The 8 Most Wildly Irresponsible Vintage Toys
These days, if a stuffed animal's plastic eye so much as wiggles, that toy is recalled faster than you can say "class action lawsuit." Back in the day, though, child safety consisted of just getting out of the way and letting natural selection do its thing. If a kid was too dumb to play with a toy the right way, well, he'd just have to learn to get along with one less eye.
That meant molten glass, molten metal, hazardous chemicals -- all were included in toys back then ... on purpose.
#8. Gilbert Glass Blowing Set
jitterbuzz
That kid behind him is eagerly waiting for a bong.
Glass blowing, if you didn't know, is the art of working with molten fucking glass to make your very own glass containers. Oh, and you do it by blowing into a wad of molten glass with your mouth. Bizarre as it sounds, glass blowing was considered a useful skill for a young man to have half a century ago. Universities actually required chemistry students to make their own test tubes, once they were done carving their desks out of lumber.
jitterbuzz
They'll be fine if they don't inhale. Or slip.
Keep in mind that in order to be able to change the shape of the glass, first it has to reach its softening point, which is around 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The Gilbert Glass Blowing Set encouraged children to try this with their bare hands in order to carry out a series of wildly irresponsible experiments detailed in the manual:
archive
We did find that when the glass becomes red hot it removes all the skin from our hands.
Another one involved blowing up a bubble of hot glass until it burst in your face, as if that's not how every single project would end anyway.
#7. Gilbert Molten Lead Casting Kit
liveauctioneers
"Over 10 IQ points lost with every pack!"
Gilbert's Kaster Kits (yes, Gilbert, the same people who gave you the glass blowing kit) allowed you to create your own army of tiny metallic minions ... which sounds kinda awesome until you realize it involved casting them from molten lead by yourself.
liveauctioneers
Try not to feel like Saruman while you do so, we dare you.
As in, put metal slugs into a little melting pot, and once they were molten, scoop up the molten metal and pour it into a mold. That really sounds like a risk someone should be paying you to take, not the other way around.
These sets came out in the late 1920s and early 1930s, but holy shit, we're pretty sure they'd invented common sense by then.
modernmechanix
Apparently not.
They included supplies for making soldiers, battleships, airplanes, cannons and horses, among other things. Ten bucks says more than one kid injured his hands trying to hastily reshape a hot chunk of lead into a nudie girl.
ammoman
Or you could use a knife to sculpt boobs directly into the mold. We've given this some thought.
Later models did include a machine that did the pouring, but it still had an open top, which doesn't sound like that much of a safety improvement ... despite the ads' best efforts to convince us otherwise:
Dailykos
"Absolutely safe"? That sad ghost-boy face haunting the kit says otherwise.
#6. Stevens' Model Dockyard Locomotive
christies
There has to be something wildly dangerous about this thing to make us care.
In 1843, realizing that boys might want a toy train that did more than just sit there, the Stevens Company created the Model Dockyard Locomotive, one of the first ones that actually moved. Of course, the main reason why toy trains didn't move up to that point was simply that the technology didn't exist. The Model Dockyard Locomotive got around that limitation by using a real steam-propelled engine that required kids to pour either kerosene or alcohol into the train and then light it.
ebay
It also comes in a "battered pipe-bomb" edition.
It even came with a little boiler attachment to heat the water. Apparently, 19th century adults had a lot more faith in kids not accidentally setting themselves on fire than we do.
steamman
Either that or they really hated children.
But wait, that's not the dangerous part yet. The toy steam engines of this era were nicknamed "dribblers" or "piddlers" because they tended to piss a continuous stream of alcohol or kerosene-laden water as they rolled along the floor. This safety hazard didn't stop the Model Dockyard Locomotive from becoming a popular children's toy in England back then, mainly on account of the strength of its "Fuck safety! This thing fucking moves!" slogan.
Thankfully modern action cinema has made us aware of the dangers of leaking fuel.
Also, at this point toy trains didn't even have tracks, so kids could just set them on a path of destruction across the house and then light the kerosene coming out of the back, leaving a blazing trail of death. (Or at least that's totally what we would've done.)
steamman
The fire speaks to us.
#5. Powermite Working Power Tools
samstoybox
Ahhh, look at the tiny serrations on that blade!
Powermite Tools allowed kids to play with fun-sized replicas of the tools Dad used every day at work, including the one that tragically cut both his hands off. Yes, unlike that pansy-ass plastic shit they sell now, these were actual working tools made of die-cast metal, only recognizable as a children's product due to the fact that they were smaller.
samstoybox
"Small, sharp things can't hurt you."
The blades in that circular saw up there probably aren't sharp enough to pierce through a human skull, but still, we dare you to find a used set on eBay that doesn't come decorated with suspicious red stains.
ebay
But hey, you can also use them as ninja stars!
Another winning Powermite product was the battery-operated table saw, which looks like a hamster-sized version of a James Bond death trap (and was probably used as such). If mutilating himself or others wasn't enough, a boy could also "play" with the Powermite router, hand drill, orbital sander, buffer, drill press and sabre saw. Somehow.
samstoybox
Note that the sabre saw comes with a spare blade, in case the first one has been dulled by bone.
The sets came with instructions to build lame little projects out of balsa wood and Styrofoam -- as if that was enough to distract boys from realizing that they could also wreak havoc with these things. Meanwhile, girls were stuck with their lame but perfectly safe little dolls and stuff like that ... right?
Excellent article! But I have to say I was a bit surprised to find #7 on the list. Casting lead soldiers? I thought people were doing this to this day! Especially considering the miniature battle games like Warhammer that are so popular. I live in Sweden, and my dad bought me the first casting moulds for tin soldiers when I was eight, and showed me how to do it. I got burned from hot lead once, when I hadn't sealed the mould properly, but never again after that, and I cast a bleedin' army of the things! And these casting sets are still sold in Swedish toy stores to this day. Are you telling me that they are considered "irresponsible" in the US? Well, you just confirmed another one of the prejudices we europeans hold about you guys...;-)
ReplyMan shut up.
"Apparently, 19th century adults had a lot more faith in kids not accidentally setting themselves on fire than we do."
ReplyConsidering electric light was mostly still into the future, this toy wasn't much more dangerous than studying, since supposedly the kids had to light their own kerosene lamps to hit the books. The only alternative would be studying outdoors using daylight, but then they would just get tanned like common labourers. Now there's a fate worse than death for the Victorian middle and upper classes!
Ah, the mini size power tools. The kids that played with these back in the day now are our horror movie directors and serial killers. Isn't it nice how toys can make a boy a man with a homicidal mission? I wonder if their parents noticed something was amiss when Junior was cutting off the heads of squirrels with the power saw?
ReplyI'm not THAT old but as a child we actually played with the molten lead little soldier making kit (probably a hand-me-down from my dad). The favorite part was to slowly drop them back into the pot making screaming noises as their little legs melted off. Now, I work in a book bindery where we actually have a much larger molten lead pot that makes "slugs" to hot foil stamp the titles onto book covers. When little kids come through for tours, I tell them all about my fun but dangerous toy I played with as a kid and demonstrate how we used to melt the solders. Still have all my fingers and brain cells (I think??) Tracy/Madison, WI
ReplyDang it! I wanted a chemistry set when I was a kid and my parents deprived me...wah! I showed them, though...I became a chemist!
ReplyI think everyone's forgetting about the real danger here . . . DRY ICE!!!
ReplyMy generation (born in the 1980's) were the first to be brought up with this hyper-sheltered, everything and everyone is dangerous parenting attitude, and have you seen how we've turned out? I literally know dozens of people my age who now have children of their own but their parents still pay their cell phone bill.
ReplyIf my daughter wants to walk down the street to the store, or try glass blowing in grade school, then by golly she'll do just that.
I wish I was a child of the 20's, this makes my Etch-a-Sketch and View Master look like bullshit.
ReplyIf you don't want to have to read the next few lengthy comments let me summarize for you: "Kids then were smart and responsible; kids now are stupid and parents are lazy".
ReplyHuman intelligence is constantly growing. I know the days look brighter in the past, but that's either a case of rose coloured glasses or your dementia acting up.
I used full sized power tools when I was 12 and the risks were expained to me, but those spinning blades of death and the exploding gun were marketed as toys. Kids haven't gotten dumber, companies have gotten smarter (i.e. been sued).
With the exception of #1 (and in all fairness in that era they didn't know that radioactive ores were dangerous), these toys weren't irresponsible, they were cool! Back in the day kids knew how to be careful and came with common sense wielding supervisory units more commonly known as parents! Now everyone is so afraid of a kid getting any minor injury. Well that's how kids learn. There's nothing wrong with kids getting little scrapes and bruises, maybe even a broken bone or two, it's all part of childhood. An important part at that. Now we're engineering a generation of kids that are so demure around anything that might even kind of be dangerous; they're going to grow up with no self preservation instincts. I mean for the love of god, kids don't even get to go run around outside anymore, much less climb a freakin' tree. We wonder why childhood obesity is such a problem? I'll tell you right now, it's because what used to be called "playing outside" and "fun" has now been deemed too dangerous, and the only exercise children are allowed to get is f*****g boring s**t like running around a track or doing pushups and situps in the house. Good god.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesOh man, I just typed out a great big ol' reply to someone else explaining this, but they totally did know that radiation was quite deadly back when those kits came out, which is why they didn't include enough radioactive material for anyone to hurt themselves with in those kits. #1 is in fact the safest item on that list.
Well I know they knew that these radioactive materials were dangerous in the sense that they could create giant f*****g explosions with the right amount and tools. But I'm not so sure they had a good grip on the consequences of radiation exposure. And the article conveniently forgets to mention how little of the material was included. Made it sound like the set came with a decent sized chunk of each.
Yeah, those kits came out a good 15 years after the end of World War 2, so we'd had plenty of time to see the effects of radiation on people first hand, unfortunately. There were pretty decent sized chunks of uranium ore in those kits. Well, small pebble sized, really, but noticeable at least. Uranium ore puts out a surprisingly tiny amount of the least dangerous type of radiation though, so there's really no danger from that. As for the radium, the kits actually only had a dab of radium paint on the end of a pin. Basically the same stuff they were putting in glow in the dark wristwatches well into the 80s. And they stopped using that because it was dangerous for the people who were working with it day in and day out year after year, not because a tiny dab posed any danger to customers.
I think that these toys should be required gifts at the end of each grade. Starting with #8 in the first grade, working up to #1 in the eighth. If the parents of say a first grader refuse the glass blowing kit because it's too dangerous, that should be interpreted as them saying their child is to stupid to not stick their hand in a fire and they should thus be required to repeat the first grade. And so on down the line. It would obviously require a bit of fine tuning, but I think the idea is sound.
ReplyOne thing you left out, kids THEN weren't IDIOTS like they are today. Big difference. We could play with chemistry sets and so on and not end up dead, I know, I DID as did everyone I knew in the 60s and 70s. Today many of the inner city ghetto illegals and other kids would be making and lighting their weed and crack pipes with the glass blowing ignition qualities, not building.
ReplyAt least the racism proves he grew up in the 1960s.
There's not much wrong with these toys (with an exception of the last one). I'm afraid there is something wrong with modern kids or parents. They were not meant for 5-year old but rather for kids around 12-13 years of age. Im my times such kids were building their first primitive radios using welding irons, making kit models using Exacto knives and acetone-based glues, make primitive fireworks with sugar and salpeter (or carbide salts for that matter) and percussion caps with potassioum chlorate. And the most severe accidents I remember from my neighborhood included being run over by a car or breaking some bones after a fall from a tree. Making toy soldiers ou of lead was a popular pasttime in the time of my parents (although my father says that it was lead scrounging that was the fun part). Using hot lead or tool was usually supervised by parents but kids quickly learned basic safety rules.
ReplyBy the way - you have to be really gifted to scald yourself severely while making toy soldiers (in that case forget about frying bacon - hot fat is hotter than lead at melting point and leave far more nasty burns). The toxicity of lead though is another story.
Are the producers in jail now?
ReplyI had a chemistry set with potassium permanganate when I was a kid, too.
Reply... I think I need to have a talk with my parents.
those toys are awesome
ReplyI hope in the future, that skin grafting gun featured in an earlier Craked article has a toy version, perhaps a new Gilbert toy.
Replymy co-worker's half-sister makes $84 hourly on the laptop. She has been laid off for 5 months but last month her income was $7450 just working on the laptop for a few hours. Read about it on this web site CashLazy.cÒm
ReplyI lost 3 fingers to the Powermite circular saw. Thank god I was able to grow them back with the Gilbert Atomic energy lab!
ReplyHell, I had to pitch a fit to play with my grandmother's vintage lawn darts back in the day. She was horrified at the prospect of one of us ending up with a lawn dart embedded in our skull.
ReplyThere ain't NO WAY I would have gotten something like this as a gift. I regularly tried to burn the house down with household items, let alone this crazy shit...