich ever made. - The Fluffinutter ! ! !

I had a chemistry set and stirred up some crazy messes. The toys were science oriented because the 60s were focused on innovation. Kennedy said we were going to the moon and everybody wanted to be a scientist or an astronaut. The kids that grew up in the 50s & 60s created computers in their 20s & 30s. Clackers were so much fun! You could knock yourself out with them if you weren't careful, and they occasionally exploded, but we played with them any way. I had the creepy crawlers set, which stunk to high heaven and you could get burned. Later they made a similar toy to make edible ones. I shudder to think what we consumed back then. Asbestos damages the lungs.

Cap guns and BB-guns were all around. I had chemistry kits and electric kits. One of my favorite kits was for building crystal radio sets. A popular sports toy was roller skates with metal wheels. Hitting a pebble on the road could send you flying if you weren't quick with good balance. We also built soap box derby cars out of stuff we found. Nowadays these have become rather professional.

As a kid in the 60's I had a chemistry set, erector set, lawn darts, creepy crawlers, powermite tools and one they didn't make the list, a wood burning set. I can't say there weren't "accidents" with some of these toys but I survived.

As a kid in the 1960's, we had lawn darts, clackers and creepy crawlers!

I told my father my chemistry set was missing Potassium Nitrate, asked my elementary school science teacher if he had some extra sulfur. Some old fashioned Kingsford charcoal took care of the rest...

We didn't have Creepy Crawlers, but some of our playmates did, and they gave us some of their creations. I can only imagine how the toxic plastic goop must have smelled when the figurines were being cooked, because the finished products still smelled very strong.

That baby cage is crazy . No way I would have had my baby hanging in there no where .

I had Lawn Darts, Clackers, and Creepy Crawlers. And my daughters had that Barbie, the eating Cabbage Patch doll, and sky dancers,

These toys were the best!!! We knew how to use them

Married, i had 3 kids, and we had the Jarts. Until one day, when i got home from work in my 4 day old new truck. I parked alongside the garage, and before i could shut it off, BOOM! My oldest had thrown one into the air from the other side. A dent more than an inch deep in my hood. The Jarts were scrapped that day.

9:20 Back in college we used to play a game called Beer Darts with these things. Basically it was two people sitting across from each other with a beer between their legs. You would take turns tossing a dart at the beer can. When a dart struck the beer you would have to drink until beer stopped flowing out. First one to have an empty beer loses. Before you start to think I am an old guy and played this when these things came out. We were playing this in 2010.

I still have my Sky Dancers! I never had a problem but once I learned they got taken off the shelves I made sure to keep them. You should look up a video where one ends up in a fireplace by accident 😂 I also had the 90’s version Creepy Crawler’s candy toy thing and my grandpa gave me clackers he found in his garage.

Mid 1970s. I had a pogo stick, clackers, lawn darts, creepy crawlers. He only showed a pic of the Slip-n-Slide.....that thing hurt me more than any others! Along with trampoline! He also didn't mention Micronauts that had lots of small shooting plastic missiles like the Battle-star Galactic toy. Never had any problem with those. In fact, I still have a box of them in original boxes that I could probably sell on Ebay.

I remember playing with Chemistry Sets, Lawn Jarts, and Creepy Crawley maker as a kid. We never owned the electric tools, but my sister did own a toy hand tool set with a real saw. I remember that my sister got in trouble when she used the hand saw to saw the banister to our stairs. 😅

Growing up "back in the day" was about stretching the envelope. Stretch too far, you lose body parts, functions, or your life. Not too far, and you learned life lessons -- not the least of which was to not admit pain where a parent could find out. Cuts, burns, mild concussions...just another day being a kid before there were panicky parents and gov't oversight. Also...making usable black powder with the "unsafe" chemistry kits was really cool (when it worked).

70s & 80s kid here. We had the Jarts (they were fun!) and you learned to stay out of the way 😂 we also had pogo sticks, clackers, chem sets, that specific CSI set also, oh and it wasn’t on the list but we had a tire swing. So fun but you had to be careful or you would slam into the tree with your shoulder or back. We never wore bicycle helmets or any other protective gear back then either. The baby cage thing hanging out the window takes the cake I think!

Ha! The Gilbert chemistry set. I got one off my uncle in the 90s. Not only was it generally full of unsafe stuff it was also like 30yrs old at that point. FOR SCIENCE! Note: said uncle was a chemist by profession.

Powermite working tools were great. And YES, the tools actually worked just like the full size ones my dad had. I got the entire set for Christmas. Loved play with and making things out of balsa wood with the tools. They just when through batteries like there was no tomorrow. The circular saw and jigsaw was sharp enough that they would cut through your skin. The the drill could make a quick hole in you hand or finger. You learned very quickly, not to hold what you were cutting or drilling in your hand.

I received Clackers for Easter one year. I remember that they felt like glass and the big challenge was to get them to clack both above and below your hand. They disappeared 2 days later after reports came out about them shattering. I have a child’s tool box that has actual child sized tools and was made for 8 yo. They include a hammer, a hand saw, screw drivers, clamps, a file etc. The idea was to build actual projects with or along side Dad.

We used to run around in the out behind my house and play war with bb guns. We'd chase after each other and shoot one another with them. I also had a buddy that "accidentally" shot me in the arm with his blowgun. Man growing up in the late 70's 80's was awesome.

My brother got the Chemistry Set for Christmas when he was 10 and I was 8. Looking back on it, I don't think it was wise of my parents to let us experiment unsupervised. But we survived and didn't burn the house down.We also had bows & arrows and BB guns. It was great - I miss small government!

01:53 ... that is an Erector Set. It has miniature tools like wrenches and screwdrivers and you construct towers, cranes, bridges, etc. all made from thin sheet metal girders and connectors. Each piece had to be bolted together with tiny nuts and bolts. My brother had about ten of these sets including upgraded kits to make all sorts of metal items to play as being an engineer. Combined with Hot Wheels cars and tracks, we made awesome structures to race a single car from one side of the house through every room and ended at the other side of the house. It would take an entire weekend to construct, but it really taught structural integrity, for if you built it wrong the entire contraption would come crashing down. Yes, as an adult I became a mechanical engineer. I guarantee that some of my "natural talent" in engineering came from using these kits when I was in elementary school.

The Romans had what are called _plumbata_ which are essentially the same thing as lawn darts. Weighted darts carried by the infantry and utilized not unlike a _pilum_ (the weighted throwing spears). Thrown into enemy formations to help break them up prior to the lines joining battle against each other. edit: typos

Dude I wouldn’t let my cat dangle from a God knows how many stories high cage out a window

Mercury from the chem set was the coolest thing .Metal you could roll around in your hand! And Erector sets were way better than leggos! We had the best toys.

Asbestos is a chemical that is highly resistant to flame, and thus was used in a lot of buildings as a fire suppressant. However, when the people who worked closely with asbestos began dying of lung cancer, that's when it was removed from all those old buildings, and during removals, nobody was allowed in the vicinity without hazmat like protection. The specific asbestos linked cancer is called Mesothelioma.

We had a Water Wiggla, we named him Mr Wiggles! He had black hair and you put his orange head onto end of garden hose and turned water on and he'd jump all around our front yard getting us wet with us running around and jumping to dodge him... was so much fun. That was way back when I was about seven years old and I'll be 65 in October 2024. We also had Erector Set, Chemistry sets, Woodburning Kits, Blubber, Knocker Ball toy "Klackers" which was two golf ball sized hard resin balls attached together with each a long cord and you'd move your wrist while holding the end of the attached cords and they'd smack together. We had metal "It's A Slinky" toy, Etch-A-Sketch, "Spirograph" for making pretty cool colored pencil drawings, We played with challenging "Operation" game made by Milton Bradley Company. I dearly loved my talking "Chatty Cathy Doll", my brother had "GI Joe doll", we had fun bouncing on "Pogo Stick" and the "Hop Pod" jumper toy thing, Lionel Train Sets, Boomerang, Super Balls, Paddle Ball, Yo-yo toy and I was pretty good at doing the walk the dog trick, us girls had Suzie Baker Oven that baked little sized cakes. I sewed a lot of doll clothes with a very small chidren sized sewing machine... we played game of "Crochet". We received most of our toys from the US Navy because our father was Naval Personnel member. I can remember us and many other children going to NAS North Island-San Diego California into large aircraft hangars full of long tables stacked with toys and we could pick out as many as we liked.😊 Our father served USN for almost thirty years, so we had many toys for our entire childhood to enjoy. The only one I didn't like was the large sized metal throwing darts because our eldest and only half brother was mean to us and he'd tie a long cord around our ankle and make us run in circle around him and he'd throw "Yard Darts" 🎯 at us! He ended up being arrested and he went to prison😊 and he didn't get out til 1974😅 he was our mom's son from her 1st marriage and he hated us. His favorite toys he got from crossing into Mexico 🇲🇽 to Tijuana with his friend and they'd bring back Cherry Bombs and other kinds of Pyrotechnics to launch at us littler kids. Mom was so busy taking care of our youngest brother that suffered brain injury in automobile accident as infant to keep tabs on the eldest meanie and dad was usually gone out on the ocean's of the world so Steven was an crazy out of control maniac teenager. Looney Bin for him at Soledad Prison😊 but his favorite thing to do was to squirter flammable lighter fluid onto our plastic army men toys and light them up. Crazy 🤪 he was mean to animals too. Psychopath him.

I have played with the chemistry kits and the nuclear kits. If you lived though the 1970s you are a different breed. Edit: i was a spoiled child and played with probably 90% of these toys. Either Grandparents bought them or we got them from garage sales or as gifts.

I had a "Creepy Crawlers" set, i played with it for years without getting burned.

I grew up in the 50s and 60s. We had several of those toys. My first time on a slip n slide I knocked myself out cold. My Grandmother kept trying to make me get up. My dad knew I was out and boy did he get mad. I remember getting hit with a yard dart. You didn't do it more than once or twice. We earned to be careful. The clackers really hurt when you didn't use them right.

I was on the trampoline nearly every day as a child - with no net! I loved it. I remember playing with clackers once at someone's house. The rest I don't think I ever had. Oh except one in the intro that they showed but didn't talk about - these tubes of multi-colored goo that you could squeeze out and then blow into balloons. The problem was the fumes - they were toxic.

I had the Lawn Darts, the Click-Clacks, and the Creepy Crawlers. My little sister had the Sky Dancers. We got more hurt by the click-clacks because my brother and I would throw them at each others as “Bolos”.

HAHAHA My dad was a WWII kid who had access to his family's woodshop (including lathe) in their basement. He somehow survived without injury (by being careful). I'm Jones Generation and if we didn't have toys that risked life and limb, we altered it. My uncle crafted a 7 foot set of wooden stilts with adjustable foot holds, I got good enough on them to flip them upside-down so I was standing near the top when walking around. My 80 year old farmer grandfather visited and happily jumped onto them and started walking around (even backwards) when he fell off them, he laughed so hard he had to catch his breath. We played rough in the 60s even seeing who could punch harder. Or play "tackle" (this game goes by a less politically correct name) If a kid didn't come in from playing without scratches or bruises, there was something wrong. There's not enough space to list the radioactive vinyl static brushes, cap guns, etc. and just the rougher play styles we had.

I got a chemistry set in about 1957. I loved it! I don't remember what chemicals were in it, but I mostly used the microscope and the glass slides. The men who designed this stuff did NOT think things through back then. It seems they had absolutely no idea the trouble that kids could get themselves, and other kids, into. They must have assumed children had common sense, or a sense of danger, at least. I remember the lawn dart scandal very well. Even at the time, I was shocked that the toy designers thought those were a good idea!

We used to have pogo stick competitions to see who could bounce the longest. My sister bounced on it all day, only stopping because it was time to come home!

Omg, I had the roller blade Barbie, and a Sky Dancer growing up, lol. I didn't realize how dangerous they were!

As a kid we had lawn darts and used them for years, especially while camping. No one ever got hit with one because we all watched and paid attention to where it was going! I also had clackers when I was a teenager - I loved the feeling and momentum you could get with them, if you went fast enough you could "clack" them above the ring and below. And the Creepy Crawlies? My cousin had that and we spent a lot of time using it! Funny how dangerous they would be considered now and yet a lot of us managed to survive lol.. And Lord I remember the Cabbage Patch Kid fights lol. You could not find one anywhere 2 months before Christmas, they all sold out.....my son wanted one and man I had one disappointed kid that year.

I love that the window cage for the baby didn't even have anything to make it fit the window's width (see 18:40), meaning that, besides the obvious dangers of a baby just suspended out of the window by what appears to be a pretty flimsy cage, the baby could also just crawl around it when mom/dad wasn't looking for a second, and there was nothing to stop them from plummeting below.

In high school, in the 70's science class. We had a gallon sized jug of mercury. It was heavy! But SO much fun to play with? Used to be able to get mercury out of old discarded thermostats that were used for home heating. Putting your hand in, and the feeling was crazy? Science class was right before lunch. No one washed? lol.

i am old ! i still have my clackers from 1975!

I had an Gilbert Erector Set my older brother had a Steam Engine and we made our own Steam power wagon. My older brother had a chemistry set which he added more dangerous chemicals to and did toxic and explosive "experiments! I played Jarts too. Getting hurt was just part of learning, what's more exciting than danger, LOL. I had Creepy Crawlers too! The tough and smart kids lived and didn't get maimed. Seriously in our house we were taught about dangers and safety measures to take while playing.

My favorite toys included a crossbow, a homemade scooter welded together from three bike frames with 16-inch tires (no brakes), homemade blow torches, a grinding wheel, four foot stilts, wrist rockets, bottle rocket launchers, and of course boxing gloves. I also owned a creepy crawler oven, almost thirty years years later and I still have a scar on my wrist from the scorpion mold.

I remember a wood engraver that was recalled due to causing severe burns. It was so cool. The clackers were fun until you lost control and it hit you in the head or the bruises it caused.