Glass blowing, if you didn't know, is the art of working with molten f*****g 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.

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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:

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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.

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 s**t, we're pretty sure they'd invented common sense by then.

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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.

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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:

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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.

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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.

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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 "f**k safety! This thing f*****g moves!" slogan.

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.)

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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.

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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.

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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?

Electrical kitchen toys were actually pretty popular back then, because when you're training your daughter to be a housewife it's also important to make her aware of the inherent dangers that come with the job. Not doing so would be irresponsible. Stores sold tiny irons, coffee pots, bread toasters and so on, all with names like Sunny Suzy or Little Deb, as if a cutesy name was somehow enough to make them remotely entertaining. However, even the ones that prided themselves on being safer than the competition were negligent:

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Note that the "double insulation" that supposedly protects you from heat and electricity is only available if you're willing to dish out the extra 50 cents for the more expensive iron. Also, it only heats up to 250 degrees? As the website we cribbed this ad from points out, that's 40 degrees hotter than boiling water. But hey, kids gotta learn somehow.

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OK, no, scratch that. The manual itself taught kids how to create explosions with gunpowder -- on the first page -- and the sole safety feature consisted of a single line telling them not to attempt the same experiment on a larger scale ... which only served the purpose of informing kids that this was a possibility.

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After remaining popular for the first half of the 20th century, Gilbert chemistry sets fell from grace in the '60s and '70s (following a series of entirely predictable lawsuits). However, at one point these hazardous kits were endorsed by both Good Housekeeping and Superman himself.

But it turns out that chemistry sets weren't the only children's toy stuffed with dangerous chemicals back then ...

Calcium carbide is on all kinds of hazardous materials lists because when it comes into contact with liquid, it forms a flammable gas. This isn't some unforeseen side effect the makers of this toy could have never predicted -- it's exactly how those freaking balls were fired. There was a literal explosion happening in the back of the toy gun every time your gentle child fingers pressed the trigger, which would launch the ball up to 70 feet away.

Just a little bit of spit was enough to cause the reaction, as demonstrated in this video of a couple of dudes firing one in a trailer park (also they appear to have tried some of the magic crystals themselves):

And if you used up all the powder, maybe you could borrow some ammonium nitrate from your Gilbert chemistry set for a bigger chemical reaction.

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As a kid, did you ever swallow or at least put in your mouth a small piece of a toy or play set? Did you grow an extra arm because of it? No? Then you probably didn't have the Atomic Energy Lab.

You see, there was a different approach to nuclear power in the '50s and early '60s -- atomic energy was our friend and the way of the future, and it would never do anything to hurt us. However, it's still hard to believe that anyone would entrust kids with radioactive material (even in small doses).

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Yet, the Atomic Energy Lab kit produced by the American Basic Science Club came with real samples of uranium (which is radioactive) and radium (which is a million times more radioactive than uranium). Since the mere presence of radioactive material in a children's product clearly wasn't insane enough, some of the experiments detailed in the manual also required kids to handle blocks of dry ice. Dry ice, by the way, has a temperature of minus 109.3 degrees Fahrenheit, and it's recommended that it only be handled while wearing gloves (none were included).

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Gilbert, of course, couldn't be left behind and introduced their own Atomic Energy Lab, which also came with radioactive samples and even a little Geiger counter that kids could use to measure the amount of radiation left in their bodies after each play session.

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For more toys children shouldn't have, check out 11 Modern Technologies That Are Way Older Than You Think. Or learn about toys we wished we grew up with in 8 Old School Toys That Got Badass Makeovers.

And stop by LinkSTORM to see what happens when Swaim sets up his own atomic energy lab.

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