strangest, weirdist or just plain wrong toy from your youth

[panamag8or]

Looks like you had the coolest toy ever! Surely it grossed-out all the girls.

All the girls except for Nashoba.lol

Yes I know, I am a lady but I grew up on a farm - what else is there to do lol

We made whirlybirds from two peahen feathers and a dry corn cob. We also made kazoo-type things from gourd vines.

 

[Fleur De Guerre]

When I was a kid, other kids used to go to France and come back with flick knives and mini (and not-so-mini) bangers, which were basically small sticks of dynamite. Which we'd then use to blow up things like dog turds! lol

I am much more lady-like these days.

 

[Big Man]

... bangers, which were basically small sticks of dynamite. Which we'd then use to blow up things like dog turds! ...

That has to be the funniest thing I've ever heard. You are the best! You are my new hero.

 

[HamletJSD]

Lee
___________________________

Yes, I've always wanted one.

fftopic:
A friend's father found one of these at a yard sale recently, but it wasn't in great working order ... he proceeded to his garage machine shop and manufactured a new one, copying the design and enlarging it a bit. It was definitely the hit of our Fourth celebrations this year

 

[Fleur De Guerre]

That has to be the funniest thing I've ever heard. You are the best! You are my new hero.

lol lol it was fun, but only if you got far enough away before it went off! lol

 

[Big Man]

lol lol it was fun, but only if you got far enough away before it went off! lol

Yeah, I bet there was a really short learning curve ...

 

[BegintheBeguine]

My nephews received The Grossinator http://www.trenchman.com/articles/article100104.html from me before an auto trip home from New York to Tennessee. The voice, the enunciation! I so mean to their parents.

 

[Edward]

fftopic: Edward, you just reminded me of a favorite line War (college classmate and my former wheelman) liked to throw around:
"Guns don't kill people--I kill people!"
Ahh, the good old days... Mayhem and chaos around the college campus.lol

fftopic: well, maybe not.... as one of the ringleaders in my day of our school roleplaying club, coming up to Christmas when we were 17 I was involved in a real-time, live-role play assassination game called Killer. I lasted til day two of the five day game - I think I was the third of six to "die." I guess I got too confident after offing my contract on day one (shot him in the back on the stairwell - neither stylish nor sporting, but certainly effective!), so I suspected nothing when, on day two ,the headmaster asked for two of us to visit him in his study at break. When we walked in and closed the door, Headmaster says "hang on one moment, please" to whoever was on the other end of the phone....the other guy pulls his gun, shoots me, and then the headmaster goes back to the phone and says "Sorry about that, we're having a war games competition in the school this week and I just had to witness the death of one of my sixth formers" - like it was the most normal thing in the world. I've always wondered who was on the other end of that call! lol

 

[panamag8or]

fftopic: well, maybe not.... as one of the ringleaders in my day of our school roleplaying club, coming up to Christmas when we were 17 I was involved in a real-time, live-role play assassination game called Killer. I lasted til day two of the five day game - I think I was the third of six to "die." I guess I got too confident after offing my contract on day one (shot him in the back on the stairwell - neither stylish nor sporting, but certainly effective!), so I suspected nothing when, on day two ,the headmaster asked for two of us to visit him in his study at break. When we walked in and closed the door, Headmaster says "hang on one moment, please" to whoever was on the other end of the phone....the other guy pulls his gun, shoots me, and then the headmaster goes back to the phone and says "Sorry about that, we're having a war games competition in the school this week and I just had to witness the death of one of my sixth formers" - like it was the most normal thing in the world. I've always wondered who was on the other end of that call! lol

We played Killer back in the 80's... man, was that fun!

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Strangest toy? A real machete. Also, a fake shrunken head.

.

 

[Diamondback]

We played Killer back in the 80's... man, was that fun!

As did I in the late-'90s/early-'00s in high-school and college. Couldn't have simulated-irons, but my red Sharpie saw lots of work...lol Ditto my collection of Mr. Yuk stickers.

Good times! Even had a prof in on it...

 

[John in Covina]

fftopic:
A friend's father found one of these at a yard sale recently, but it wasn't in great working order ... he proceeded to his garage machine shop and manufactured a new one, copying the design and enlarging it a bit. It was definitely the hit of our Fourth celebrations this year

*************
The Carbide Cannon! I have seen a pretty big one of these. You actually have to be careful, the blast can be powerful and the boom could break house windows.

Ever blow up acetylene balloons. Big bangs too!

 

[Miss Brill]

Not really a toy, but when I was 7, my mother's friend ordered me an incubator with quail eggs from the back of a farmer's magazine. I ended up with 2 wild quail living in different cages on top of my dresser. They had to be kept apart because one would peck the daylights out of the other.

I finally had to get rid of them because a snake came in the house after them. :eusa_doh:

 

[K.D. Lightner]

Miss Brill -- Your post reminded me that, when I was a teenager, my family attended the Iowa State Fair, where you could buy little chameleons, which you could wear on your lapel or shirt -- a small ribbon wrapped around the litttle lizard, the ribbon attached to your shirt with a safety pin.

I brought mine home, got a little cage for it, bought some dried flies, gave it a water dish. It lived for quite some time, once escaping into the house, my mother threatening to move out (she hates anything that creeps, crawls, slithers or looks like it might). We found it a few days later, it had crawled up the curtains.

Finally, it died in the winter -- maybe it was supposed to hibernate or something, it just stopped eating and then died.

They stopped selling those things at the State Fair a few years later.

You could also buy baby chicks and bunnies around Easter time. They don't seem to sell chicks anymore, or at least I haven't seen any for sale, but a lot of rabbits end up in the ASPCA or humane society each year because many people don't want them once Easter is over.

Bad idea to pass living things off as toys and playthings for children. I know many stories of little chickens and bunnies that were killed being manhandled by kids.

karol

 

[sweetfrancaise]

THere was this stuff I believe was called "Plastic Balloons" which came in a tube and you put a dollop on the end of a straw. When you blew thru the straw the glob became a Ballloon of some sort with crazy colors streaked thru it. Now as i recall the plastic, while soft, held the smell of just about every industrial solvent known to man.

All I can figure is if you sniffed the glob or inhaled in any way, you were going to fry brain cells for sure.

That stuff provides hours of fun--you can find it at the grocery store!

 

[dostacos]

when I was seven there were two brothers who were in High School. One day they showed us how to make a Molotov cocktail burned the heck out of an orange tree in the orchard behind our houses.

One day I was in their garage and the younger one was filing something, and saving the filed particles. He answered, oh nothing..... a few weeks later the brothers invited us back to the same orange tree the younger one had dug a hole and placed a can in the hole with a "black" string leading out of the can to where we were standing. they lite the string which burned hot and FAST when it got to the can there was a loud BOOM and the tree rose up and fell over.

I never did find out what they had against that tree. The good news is that they moved out of the neighborhood shortly there after so all us little kids had to find new "ROLE MODELS'

 

[Diamondback]

If I had to guess, I'd say they were powdering charcoal as a very-low-grade (and very dangerous) explosive.

DT, it's a good thing they moved away from you guys, who knows what other kinds of "fun" they mighta progressed to...

 

[Jerekson]

I'm surprised Hemingway Jones hasn't posted his monkey in here yet

 

[Edward]

Bad idea to pass living things off as toys and playthings for children. I know many stories of little chickens and bunnies that were killed being manhandled by kids.

Agreed. Cats at least have claws and aren't afraid to use them to communicate that they're not happy with how they're being lifted.... smaller creatures, less able to defend themselves are very vulnerable with kids. I know someone who at a very young age squeezed a hamster to death. Not intending the unfortunate rodent any harm, quite the opposite, but certainly some animals just don't mix well with kids. Any pet needs to be given the respect owed to a living creature and not treated as a toy, though.

 

[ITG]

Anyone ever have one of these clapping monkeys? I still have mine.