4

Kinder Chocolate Eggs

Food and toys have a strong relationship. Everybody remembers the sheer joy and excitement of finding the toy surprise in their morning bowl of Lucky Charms. Kids rarely choked on those toys because the boxes had huge flashy advertisements all over them and the toy was usually the first thing they looked for when they tore open the box with their teeth and hands like a lion pouncing on a weak, marshmallow-filled antelope.

Leave it to the Germans to turn childhood joy into unrelenting horror.

Kreiner Imports of Chicago sold the Kinder Egg to stores in the South and Midwest from March to August 1997, just in time for another Christ-based holiday that finds children eating candy-filled chocolate eggs with as much thought and chewing as Pac-Man in attack mode. Unfortunately, Kreiner's chocolate eggs were actually tiny plastic toys with a delicious chocolate shell wrapped around them.

3

Sky Dancers

2

The Easy Bake Oven

Like the Slinky, Uncle Milty's Ant Farm and Ohio Art's Etch-a-Sketch, the Easy Bake Oven has become a classic toy in the halls of childhood nostalgia. Every little girl or confused young boy had one growing up, or at least the ones who had parents who actually loved them. They could do just about anything a grown up oven could such as bake cakes and cookies, make fudge and brownies and prepare women for a lifetime of soul-crushing indentured servitude to a man who only cares if his meals and his women are as hot and quiet as possible.

But 44 years after Kenner toys created the Easy Bake Oven, it went from a cute childhood plaything that taught children how to give every kid on the block diabetes, to a menacing finger scorching monster.

The CSPC announced a recall in February 2007 after 29 reports of burned fingers surfaced and again this past summer when the latest incantation of the toy created by Hasbro baked up 77 incidents of burned fingers, 15 of which went as high as second- and third-degree burns. A 5-year-old girl even had to have part of her finger amputated. Just like a big girl!

Why they should have known:
Forget the fact that the Easy Bake Oven has always been dangerous because it lets children eat icing by the bag. It also lets children stick their fingers in an oven.

Hasbro proudly rolled out their new and improved version of the classic children's toy in 2006 claiming they replaced the light bulb with its own central heating system, according to Hasbro's official Easy Bake Oven timeline.

1

Lawn Darts or Jarts

Lawn darts were introduced in the '60s, a more innocent time when the world did not yet realize that children could be harmed by something as innocuous as a flying metal spike.

The CSPC finally caught on in 1988, when the toys actually killed three children. They issued a recall alert that, not only called for a ban, but also ordered any remaining darts be destroyed on sight like they were bloodthirsty zombies roaming the streets in search of kids to puncture.

Then CSPC Chairwoman Ann Brown reissued the recall alert in May 1997 when one hit a 7-year-old Indiana boy in the head so hard, it pierced his skull. The fan site, Lawn-Jarts.com questions the recall and asks what the big fuss was all about. Cracked.com may not be Consumer Reports, but we have a feeling it has something to do with the dead kids.

Why they should have known:
This toy went with the strategy of taking darts, a game clearly unsafe for children, and deciding it would be safer if it were 10 times larger, and if the rules were changed so that the target was basically your entire lawn. We're assuming that exploding tip lawn darts were also considered at some point.

It's true that, as lawn dart proponents remind us, the game is perfectly safe if played according to the rules. Of course, the reality is that it takes about three minutes for kids to grow bored with the actual game and for someone to dare someone else to stand over the target and try to catch the dart in his teeth.

Let's face it, if children could be trusted to perfectly obey safety warnings, they could be trusted with flamethrowers, too. Hell, if they could read and obey safety warnings, they'd run the world because half the adults can't even do that.

If you liked this article, check out Danny's rundown of the The 8 Greatest Makeshift Movie Weapons .