strangest, weirdist or just plain wrong toy from your youth

[K.D. Lightner]

Can you imagine the law suits that would ensue in this day and age if the toys of our childhood were being sold today?

They wouldn't be sold today -- they'd be yanked off the shelves faster than you can say "litigation."

karol

 

[MrNewportCustom]

Those who did not have weapons made them. Anyone from my era remember sling shots? -- just as deadly, if not more so, than b-b guns. We also fashioned spears from tall weed stalks that dried out and died in the autumn. I had a special spear I named "Wawona" after a giant sequoia I read about, and it was sharpened to a such a point that it would stick in a tree. At least I didn't throw it at anyone.

karol

lol lol lol

You just reminded me of the time my younger brother and I built the ultimate slingshot/crossbow. Using a 2X4 of about two feet, a couple strong rubber bands and a trigger mechanism that I can't recall, we shot a standard steel-tipped/green-plastic-finned dart some thirty yards into our across the street neighbors' rough-surfaced concrete garage wall. It stuck.


Lee

 

[cassylynn]

A child with an imagination can sometimes be dangerous, I can't imagine what my children are going to be like if they ever hear of some of our prized experiments. Take the potato gun for instance - PVC Pipe, flint, a can of hairspray, matches and a potato. Yes I know, I am a lady but I grew up on a farm - what else is there to do lol

 

[MrNewportCustom]

A child with an imagination can sometimes be dangerous, I can't imagine what my children are going to be like if they ever hear of some of our prized experiments. Take the potato gun for instance - PVC Pipe, flint, a can of hairspray, matches and a potato. Yes I know, I am a lady but I grew up on a farm - what else is there to do lol

So can an adult. lol As proof, I warn that you don't let your kids read Dave Barry's account of firing a potato gun from the roof of The Miami Herald. Read about it here. I laugh like a little girl every time I read it. (Don't forget to hide the screen from the children while you read.)


Lee

 

[Diamondback]

Hey, how do you think all good engineers get their starts?lol

 

[MrNewportCustom]

Hey, how do you think all good engineers get their starts?lol

As humor columnists?

This device certainly changed Dave Barry's career. About a decade and a half after writing this article, BAM! He retired!

Lee

 

[Diamondback]

I meant by building dangerous toys like those.

 

[MrNewportCustom]

I meant by building dangerous toys like those.

Could this, perhaps, explain my brother having built the slingshot/crossbow device as a teen and now working as a computer tech at JPL?


Lee

 

[Diamondback]

Hey, why not? Jim Lovell of Apollo 13 fame got his start building homebrew solid-fuel rockets...

 

[Dr Doran]

Not exactly a "toy," but lighting hairspray (AquaNet in my case) on fire with a lighter and having a flamethrower was a fun dangerous thing to do in my younger teen years. Did any of you do that?

 

[Diamondback]

I didn't, but I thought about it, it sounds really fun... *waggles eyebrows*

Of course, "artistic use of Pop-Its" is always fun... like, oh, under the welcome mat or the toilet-seat...

lol

 

[Doh!]

Sure, we had Klick-Klacks, but even though ours never shattered, we quite often used them as a bolas against each other.

Another fun toy we had was Time Bomb:

http://www.spookshows.com/toys/time/timebomb.htm

Wind it up, and hope that the metal mechanism repeatedly striking the inside of the plastic shell doesn't eventually come all the way through!

We had Jarts, too.

Hmmm... come to think of it, perhaps our parents were trying to do us in...?

 

[dostacos]

Hey, why not? Jim Lovell of Apollo 13 fame got his start building homebrew solid-fuel rockets...

knew a guy in San Jose [invented the HUD for jet fighters] he decided to try model rockets. first time he tried the fuel he blew a hole in a parking lot big enough to lose a VW bug in.

He loaded his stand and metal rocket into his buddies station wagon and headed out to Milpitas. now we are not talking straight up HE was shooting it out toward Oakland.

they set it up, and do a countdown, and fire away.

just then 2 A6 intruders are coming in to the base out there. As he described it "First the radar went from a long sweep to a short sweep then pegged with tone that something was coming at them hard and fast followed by each plane breaking right or left, and full power climb finishing with changing their shorts "

realizing that this was not a GOOD THING, so they threw the launch pad into the station wagon just as two helios land and armed men charge out and start to have a "discussion" with them. My friend pulled out his wallet to display a security clearance way beyond the 2nd Lt's paygrade and after yelling at them for a while sent them on their way.

Same guy told us it would be easier to make a star wars blaster that worked than just LOOKED good. but that is a story for another day.

Dan

 

[staggerwing]

When I was about 15, I was hanging around the house one day. Got bored and started rummaging around. The first thing I found was a length of pipe, which, I keenly noted, was threaded on one end. "Hmmm, what can I make of this?" I tried a couple of things, when I found that a "glow plug" from one of those model airplane engines I mentioned in my previous post to this thread, fit perfectly. Now, I was on a roll. I found a large ball bering that would just barely fit down the pipe, and had an "ah ha!" moment. Cut the heads off a mess of fireplace matches, rammed them down on top of the glow plug. Stuff in a little toilet paper "wadding"...yea, you know where I'm going with this...and the ball bering (berring? whatever)...projectile.

Some wires and a battery, and I set the thing up on the KITCHEN counter! Well, I hooked up the battery and a moment later, BOOM!!!

There was a trail of burning debris across the kitchen. I found the projectile embedded in the dining room wall. It had gone clean through the kitchen wall, and halfway through the dining room wall. Now, that was a cool toy.

 

[Big Man]

This was what was fun about toy guns. By the way, that's me as a kid of about 5 or 6 years old.

 

[Lincsong]

I had a Jack Klugman doll that was 'anatomically correct'. That was my favorite toy.

And I thought the story about "football" weddings was bad.

 

[Story]

There was a trail of burning debris across the kitchen. I found the projectile embedded in the dining room wall. It had gone clean through the kitchen wall, and halfway through the dining room wall. Now, that was a cool toy.

Brilliant!

 

[MrNewportCustom]

And I thought the story about "football" weddings was bad.

Hold on to your hat, Linc. My brother is getting married a year from this October 4th. . . . At Disneyland! (His fiancee nixed the Star Wars-themed wedding.)


Lee
____________________________

"There are various forms of the disease, the victim of which is unable to say 'No.' Some of these forms are more serious than others, and often lead to electrocution or marriage." - Robert Benchley

 

[MrNewportCustom]

Back to dangerous toys . . .

A friend of mine still has the Fourth of July "Big Bang" cannon he got as a kid and likes to fire it off whenever possible. The thing is made of steel, and knowing his penchant for blowing things up I can only imagine some of the things that went on in his back yard. (Firing strike anywhere matches at sow bugs climbing the cinderblock wall with his BB gun, comes to mind.)

Lee
___________________________

Yes, I've always wanted one.

 

[Diamondback]

Ahhh, now we're talkin'! Carbide cannons are always fun, too... I may need to find me a Civil War reenactor group and join up just so I can play with 'em...