Strollerderby

How Did We Survive? Unsafe Toys From Our Childhood

Posted by Karen Murphy

easy bake ovenI'm pretty sure that if the safety rules we impose over the toys our kids play with were imposed on the toys we played with when we were little, we would have been playing with nothing but rocks. Wait. Scratch that. Not rocks. They're, you know, hard. Uh, cotton balls! Yeah. Nice, soft cotton balls. Wait, they're chokable aren't they? Never mind the cotton balls. What about ... uh ... blocks of wood? (splinters. nope.) Um...what, then?

Well, Kelly remembers the evil, dangerous toys we all had. It's a wonder any of us are still alive, having survived BB guns, Easy Bake ovens (I had a jewelry maker that melted plastic. Tell me THAT thing was safe), and the heartbreak of Sea Monkeys.

Go read her piece over at The Poop. She's funnier than me. Go on. Go! 


+ DIGG + STUMBLE
Posted Aug 22 2007, 10:34 AM
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Comments

 

trayletha said:

and we slept in cribs with gaps large enough for our heads to fit through - and we didn't have car seats either, when I was two months old my parents drove from Washington DC to Memphis, TN with me in a cardboardbox behind the passenger seat. HA, it is amazing any of us survived to reproduce.

August 22, 2007 11:17 AM
 

creative-type dad said:

Somehow we survived. I don't get why the media goes overboard with this stuff.

Oh yeah...ratings

August 22, 2007 11:36 AM
 

K said:

of course, Easy Bake Ovens weren't made with cheap plastic by cheap labor. Neither for that matter were cars. Go ahead, dig out your 1970s/80s easy bake and compare it to a brand new one. Stuff is made more cheaply these days and are thereby more likely to break, fall apart, etc.

Maybe less parents these days teach their kids to be careful with stuff, or actually do that whole "parental supervision" thing.

A lot of us here probably came from middle class families and were therefore more likely to have close parental involvement, good health care, and better-quality (i.e. less cheap) toys.

I really wish the CPSC had historical statistics...

August 22, 2007 12:01 PM
 

HDCS said:

What? No lawn dart love?

August 22, 2007 1:44 PM
 

deeness said:

@ K:

You're right about the Easy Bake Ovens.  Even the recent recall made sure to mention that older models were safe!

August 22, 2007 2:13 PM
 

| ourkidstoys.info said:

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August 28, 2007 2:08 AM
 

| ourkidstoys.info said:

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August 28, 2007 3:57 AM
 

Bill said:

I was just pondering a similar sentiment as it relates to playground equipment ...

"...The ground in the parks I grew up playing on consisted of concrete, packed sand and medical waste, but this playground was built on a rubberized base. The only rubber we saw on playgrounds as kids were the used condoms left next to the teeter-totters by sexually active teenagers and occasionally George Michael. And with that memory, WHAM, I was lost in a flashback of nostalgic reverie for the beloved character-building tetanus shot requiring playground equipment of my youth."

What was that stuff inside Stretch Armstrong anyway?

http://bgathen.wordpress.com

August 30, 2007 10:22 AM
 

| ourkidstoys.info said:

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September 1, 2007 1:58 AM

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