The water guns that looked too real: Shoddy Goods 096
1I have a specific memory, growing up, of a law getting passed that dictated that as of January 1985 throwing stars were going to be 18+ only. Throwing star sales went through the roof that December, 1984. What else were we going to throw around in the construction sites we trespassed in? What toys or clothes were banned, legally, parentally, or in schools during your childhood? Let’s hear about 'em in this week’s Shoddy Goods chat.
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For the record I have not been able to find any evidence of this law, so it may have entirely been kids’ rumors. Or, hey, maybe it was completely made up by the throwing star store people to spur sales!
@dave Many such laws were state-by-state with wildly variable restrictions or the lack thereof. Customs has had regs about the import of weapons; I have no idea what may have been applied to throwing stars in that regard, but since I’ve seen them for sale in lots of places, it can’t have been all that much.
Far and away my biggest memory along these lines is Jarts.
Ginormous darts that you launched underhanded across the yard hoping to hit inside a round target when the point stuck in the dirt. What could go wrong??
@chienfou
At the time of the toy gun ban being passed in L.A., I was working in my first career at a boutique toy store. I was 19 or 20, and I thought the Entertech guns were very cool. The design & construction were good too, but the motor/pump system was unreliable (we got a lot of returns).
When the ban passed, I was almost crushed by the irony that our society will take immediate and drastic action to limit the sale of toy guns that are deemed dangerous, and will also do absolutely jack squat to limit the sale of actual guns.
@JohnnySocko
I think the danger was primarily in having them mistaken for real guns and getting your ass shot… not the gun itself being dangerous
Two things come to mind, both when I was in 7th-8th grade:
Clackers Ours were mad by casting resin in the shop class, so they were bigger and heavier than the ones in the video. If you got them going hard and fast enough you could shatter them into a million razor sharp shards Made great bolas, too
Nunchucks, of course…they were banned almost imediately, but lots and lots of Bruce Lee wannabees managed to whack ourselves in the fac, the back, and…other, more painful locations…
Slap bracelets were banned pretty quickly at school. These days I see them made of plastic, but at the time I recall they were fairly hefty metal strips covered in a bit of fabric, and they could really smart- or worse, the edge would get exposed and you’d get sliced.
Plus they were annoying as hell when you have 20 kids all slapping them on their wrists at once.
How about the metal molder from 90s where you melted metal pellets and pored it into modes to make di-cast objects?
Or those science and chemistry sets that gave you alcohol burners and real chemicals that could be pretty dangerous if mixed?