I miss insanely dangerous Christmas toys.

[rydesteel]

Any one else play mumbletypeg?

[Nierman]

We didn't have much growing up, but my brother and I each had one of the two lenses from an old overhead projector and we made the most of it.

[Honus]

Maybe less bat shit dangerous toys, but plenty of awesome learning toys. I got my nephews Erector Sets last year and Snap Circuits this year. They probably hate me.

But with a subscription to Make Magazine and some creativity kids can make awesome shit. Although I did notice that most RC cars are sold these days fully assembled, that was half the fun! I see Tamiya released the Fox and Hornet... is it weird if I get one?

-Joe

Snap Circuits are awesome. My boys have two Snap Circuit sets and they love them. I have every issue of Make Magazine and I usually have to pry it out of my kids' hands. I had the Tamiya Grasshopper car when I was a kid- loved that thing. I see nothing wrong with picking up a Fox or Hornet.

I built lots of R/C models and plastic model kits when I was a kid- I built a lot of beautiful planes and dammit if I didn't crash every one of them, usually quite spectacularly. When I was a kid I built my own pulse jet engine from plans I ordered through the mail. If you want fun, loud and dangerous pulse jets are tough to beat.

[Nierman]

Kids these days don't have an Evel Knievel as their hero, either. But then I remember asking my Dad if Evel had a gun, and he replied with a "yeah, probably", and I was scared - what with him being Evel(sic) and all - thinking he could come and kill our family.

[Jake Rosenfeld]

Oh man, the bow and arrows..... I'm still picking slivers of fiberglass out of my hand from the yellow bow I got one year.
No matter how straight up and down I seemed to hold it when I shot I could never get the arrow to land any closer than 5' from me.

[David Tollefson]

Model glue. Geez, that Testors glue was wicked. Melted the plastic. I used to get that stuff all over my fingers. I'm sure we'll find out some day that it causes three a headed babies or something.

[nrs5000]

You all have hit on most of the dumb stuff I did but here is a new one. Drain some gas out of the lawnmowner and Dissolve some styrofoam in it -- home made napalm.

My boys are getting new bikes and pocket knives from Santa this year. But Santa can't hold a candle to grandpa, he just bought a pair of vintage Mini off road honda dirt bikes for them, 50 and 75 cc. He will need to restore them but he already has taken them for spins in the backyard. Their shrieks are louder than the motor.

[Too Tall]

I nominate this for best thread of the year in the off topic section.

[ldamelio]

Creepy Crawlers. The real ones from the 60's, not the pale imitation bull**t of the 80's or 90's. What better toy for a six year old than a scalding hot plate with metal molds and attractively colored (i.e. Hey kid, drink this!) carcinogens to cook into rubber bugs? Also came with sharp wires you could insert to make them flexible (or poke your annoying sister). Good stuff.

[EricKeller]

we had some jarts when I was a kid. Played a couple of times, no big deal. A few years later, we go to this campground somewhere in the midwest (think big open field). There was a family playing jarts. They had the targets so far apart that you could barely see them. Each toss was like a hail Mary. I think my dad threw ours away when we got home.

My brother modified one of my model trains to put an Estes rocket in it. I am not sure he ever actually set it off, it's still in one piece.

[lala]

I had a jar of mercury. Some relative brought it home from work and gave it to me.
I used to pour some out on the kitchen table and push it about with my fingers.
... Later that day, we would eat our meal from the same table.

No one told me it was poisonous and carcinogenic.

[ron l edmiston]

--- chemistry sets, the one with all the pull out drawers/tubes.., spilled the shit that stained the hardwood & carpet..
always got hell beat out of me for that..

ronnie with memories

[Tom]

Heck, I lived on a farm when I was a kid. We didn't need dangerous toys. Though two older brothers built a six foot tall working trebuchet once. That was cool. Powered by elastic cords that came from Pratt and Whitney where one brother worked, he said it was what they braided into the cord they caught planes with on carriers but he also made up all kinds of stories. Anyway, this thing could throw a rock the size of two fists about 400 yards on a straight line. Until they got the sling figured out it would throw them backwards or straight up. Good times, good times.

[dhoff]

Oh this is so good. Chemistry set was a good start, found the black powder recipe in the World Book Encyclopedia, Etes rocket engines were great too, cut out the filler at the bottom and then grind the propellant made a fire hot enough to melt aluminum. Then I met Jamie, his dad was a chemistry professor at Columbia and he is now an Organic Chem professor. We set out to make something that would burn hot enough to light the school on fire but failed, then set out to invent Mace.

the woodburning kit became a soldering iron and also could heat a doorknob to dangerous temperatures, SURPRISE! And when I found my dad's box of .22's (mom wouldn't allow guns) they were promptly embedded between two bricks and we through rocks till one went off, making a gash on my friend, Kaz's leg that didn't even need stitches. For some reason, my dad's "safety razor blades" seemed like good toys as well. Me and Tom came in the house to get a few band aids before my mother came out and found us sitting on top of the car, playing and bleeding. I think we were a bit disturbed.

Nowadays, we would have been medicated.

[Todd Amunrud]

My dad got us into building stilts one summer around age ten. We had a couple of sets of stilts that needed a ten foot step ladder to get started. A few of those falls were scary, but we'd get back up and go.

[quickag]

Mark Freeze and I learned a lot about chemistry and explosives in Mill Creek.

[echelon_john]

Built a treehouse by stealing boards from the garage.

Not boards stored in the garage; boards that WERE the garage. Amazed it remained standing. There are still boards up in that tree 30+ years later.

Made a zipline from said treehouse to the ground. Attempted to slide down zipline using a flat dowel over the line. Still have the scars from the rope burn on my hand.

Had a folding buck knife when I was about 10. Playing with knife while doing karate blocks, I managed to stick it directly into my thigh. My mother didn't drive, so had to wait 3hrs for my dad to get home to take me to the E.R. Good times.

[zachateseverything]

When I was 6 or so, my parents got my brother and I a set of NERF swords for Christmas. We were always fighting so I think they figured "might as well make it safe." What they didn't realize was that the foam blades were pretty easily removed which exposed a large, sharp, plastic spike. The toys seemed to vanish quickly after that discovery.

[Noteddy]

Lots of model rockets of various ill-advised designs - including a rocket-model "car" that was just a projectile. Home made ignitors - most of those scars have been covered up by others.

Probably the most ill-advised was making nitrogen triiodide. A contact explosive. Never managed to make very much, thank heavens. It was cool stuff with purple smoke and all. Everything about the process was highly corrosive.

A home-made hot air balloon from doped tissue paper which we heated by filling a five gallon bucket with charcoal and then blowing compressed air through it. Sounded like a jet engine. An airborne torch. That led to some experiments involving compressed air and flammable liquids that were essentially flamethrowers.

Growing up on the farm calibrates the risk register differently. Easy access to space, tools, welders, fuel, scrap metal and wood, there aren't many things you can't/won't try. Who needs toys? Amazing that all six of us survived. So far.

[thomas]

This thread is reminding me of Sixth Grade. The cool thing all my buds were into was making 'rockets' out of match heads and aluminum foil. We'd buy 50 book boxes of matches, cut off just the match tips, and then roll them in several layers of aluminum foil like a big joint, leaving one end slightly open and the other end tightly sealed. Then light some kind of fuse and stand back and watch the sucker blow. Great fun for a bunch of near-pyro kids. On Halloween, we'd tape firecrackers to somebody's aluminum screen door, light it, and run like hell.

We'd probably be in jail for doing that stuff these days. Poor kids just can't have fun any more.

Never got any dangerous Christmas toys. Always wanted a BB gun, but my parents knew better.