Robert Berry at RetroCrush reminisces:
See, when I was a kid, our toys were dangerous because of misuse. …Now that China’s trying to implement a worldwide population control by dunking everything in some sort of evil death juice, it appears that these old school “deadly” delights are probably the safer option after all.
Actually, I well remember lead toy soldiers, whose composition was exactly what the name implies; because lead is a soft metal, one way you could play with them was by applying pressure with your fingers to alter their shape a bit this way or that. Pratie Place, a while back, mourned the demise of such amusements as early-design Fisher-Price “little people” and Parker Brothers’ spring-load token game, “Booby Trap” — though a redesigned version of the latter is back, per Tom McMahon.
8 Comments
Mildly related: 12 Angry Little People.
Wow, you mean they DIDN’T stop making Booby Trap cause it was putting peoples’ eyes out? Or do the new plastic pieces have special magnetic implants (or strings) which reduce to flaccidity the otherwise dangerously vigorous springing-up action? The sudden poinging was most of the charm of this game…
How many eyes were actually lost to Booby Trap? If you can come up with one case, I’ll be surprised.
I miss my lawn darts. Every Memorial Day, 4th of July and Labor Day we’d go to my Uncle’s and the first thing I did was head for that box in the garage. I’d like to see some stats on how many people were hurt by lawn darts.
Some of the current recalls are for toys that only dangerous if misused–Mattel recalled toys with embedded magnets because when children swallowed two or more pieces, the magnets caused intestinal problems. They also caused problems when children stuck them up their nose or put them in their ears (Is there ANYTHING kids don’t try to stick up their nose? Are we going to ban pennies nd beans and gravel?), but were harmless during normal usage.
You have *no* idea what the move from lead to pewter did to us collectors of miniature soldiers. Prices tripled overnight, increased costs for producer and consumer alike and reduced the number of companies producing offerings. It was totally reedikulous, it wasn’t like parents were buying Games Workshop Space Marine lead minis for infants…
JamesT,
You do get more for the switch from lead to pewter than JUST the safety thing… do a little research into older lead figures and how they must be kept to avoid decay.
As a child, I made my own lead soldiers. One Christmas, I was given a “toy” melting device, lead bars and moulds which combined to allow one to melt the lead, prepare one of the moulds and fill it with molten lead to make the desired figure. Unfortunately, I never burned myself so that I could sue and retire with a large pension. My parents had enough confidence in their parenting so they did not worry about my use of a somewhat potentially hazardous toy.