# Lifestyles & Discussion > Science & Technology >  The 8 Most Wildly Irresponsible Vintage Toys.

## phill4paul

Here we have it. Humanity should never have gotten to the point we are at now. Thank goodness there are those among us to tell us what is safe and what is not. 

http://www.cracked.com/article_19481...tage-toys.html

  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



Glass blowing, if you didn't know, is the art of working with molten $#@!ing 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.



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:



  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



  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.



  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 $#@!, we're pretty sure they'd invented common sense by then.



Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_19481...#ixzz2kmDfvVyv

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## 2young2vote

I think this is an example of why people back then and before grew up faster than nowadays.  If you did something stupid - you would know it.

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## CaseyJones

http://www.cracked.com/article_17493...rens-toys.html 

lol

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## Scrapmo

It looks like kids could learn some useful skills from some of these toys. Ah F**k it, just stick em in front of spongebob until its time to go to bed.

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## Icymudpuppy

I'm pretty sure my Dad had the complete Gilbert collection.

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## mad cow

And Lawn Darts didn't even make the list.

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## phill4paul

> I think this is an example of why people back then and before grew up faster than nowadays.  If you did something stupid - you would know it.


  From this a child learns that tools cannot hurt you. They can play unsupervised. Unsupervised training leads to dumb$#@! decisions.



  I'm lucky. My dad let me use his tools under his supervision. This would have rocked though....

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## Brian4Liberty

I wonder what happened to that old chemistry set? Probably deep in a landfill somewhere.

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## pcosmar

Toys?

I was swinging a double blade axe at 8 yrs old,, had been taught to shoot at 4.
We were poor,,  my friends had the cool toys.

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## phill4paul

> Toys?
> 
> I was swinging a double blade axe at 8 yrs old,, had been taught to shoot at 4.
> We were poor,,  my friends had the cool toys.


  By all modern accounts those of our age should have died out.

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## CPUd



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## pcosmar

They missed this one.

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## phill4paul

> They missed this one.


 I'm all in. Can we mow some lawns or have a yard sale?

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## tod evans

Walk down memory lane.............Thanks!

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## Demigod

Glass blowing is an art.And kids this days live in bubbles.I have seen kids who are not allowed to walk on grass because it was dirty and there were insects.

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## DGambler

> I wonder what happened to that old chemistry set? Probably deep in a landfill somewhere.


I had this, was pissed that my dad wouldn't teach me how to make nitroglycerin.

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## acptulsa

Ah, yes, let us laugh at how the free market did dangerous things (like melting lead) before they were known to be as dangerous as they are.  And let us blame a lack of government meddling for it, even though before the hazards were known governments were more likely to mandate it than to prohibit it...

And by all means let us make the world safe for idiots, even if it stifles the intelligent to the point where the human race falls into stagnation.  Because governments love stagnation--after all, it preserves the status quo.

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## MelissaWV

> Glass blowing is an art.And kids this days live in bubbles.I have seen kids who are not allowed to walk on grass because it was dirty and there were insects.


I listened to my sister prattle off about all the electronics and games and programs and movies and toys and clothing that my niece needed as part of "play."  She was mostly talking to my mom, but I was also on the phone, so there was a little pause and I said "At her age, I played with grasshoppers."

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## ClydeCoulter

> I listened to my sister prattle off about all the electronics and games and programs and movies and toys and clothing that my niece needed as part of "play."  She was mostly talking to my mom, but I was also on the phone, so there was a little pause and I said "At her age, *I played with grasshoppers*."


Me too, I made a little recurved bow with a bobby pin, strung it with thread, then made little arrows out of toothpicks and then went grasshopper hunting

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## MelissaWV

> Me too, I made a little recurved bow with a bobby pin, strung it with thread, then made little arrows out of toothpicks and then went grasshopper hunting


Not quite... what I had in mind lol

I used to pick them up by pinning their back legs to their bodies, then I could look at them more closely.  It's amazing how many variations on something so seemingly simple are out there.

(Note: this was definitely a catch and release operation)

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## Origanalist

I'm glad the person who wrote this stuff was not any influence in the life of my kids......

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## tangent4ronpaul

> They missed this one.


http://www.michaelchuck.com/the_submarine.htm

(...)
And then one day I saw it:  the Polaris Nuclear Submarine.  Right there on the inside cover of my favorite comic book.  It looked beautiful, all metallic and shiny, with rivets visible all over its shell-like exterior.  This baby had everything.  Missiles that fired.  Torpedoes that launched.  A real periscope.  An electrically lit control panel.  According to the ad, two kids could fit into the thing.  The ad described, like some twisted con artist, the hours of fun and adventure two boys could have diving and exploring the underwater depths in this mighty machine.  All for only $6.98 (plus shipping and handling).  I immediately thought of Kirk, my younger brother.  Maybe with both our allowances . . . .   

Poor Kirk.  I had Kenny and Wayne and Steve and George to look up to as older brothers and role models.  He had me. 

This episode took place shortly after the time I talked him into making mudpies on top of my Dad’s newly shampooed carpets.  I talked to this second grader about how we could take this Polaris sub deep into the Delaware River, exploring its bottom through the portholes.  There’d be all the fish, and maybe even treasure on the bottom.  Who knew? No one had ever been down there to explore.  Certainly no kids our age.  You can say I was a stupid kid, believing that for seven bucks they would actually ship me a working submarine . . . .  But I wish you wouldn’t.   

The fact is, that’s exactly what I believed.  I not only believed it, I convinced my little brother Kirk.  We as kids had a sweet naiveté, a charming innocence that kids just don’t possess today.  Kids today are more cynical.  They’re jaded.  We believed with wide-eyed wonder . . . .  Crazy for electric football . . . .   Astonished at pong . . . .  We stood around the TV set in 1980 and marveled at cable and HBO and the fact that you could hear all the profanity on TV, “just like at the movies.” 

The illustration of this submarine sure made it look like it would submerge just fine.  But Kirk didn’t have enough money either.  Seven dollars in 1969 to a nine-year-old might as well have been a hundred. 

That’s where my older brother Wayne came in.  I don’t recall details, but it was Wayne who gave us the money for the submarine.  He was about 21 or 22 and recently out of the service.   

We mailed the money and waited with eager anticipation for the underwater marvel to arrive.  Each day seemed like a week.  Then finally, one Saturday afternoon a long, nearly flat brown cardboard box was delivered to our house.  On the front, in large black letters, it said, HERE IS YOUR POLARIS NUCLEAR SUBMARINE!   

Kirk and I looked at this strange package, mystified . . . .  How could our submarine be in there?  I was expecting at least a very large wooden crate.  Maybe even some kind of crane to lower it into the back yard (we had talked of how we would attach it to the roof of Dad’s car to get the monster down to the river . . . the sub, not Dad . . . .). 

A nameless dread rising within me, I began to pull open the big box.  Inside, to my shocked dismay, were several pieces of flat, blue colored cardboard.  We took them out and spread them across the floor.  There were little metal clamps in a bag to fasten the cardboard pieces together.  Once put together, the thing had room for two kids, all right.  They could fit in the large cut-out hole in the bottom.  The “electrically lit control panel” consisted of a single small bare bulb, the size of a blueberry.  The plastic toy periscope and torpedoes completed the set.  I didn’t see how we were going to explore underwater in this thing.   

Cardboard . . . .  It was made of cardboard!  HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAA!   

The story of my young life.  Once again, my most cherished dreams, my fondest, deepest hopes torn to shreds like used tissue paper.  Kirk wanted to mail it back, but hey, it was a gift.  It wasn’t Wayne’s fault our expectations were too high.   

In the end, we did finally play in that cardboard submarine, a two-man crew, and pretended to dive, hunt for treasure, and battle enemy navies.  We used our imaginations and explored depths of wonder no real submarine could ever hope to reach.   

Not bad for seven bucks.

-t

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## CaptainAmerica

teaching kids to burn their animals eyes out at an early age

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## klamath

> Not quite... what I had in mind lol
> 
> I used to pick them up by *pinning their back legs to their bodies*, then I could look at them more closely.  It's amazing how many variations on something so seemingly simple are out there.
> 
> (Note: this was definitely a catch and* release operation*)


Yeaw because if you hold them that way their legs generally came off!:

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## CPUd

> The fact is, that’s exactly what I believed. I not only believed it, I convinced my little brother Kirk. We as kids had a sweet naiveté, a charming innocence that kids just don’t possess today. Kids today are more cynical. They’re jaded. We believed with wide-eyed wonder . . . . Crazy for electric football . . . . Astonished at pong . . . . We stood around the TV set in 1980 and marveled at cable and HBO and the fact that you could hear all the profanity on TV, “just like at the movies.”


Back then we called it "Home Box Office"

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## MelissaWV

> Yeaw because if you hold them that way their legs generally came off!:


No, you gently pin the legs to their body in the folded position.  If they kick out a lot, just open your hands.  I very very very very very very very rarely had a leg come off of one.

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## Origanalist

> No, you gently pin the legs to their body in the folded position.  If they kick out a lot, just open your hands.  I very very very very very very very rarely had a leg come off of one.


Collateral damage.

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## MelissaWV

> Collateral damage.


That leg was already loose, I swear!

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## mad cow

When I was a young lad,I used to pin their legs very gently in the folded position to their bodies and impale them on my fishhooks.

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