Dangerous Toys !!
 

When you think about some of the children's toys that were readily available, makes we wonder how we survived ... sure was one or two accidents here and there.
For instance, catapults, bow and arrows you whittled away to a sharp point. Pea-shooters if you didn't swalllow the pea before you shot it down the tube. Anymore ??

Re: Dangerous Toys !!
 

Oh I can think of a few accidents we had as kids. Back then we had less to do indoors so the great outdoors was our playground. Toys we didn’t have a lot of, but we did make many of our own Bow’s, arrows, catapults etc and often used them to effect.

I seem to remember that most of our accidents didn’t result from toys; we had the odd drowning from swimming in the lodges or worse “clay pits”.

Falling through holes in floors or trap door in old disused railway buildings, warehouses and mills cost the odd limb as did falling from bridges, trees, walls and barns and the like. Barbed wire was rare but I managed to get myself a three inch scar on the back of my right leg after running into it whilst evading an enraged farmer in my youth.

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And they say the kids of today are wild.

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Sorry should have added lol.

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I don’t think you can buy chemistry sets these days.
As a young lad I had about three chemistry sets bought for me back in the early 70’s.
They contained things like glass test tubes, beakers, mentholated spirit burners and acid’s and alkalises.
I spent many enjoyable hours experimenting with all my chemicals etc. Good fun.
I think these days they would be classed as to dangerous for young kids.

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Wild we may have been, but we knew where the line was........:)

Just you wait till play time Sara.......:p

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:) Cheers Len, I love it when someone post something that awakens memories.

I never got a Chemistry Set, it probably had something to do with the fact that I was given a Tools Set when I was Five or Six. Must have been then because we where still at Church.

Anyway the Tools Set had miniature, but real Tools including a little saw, the rest they say is History…:D

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Klackers.
Wooden balls on string. Loads of fun,but oh,the pain.

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There was a pair wrapped around the Telephone Lines across Miller Fold for years. I think they where Linda Balls.....

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Oh yeh Len, remember my bros. getting one, he played with the above, I just loved to make the crystallized garden in a fish bowl. Used to get a little too excited though and ruined it by putting too much in there. Probably a little like Mez's fishtank :D

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I too once had a chemical garden. :D
Was interesting seeing how those crystals grew in glycerine.

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I had a plastic sewing machine. The first time I used it I put the needle through my finger and hurled it at a wall.
Put me off sewing for life.

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Ooooh, Clackers..... I always wanted some but never got any. A girl at my junior school broke two fingers using them so I wasn't allowed any. I also wanted a chemistry set but never got one of those either. I was good at chemistry at school and I think my dad was afraid that I would blow up the house. My neighbour had a cap gun when he was a kid and we had hours of fun with that. I used to love the smell of the caps after they'd been fired and used to sniff them. I once burnt the end of my nose sniffing caps:D

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I started off with a small chemistry set and ended up taking over the shed white coat and all hehe .
but the explosives you could make were great we used to make rockets and shoot them over the river i was good friends with a local chemist and he would let me by most chemicals from him includind potassium feracyanide.!!used in bleaching pics

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I would say any toy is dangerous if thrown hard enough!!!!lol

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Spud guns. The guns you stuck into a potato, and then fired a one inch long cylindrical pellet at someone.


Happy, innocent days.

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Not really dangerous but would be seen as a bit unethical nowadays, syringes filled with sherbert.


As well as pretending to smoke with your chocolate cigarette, you could play at shooting up.

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We had teddy bears with button eyes on wires that came out. Never knew anyone who died from it.

I was never allowed a bike, only a tricycle. I used to hire one (two bob a day - extortionate!) from a girl in Russia Street so that I could go out with my friends. My mother would have gone mad if she'd known, but apart from the odd graze, I didn't suffer.

We used to go out in the morning with a few sandwiches and stay out all day. Nobody worried, except about the canal of course!

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One inch long! I think your measurment is slightly out there. More like 1/4" or maybe 1/2" at most. Reconverting from rindy measurment units that must make you endowment only 2 1/2" instead of the 10" you said.

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No I assure you the pellets were one inch long.


As well as being privately educated, having a swimming pool etc, we must have had better guns than poor you as well.:D

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if kids had them these days they would have more drugs out on the streets,parents would be getting poisened,mates would get lethal injections...........etc...........lol

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Making plaster of Paris molds of toy soldiers then casting our own copies by melting down old lead scraps (how the molten lead would spatter when sweat from your brow dripped in it!)

James

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Most sub-teen boys carried a small bottle of quicksilver (mercury) in their pocket. You could impress the girls by rolling it around in the palm of your hand -- also used to put farthings in to silver plate them so that they looked like sixpences.

James

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Making our own bows and arrows using bamboo garden stakes so that we could play Cowboys and Indians after the Saturday morning Mickey Mouse club serials (Buck Jones, Ken Maynard, Tim MCoy, et al.) at the Odeon.

The boys who wore their (Hubley) cap guns on their belts to the Cinema (quite a few) played the Cowboys.

James

Re: Dangerous Toys !!
 

Deffinately clackers!....

....made a brief comeback in my childhood (im now 20) but they were reduced to being made of plastic and on rigid plastic frames insted of string to avoid you hurting your wrists (spoil sport!)

My mum loved it when I brought them home....reminded her of when she was a girl...but hers had iron balls! So she always had black and blue wrists where they'd caught her.

She still beat me in a competition to se who was better at using the new ones :(

...what about those toys that you put round your ankle then there was a string with a ball on the end and you had to fling it round in a circle and kind of skip over it! Now been replaced with ones that light up and count how many you do etc etc...

Just shows that old toys are the best!

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When we were kids we used to use old stockings with a ball placed in the toe and tied round the ankle.

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Oooh, I remember doing that Anne. Had black and blue ankles all the time as I missed the jump and ended up with it wrapped completely round both legs.

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I remember scotch arrows made from bamboo, a dart point was added to one end then a couple of playing cards used as a flights, the lads used to wrap string round them some how then throw them across the field,unfortunately one plonker decided to go to the other end of the field and tried to catch one, it only ended up stuck right in his forehead,what a mess. He was very lucky we all thought he was dead,put it this way nobody ever tried it again,thankgod:eek:

Re: Dangerous Toys !!