I miss insanely dangerous Christmas toys.

[jacked]

When we were living in West Concord, MA, in a neighborhood of modest houses with a bunch of families' back yards intersecting, we had stashed our tree in the backyard after Christmas, and around March it was really good and dry, so we took it into the middle of the back yard and lit it off. It went up with a whoosh and a pillar of fire. Our neighbor saw it, and it turned out he still had his tree, so he chucked it over the fence and we lit that one off too. 3 or four other neighbors followed suit. Best community building exercise ever.

I still do this for my now 20 something yo kids when they visit. Old tree hangs around til next winter, then kawhoosh. Reminds me I've got one aging out back right now.

[Noteddy]

Innumerable cuts and a few burns, including one that blew up the size of a chicken egg on my hand from grabbing the exhaust while crashing.

Equaled only by touching a centrifugal clutch housing that you are burning up by being a dumb-ass with your go-kart.

[djg21]

Johnny Switchblade Adventure Punk

What was a summer picnic without Jarts?

[dhoff]

When we were living in West Concord, MA, in a neighborhood of modest houses with a bunch of families' back yards intersecting, we had stashed our tree in the backyard after Christmas, and around March it was really good and dry, so we took it into the middle of the back yard and lit it off. It went up with a whoosh and a pillar of fire.

I did that in Westfield NJ once a few years ago and when the Fire Department left, the gave me a $500/ticket an a public scolding. That I had been building fires at that point for 40 years and had a hose and a fire extinguisher and had cleared the surrounding area was of no interest to them. They just wanted to be in charge.

[dhoff]

Bottle rocket wars.

Loved Bottle Rocket wars, Roman Candles too! Halloween was a blast. It seemed we were always playing with explosives, fire or projectiles. Roman Candles were the perfect combination of the three

[Nierman]

Yeah, I guess the danger level just increases proportionate to our age.

[taz]

Briggs & Stratton mini bike. No helmet. Innumberable cuts and a few burns, including one that blew up the size of a chicken egg on my hand from grabbing the exhaust while crashing. Eventually prohibited from riding it, then prohibited from going to my friend's house (who owned it) because I didn't get the message. Something about it I loved but it did not love me back. An abusive relationship. Why I know I should never have a motorcycle though am heartbroken with that knowledge.

not exactly insanely dangerous, but this was my Christmas present when I was 8. Helmet? What's that? Now my brother won't let my 7 y.o. nephew ride his bicycle without full armor and he still isn't allowed to the end of the block.

QA50.jpg

[Wordbiker]

Fireworks, rockets, matchbombs....check. Stilts, homemade skateboards, sidehack, a chariot (with strapped on fire extinguisher that could be filled with any liquid), wrist rockets, BB guns, motorcycles...check and check.

One "toy" that comes to mind as one of the most dangerous made available to us was this:



No suspension, 250cc motor and just enough rollcage to beat your head on....but boy was that ever fun.

[BSUdude]

When I was a teenager on a farm I had a 4-wheeler. Not a big one, a 250cc honda. Just big enough to be "full-size." You could max out at about 40mph on the road. Enough to make your eyes water for sure. At the time a helmet wasn't even a consideration. Anyway our house sat atop an incline about 6-8 feet above the level of one side of our yard/driveway. One day I was coming through the pasture fast and I hit the incline and discovered that I could get some air. Proceeded to keep doing this for the next 45 minutes or so faster and faster, gaining more and more altitude. Now I should add that at the time my parents were having the house worked on and there was a pile of scaffolding adjacent to where my landing zone was. During what ended up being the final time ramping the hill I endo'd the 4 wheeler and hit the ground on my chest, sliding forward into the pile of scaffolding. Luckily the 4 wheeler did not land on top of me. But when I got up there was about a 5 inch tear in my blue jeans directly adjacent to my zipper from a sharp corner of the a piece of scaffold. My dad had heard the crash, and came out yelling. That was the end of that. No injuries though, and the 4 wheeler survived, albeit with a bit of cracked plastic body. I was lucky. My mom also mended the jeans and I continued wearing them.

I did model rockets too but I was definitely not as creative as others in this thread.

[Peter B]

Equaled only by touching a centrifugal clutch housing that you are burning up by being a dumb-ass with your go-kart.

Or having the throttle stick, reaching backwards over your shoulder to short the spark plug while simultaneously dodging parked cars, only to get repeatedly bit by the spark instead!

[jitahs]

Briggs & Stratton mini bike. No helmet. Innumberable cuts and a few burns, including one that blew up the size of a chicken egg on my hand from grabbing the exhaust while crashing. Eventually prohibited from riding it, then prohibited from going to my friend's house (who owned it) because I didn't get the message. Something about it I loved but it did not love me back. An abusive relationship. Why I know I should never have a motorcycle though am heartbroken with that knowledge.

I had one of those...motorcycles have throttles that stay in place, rather than rotate around the bar while "accelerating", necessitating using the other hand to pin it in place. With two hands on one side of the bar and feet down to slow the thing, I feel confident you could handle a motorcycle.

[steve garro]

Great thread.

My dad was a black powder muzzleloading rifle enthusiast and had a ton of supplies in the basement that he thought were well hidden. They weren’t. My brother and I would stuff the black powder into spent D sized Estes rocket engine tubes and seal the ends with hot glue. A model rocket igniter went in the middle, so they were detonate-by-wire type bombs. Later we figured out how to use our R/C car radios for remote detonation.

Dad also had boxes and boxes of 38 special shells, and percussion caps for muzzleloaders. The shells fit perfectly over the ends of aluminum arrow shafts, and if you stuffed a bunch of caps in the end, you had arrows that exploded on contact with hard surfaces (trees, sheds, neighbors roofs, etc).

We also made a lot of “burning arrows” with a rag dipped in kerosene knotted on the end. One day my brother shot one straight up with a compound bow, very high. It landed in a neighbor’s apple tree, and burned a large limb.

I have fond memories of bb gun fights, we had a 2 pump limit but I had stupid friends and they never abided by that rule. I caught a pellet on the hip once and it wasn’t a 2 pumper. I also hit my friend’s adam’s apple, which left a mark that was hard to explain to his parents. One day a neighbor from across “the woods” stormed over screaming “why is my sliding glass door lying on my living room carpet in a million pieces?!” I mowed a lot of lawns to pay that one off.

Estes rockets had limitless possibilities for modifications. A large outdoor Christmas light bulb screws very tightly into the top of a D sized engine, and a few balsa wood fins glued on makes a very fast, erratic rocket. One of mine looped out of the back yard and flew right through my grandma’s bathing suit, hanging on the clothes line. It left a gaping hole with burnt edges. My grandmother was cool enough to see the humor.

Hell yeah!

You would have been a fun neighbor - ever discover that a rim fire .22 fits right into a standard drinking straw?

Like Jarts but explosive!

I con't believe nobody has brought up Wrist Rockets yet

- Garro.

[Jonathan]

I con't believe nobody has brought up Wrist Rockets yet

- Garro.

We did. My local hardware store a few hundred yards away still sells them.

[Tim Porter]

Best OT thread ever:

This is for Garro:

[Tim Porter]

I don't think anyone's mentioned my most coveted Christmas present, the Mattel derringer belt buckle. It shot those hard little bullets you see on the left:

[EricKeller]

You would have been a fun neighbor - ever discover that a rim fire .22 fits right into a standard drinking straw?

If I had to guess which vsaloner had the most dangerous childhood, I definitely think you would have been my first choice. How do you use a .22 in a drinking straw? Or rather, how far do you throw it?

[steve garro]

If I had to guess which vsaloner had the most dangerous childhood, I definitely think you would have been my first choice. How do you use a .22 in a drinking straw? Or rather, how far do you throw it?

You just stick the bullet into the straw and throw it up in the air on the pavement and since it's a rimfire it detonates - BANG!

My dad too was a black powder enthusiast (common theme is seems) and all that entitles, but for real results it's Hercules Blue Dot all the way.

Ever blow up stumps with a bag of fertilizer and diesel fuel?
Daaaaaang………!

I'm going to go to Ace Hardware and buy a wrist rocket, and go shoot my Red Rider on the porch over coffee - it's at the ready!
- Garro.

[Dave Thompson]

Heh, boys and their toys!

[Bob Ross]

I miss Jarts. I miss how insanely, completely, over-the-top dangerous they were but nobody really realized it at the time. I mean my friend Ryan and I did put one through his sister's foot once, but hey, she shouldn't have been in that spot in the first place.

To this day I still fondly remember the afternoon in 11th or 12th grade when my buddy Rick & I cut school, went to his house, got stoned, listened to music...and then discovered his old Jarts set in the basement. Immediate inspired glee/mayhem. Nobody got hurt...but only because of some miracle, presumably.

I miss my old chemistry set. I distinctly remember the instructions had me making gunpowder.

After my gradfather noticed how much I enjoyed my chemistry set as a kid, he gave me his old Chemistry For Boys textbook from 1923. It had a recipe for thermite!

It had a recipe for thermite!!!!

Things were never quite the same around the Ross household after that...

Drones are the new Jarts.

^^^This. My friend's Christmas Day Facebook status was something about "Taking the wife to emergency room due to holiday drone accident" ...he'd been flying his new mini-copter around the living room and wound up t-boning her forehead.

[monadnocky]

I don't think anyone's mentioned my most coveted Christmas present, the Mattel derringer belt buckle. It shot those hard little bullets you see on the left:

My god, this is awesome. I don't even know what to say. That just about tops the 12 year old boy to-do list... shooting bullets out of one's crotch.

And, FYI, my gun bible lists several (real) of those. Quite coveted now, apparently, if they aren't reproductions.