The Jarts ban was good, actually: Shoddy Goods 117
2I’ve already mentioned the throwing stars that got banned, but somehow it seemed like every kid in our neighborhood had bb guns or pellet guns or various other weapons that they could snipe kids who dared to ride the street in front of their house. What’d you or friends have that eventually got banned, or that you think probably should have been? Let’s hear about ’em in this week’s Shoddy Goods chat.
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The ban on the slip-n-slide was no loss in my opinion. Not sure about the water wiggle. A playground without a jungle gym just wasn’t complete, but many of them were pretty much designed to be concussion and tooth-breaker zones.
@werehatrack I loved Slip-n-Slide when I was a kid. Didn’t know it got banned. The only time I didn’t like it was when it got sandy. That scratched a lot when sliding down.
@heartny @werehatrack
They still sell them, my nephew just got one for his birthday.
this was basically the start of the smother generation. i’m not saying it was wrong, i am just saying we coddle too much and this is about where it started. if we had a spaceship and you had to be willing to move to another world and let your kids be independent, the human race (at least the US part of it) would not be able to go.
I’m old. Not exactly a toy, but I remember playing with liquid mercury, letting it flow from hand to hand and coating pennies with it until they were bright silver. Also had a radioactive greenish keychain bauble with little seashells in it that glowed in the dark that we used to keep by the bed at night.
Whether or not they caused brain damage is open for discussion I guess.
My mom worked for Mattel for a while and brought home a rocket toy to test. It hooked it up to the garden hose and got stuck on the roof on the first try. Don’t think it ever made it to market.
Roman candle and bottle rocket fights were exhilarating. I guess they’re technically banned everywhere now, but you can still buy them. In some places, you have to sign a paper claiming you planned to use them somewhere else. The absurdity!
Also did the mercury thing. Those mercury thermometers were always breaking. A cousin’s son lost an eye from a lawn dart.
I just bought the old banned jarts at a garage sale this summer for $3. I’ve been looking for them for about a decade, it’s my holy grail of garage sale items.
I used an asbestos ceiling tile to pin my macrame projects in 1968-72. I held it on my lap like a desk and stuck pins in it. The edges were crumbly. Not sure how I dodged that bullet.