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00:04Do you remember a time when kids' toys went for the jugular?
00:08It actually wraps around the girl's throat twice.
00:11Did you ever see the movie Alien, where the thing goes around your throat?
00:15It was that.
00:16Do you remember there was once a fun craft project that could slip you a roofie?
00:22They're coated with a chemical that is utterly insane to be on a child's toy,
00:27especially one that looks like candy.
00:29Or when a gas-powered pogo stick could send you sky-high.
00:34You're basically jumping out of your second-story window
00:37onto a thing about the size of a quarter that has taken life into your own hands.
00:41Does it sound dangerous? Yes, that's the point. That's what makes it awesome.
00:46These are the things we used to do for fun, for money,
00:51or maybe out of boredom that we'll never see again.
00:55Were they dangerous? Certainly.
00:59Deadly? Occasionally.
01:01But boy, wasn't it exciting.
01:13One of the must-have toys of the 1980s was an innovative new doll you very well might know.
01:20But what you might not know is that one time this cuddly, soft doll suddenly developed an appetite.
01:30If you were a kid in the 80s, everybody knew what a Cabbage Patch doll was.
01:34This is one of the first examples of a toy going viral,
01:37and they truly can't make enough to keep up with the demand.
01:43It's anarchy.
01:46People are climbing over one another for this doll in its giant cardboard box.
01:54I got my doll! I got my doll!
01:56It's America's best-selling toy in 1983, 1984, and 1985, with half a billion dollars in sales.
02:05But crazes pull off. They always do.
02:10Interactive dolls like Teddy Ruxpin are coming out, and they're electronic,
02:14and they're grabbing massive market share.
02:16Hi, my name is Teddy Ruxpin. Can you and I be friends?
02:21So just being a cute little doll in a Cabbage Patch isn't gonna cut it.
02:25Your new thing better shake it, better wiggle it, better dance it, better talk.
02:29It's gotta do something.
02:31To reignite their Cabbage Patch Kid craze, they give their dolls something to do.
02:37And it takes interaction to the next level.
02:41What they come up with is the Cabbage Patch Snack Time Kid.
02:45She's my Cabbage Patch Snack Time Kid. She really loves to snack.
02:50Wow! She really too!
02:51The Cabbage Patch Snack Time Kid has a mouth that opens and closes like a child, so you feed it.
02:59This doll really looks to be eating.
03:03It's really exciting to see this tiny doll chew food.
03:11The way the Snack Time doll works is very similar to the old laundry roller mechanism
03:17that you put your clothes in there and it pulls it through.
03:19Inside the head of the doll is a motor that controls these rollers.
03:24And there's a little sensor in there that when you put one of the pieces of toy food into its
03:28mouth,
03:28the lips start to move and those rollers grab hold of that food, pop it into the doll's belly area,
03:34and then pops it right out into the backpack.
03:37It really is bringing the Cabbage Patch doll to life, which is what their whole ethos was.
03:41And they are a huge hit.
03:43Within the first six months, they'd sold 500,000 of these dolls.
03:47By the end of 1996, the Snack Time Kid is devouring its competition.
03:53But that's not all it's consuming.
03:56The Snack Time Kid loves to eat.
03:59And it's supposed to just eat the plastic treats that you feed it.
04:03But it can't tell the difference between the food that it came with and anything else you put in its
04:08mouth.
04:08So kids, they're feeding it all sorts of things, paper towels, real food, hair ribbons.
04:14But if the wrong thing gets in there, like your finger, there is no obvious way to make it stop.
04:19There's no on-off switch.
04:21Anything you put in there, it's going to keep trying to chew until it spits it out in its backpack,
04:26which is a major problem.
04:28It's the mid-90s.
04:29Children and adults have long, layered hair.
04:32It's beautiful.
04:32But as it turns out, long hair is not that great when you've got a perpetually hungry doll.
04:39And the mechanism is strong enough to pull the hair right out of the scalp.
04:44Imagine this doll just keeps getting closer and closer to your head.
04:49It's like it's eating spaghetti, except it's your kid's hair.
04:53The doll will not stop.
04:55It just chews and chews.
04:57It's like something out of a horror movie.
04:59We're talking like Chucky Megan action here.
05:02Parents are freaking out.
05:03They're calling 911.
05:04They're trying to pull out the battery.
05:06They're searching for that non-existent on-off switch.
05:08They're doing whatever they can, and then they realize there's one way to make it stop.
05:14And that is take the backpack off.
05:17Because if the backpack is off, the Cabbage Patch doll is no longer hungry.
05:22Make sense? No.
05:24When the backpack is off, there's no place for the plastic food to go,
05:28so the eating mechanism is disabled.
05:30Who would think backpack when a doll is eating your child?
05:34You're thinking off button, battery compartment, not backpack.
05:38There are more than 90 reports of kids getting their hair or fingers stuck in the doll's mouth.
05:45So the toy maker decides the right thing to do is recall all 500,000 of the Cabbage Patch Snack
05:52Time dolls and issue a full refund, which costs millions of dollars.
05:58It's so costly that they really don't see a way forward, and they discontinued the Cabbage Patch Snack Time kid
06:04entirely.
06:05Not only do they discontinue the line, it is such a blow to the manufacturer, no other toy maker has
06:11ever tried to make a chewing doll.
06:13What a sweet little face.
06:15You wouldn't think this is going to rip my kid's hair out and make them have long-term PTSD for
06:22sure.
06:25Finger-eating dolls were only one way toys could turn on us.
06:29In the 1960s, there was a new toy kids couldn't wait to take for a spin, a very painful spin.
06:37In 1958, the hula hoop comes out, and it is an instant success.
06:43It's hard to overstate how crazy the hula hoop phenomenon was.
06:48A hundred million hula hoops are sold in two years.
06:51By the 1960s, if you're a child in America, chances are you or somebody very close to you owns a
06:57hula hoop.
06:58This thing takes off and everybody wants in it, so people are trying to think, what could we make that
07:02would be like the next great hula hoop?
07:04Well, it turns out, there's an opening in the hula hoop market.
07:08People like to do tricks and get a little fancy. Hula hoop with an ankle or a wrist.
07:13One particular trick that is tough for a lot of people is hula hooping on the head.
07:17Spinning a hula hoop is always a fight with gravity.
07:20You run the risk of it constantly falling to the ground if you're not spinning fast enough.
07:25But a toy company called Transogram lets the hula hooping phenomenon go to your head.
07:30It's a new thing, it's a fun thing.
07:34In 1965, something called the swing wing is born.
07:40It's a cap, it's got a tether on it with these weighted streamers.
07:45And the idea is that if you use your head to swing it around, the weighted streamers will counterbalance and
07:50you can get them to spin really quickly.
07:53The more you swing your head around, the faster it goes.
07:56And it looks like fun.
07:57Because it's a hat, it won't keep dropping to your waist like a hula hoop.
08:02Now, you can generate a lot more centrifugal force by flinging these weights and really build up momentum.
08:10Kids are really into the swing wing, but it starts to hurt after a while.
08:14You're basically headbanging trying to get this thing to spin around.
08:17I don't think you could do this for more than 30 or 45 seconds.
08:20It hurts to do it just thinking about it.
08:24Kids' necks are built to go side to side or up and down slowly, but the swing wing forces them
08:29to whip their heads around violently.
08:32It's not just the violent headbanging that hurts.
08:34There's also a counterweight pulling in the opposite direction of the way that your neck is straining against.
08:38The swing wing is just asking for a neck problem.
08:44And depending on how you're whipping your head around, you could actually damage your spinal cord.
08:49There's a word for this type of violent movement.
08:52Whiplash.
08:53It's what you see in these crash test dummy films where their heads just swing all the way around.
08:59Today, there's an entire legal industry dedicated to this kind of damage.
09:04My question is, did anyone at the company test it?
09:09Because it really is crazy.
09:12You'd think that the Consumer Product Safety Commission would yank the swing wing off the market.
09:18And maybe they would have.
09:19But two years before the Commission's creation, the company declares bankruptcy.
09:24It's safe to say that it was probably because of the swing wing.
09:27But there's something to be said for a time when you could just strap something to your head like this
09:31and just go for it.
09:34Okay, so it didn't become the next hula hoop.
09:37But this pain in the neck did go down in history for all the wrong reasons.
09:45Remember as a kid when it felt like your entire universe revolved around one toy you just had to have?
09:52Well, in the 60s, one inventor thought he had just that.
09:56By taking an iconic plaything to a terrifying new height.
10:02In the 1960s, America is in love with hot rod culture.
10:08People are taking boring family cars and pickup trucks and souping them up with giant engines and really loud exhausts.
10:16There are hot rod magazines, movies.
10:20There's this kind of outlaw bad boy vibe to this whole trend that really captivates America.
10:25And a gearhead named Gordon Spitzmesser thinks he can tap into that.
10:30He wants to give the same badass outlaw vibe to a pogo stick.
10:36Pogo sticks in the 50s were only rated for about 80 pounds.
10:41Because they were built with these soft, kid-friendly springs, you outgrew it pretty fast and the thrill was gone.
10:48So Spitzmesser has this brilliant idea to up the ante.
10:52And the way he's gonna do this is by attaching an internal combustion engine.
10:56Does it sound dangerous?
10:58Yes.
10:58That's the point.
10:59That's what makes it awesome.
11:01Spitzmesser's version isn't gonna raise the bar.
11:04It's gonna launch right over it.
11:07The engineering behind this is actually pretty impressive.
11:10Spitzmesser creates a single cylinder engine.
11:13And the spring action of the pogo stick drives that piston up and down.
11:17When the piston reaches the top of the cylinder, the spark plug fires,
11:21the fuel explodes, that pushes the piston down hard.
11:26And that's gonna send you flying back in the air.
11:28In 1971, Spitzmesser's vision is ready for market.
11:33And it's goodbye boring pogo stick.
11:36Hello, hop rod.
11:38Hey, what's that kid doing?
11:41He's hopping on a hop rod.
11:43Can we just take a second to appreciate the name?
11:46The hop rod.
11:47I mean, that's perfect.
11:49It's promising a pogo stick that may or may not be street legal.
11:53My 10-year-old head would explode.
11:55The big stick is here.
11:57It's the hop rod, the world's first powerized pogo stick.
12:01People are looking at the commercials, and it looks effortless.
12:05You're just holding on for the ride.
12:07You could hop for 30 minutes on just four ounces of gas without expending any energy or using your leg
12:13muscles.
12:14The hop rod can hold 280 pounds.
12:17So now, the pogo stick's not just for small kids.
12:20It's for anybody.
12:22The hop rod is so ruggedly built, even mom and pop can hop.
12:25Grandpa, too.
12:27My grandfather got one of these things.
12:29He's gonna bust a hip.
12:30I shouldn't be anywhere near these devices, okay?
12:33Adults don't fall to the ground and then pop up laughing with, like, springy bones.
12:38You think about the original pogo stick, and most kids were getting a few inches off the ground.
12:42Well, then, with this hop rod, people are getting, like, three feet off the ground.
12:48That's table height.
12:49It's pretty insane.
12:52Sure, three feet sounds fun, but it's not long before amateur daredevils are supercharging their hop rods.
13:00The hop rod is designed for gasoline, but nothing keeps you from putting something else in there.
13:06Some people mix oxygen and acetylene, which produces a flame that's over 5,000 degrees.
13:13When you produce energy like that, you're flying 12 feet in the air.
13:17Jumping 12 feet in the air, you're basically jumping out of your second-story bedroom window onto a thing about
13:24the size of a quarter that has taken life into your own hands.
13:28And if you did get in trouble, the only exit strategy for this thing was to just jump and pray
13:34to God that you land somewhere safe and roll with it.
13:37Any child toy that needs fuel probably shouldn't be given to a child.
13:41That being said, I feel like kids today are losing out on a pride of survival.
13:48Despite delivering on daredevil thrills, hop rod sales fall flat.
13:54Not from concussions or broken bones, but from busted wallets.
13:58It costs about $70, which is about $500 today.
14:02The hop rod is not the big seller Spitzmetzer thought it would be.
14:05So by 1975, hop rod was out of the market, but they didn't disappear before they made an appearance at
14:13the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
14:15It's a publicity event.
14:17This TV personality gets on a hop rod and starts jumping, but falls off and breaks his shoulder.
14:22There's no footage that we can see, unfortunately, but the Indianapolis Motor Speedway banned pogo sticks still to this day,
14:30mind you.
14:32It must have been bad.
14:34With certain toys, the hazards were pretty obvious.
14:38But sometimes the most dangerous toys were like hiding a concealed weapon.
14:43And in some cases, they actually were.
14:47In the 1950s, cowboys are all over television.
14:51Gunsmoke is the most popular show.
14:53It comes out in 1955.
14:54Cowboy toys are the thing to have.
14:57So every backyard is gunfight at the okay crowd.
15:01In the current era, realism and gunplay sounds kind of dicey.
15:05But at the time, realism is the number one component.
15:08Looks like real.
15:10Sounds like real.
15:12At the core of every imaginary gunfight, there is a critical element.
15:16And that is getting the drop on any varmint before they can get the drop on you.
15:23In 1959, a new toy promises to give any six-year-old gunslinger the element of surprise.
15:31So you're in a gunfight.
15:32Your opponent might be watching your hands.
15:34Might be watching your eyes.
15:36But you know what he's not watching?
15:37Your pelvis.
15:39In a tight spot, that tricky buckle gun holster set shoots a safe shooting shell when you push out your
15:45stomach.
15:47The Derringer is a metal toy belt buckle that hides a gun.
15:51It's kind of a combination of your regular cowboy quick draw with something that feels a little bit more James
15:58Bond.
16:00This is a time in history when cowboy culture is really sort of colliding with Cold War spy culture.
16:06So anything that's sort of sneaky is going to be really big in toy weapons.
16:12It is a pretty awesome idea.
16:14The belt would pop open and it would fire little plastic bullets, but the pop and smoke came out.
16:19So if you've got this thing in your belt, locked and loaded, all it's waiting for is a little bit
16:23of pressure on these two little points right here.
16:25And all of a sudden, boom, it shoots.
16:27You don't even have to pull the trigger.
16:29With the Remington Derringer, you might get the drop on your friends, but perhaps hands-free shooting wasn't fully thought
16:38through.
16:39Firing projectiles at waist level.
16:42What could go wrong?
16:43And these plastic bullets that they're using, these are not little light plastic nothing bullets.
16:49Plastic bullets are what riot police use to quiet unruly crowds.
16:55Now you got this belt buckle and you're trying to aim with your little six-year-old hips.
16:59You're taking out the table lamp, mama's glass of wine, your brother's eyeball.
17:04Anything waist height, better watch out.
17:06There weren't warnings.
17:07It didn't say, like, don't point this at anyone.
17:11Toys in this era were definitely in the mind state of if you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough.
17:18Mom's best china isn't the only delicate collection at risk.
17:22These shells have a habit of just sort of exploding on their own.
17:28The little caps were actually a tiny little gunpowder explosive and could cause actual burns.
17:35One should be advised not to have explosive or incendiary devices near the family jewels.
17:43Despite all the broken glass and the random explosions coming from your kid's pelvis, parents buy a lot of these
17:50things.
17:51It's a big hit.
17:53I think there may not have been a lot of rules for toys and regulations at that time
17:58because I think parents just thought, oh, well, if it's for sale, it must be fine.
18:04By the late 60s, Westerns were fading, and the Derringer belt buckle rode off into the sunset.
18:13What parent doesn't love a toy that inspires creativity?
18:17Something you can leave a kid alone with for hours.
18:21Well, it turns out, for one popular arts and crafts toy, that was a very bad idea.
18:27Fused beads or perler beads are this really big trend in the 80s,
18:32and you basically set up these little beads on this pegboard,
18:35and then you essentially melt them together with a hot iron.
18:39Really fun. You can make all sorts of cool designs and decorations.
18:42But five-year-olds can't handle a hot iron.
18:45So you have to wait for your mom or dad to come around and fuse your whole creation together.
18:49And that just sucks.
18:51So an Australian company thinks to itself, well, what if there was a way to create a toy
18:55where kids could do this on their own?
18:57You're going to have to make some sort of chemical reaction for the beads to bond
19:02and essentially glue themselves together.
19:04They get some engineers to help design a toy that can do just this, and it's called Aquadots.
19:10Here's the trick. Spray with water to make them stick.
19:13Kids have a little spray bottle. They're going to spray their little Aquadots,
19:17and in just a few seconds, it's going to fuse together and their new creation will be ready.
19:24It kind of feels like magic. No iron, no adults, and kids, especially girls, are super into it.
19:30Now, as a parent today, you might look at these beads and think,
19:34oh, these are a choking hazard. But that's actually not the real hazard of the Aquadots.
19:40They're so small, kids are just swallowing them, and then parents start reporting really strange symptoms.
19:50Parents are reporting children getting dizzy, nauseous, passing out, and in some cases even falling into comas.
19:57There are enough reports of sick kids that the Consumer Product Safety Commission opens an investigation.
20:04Researchers find out that they're coated with a chemical called butanidiol.
20:09That's a chemical that is utterly insane to be on a child's toy,
20:13especially one that looks like candy and can be easily swallowed.
20:17Butanidiol is essentially an industrial solvent.
20:20It's found in spandex. It's found in nail polish.
20:23In fact, it's so toxic that if you were to ingest some of it, you have to call poison control.
20:28You're supposed to wear goggles and gloves to handle this stuff,
20:31and you definitely don't want to inhale it.
20:33It's not the kind of thing you want to lick off your art project.
20:36But it gets worse. When this chemical is ingested, it turns into a compound called gamma hydroxybutyrate, or GHB.
20:45GHB was developed as an anesthetic.
20:47It knocks you out cold by suppressing your central nervous system.
20:51Today, it's classified as a Schedule I substance.
20:55It's extremely powerful.
20:59GHB, also known as the date rape drug.
21:04And that's what they're using to coat a children's toy.
21:09What's wild about this toy is that nobody thought,
21:12what happens if, like, maybe a child thinks to put a small colorful object in their mouth?
21:16Of course that's going to happen.
21:17And then beyond that, they never looked at the way in which it was toxic.
21:22No one says, OK, so this thing that used to take heat to bond,
21:28we're just going to spray water on there and that's all it's going to be?
21:31Yeah.
21:32No one raised their hand and said, so what are we putting on there that makes it do that?
21:37And is that safe for children?
21:39Nope, that didn't happen.
21:40The U.S. government hits aqua dots with a $1.3 million judgment.
21:47And, of course, millions of packs are recalled.
21:51But how insane is it a children's toy made with this chemical made it to market in the first place?
22:01Wow, talk about hard to swallow.
22:03And when one toy icon from the 1960s got an upgrade, the dangers were more of a burning sensation.
22:12In 1963, a toy company in Ohio comes up with one of the greatest ideas of all time, the Easy
22:18Bake Oven.
22:19You make your batter, you put it in the tin receptacle, and you slide it through a narrow slot in
22:24the Easy Bake Oven.
22:25The idea is genius.
22:27Use a box with 200-watt incandescent light bulbs to bake cakes on demand, and then you're suddenly everybody's favorite
22:35friend.
22:36Over the next four decades, Americans buy more than 20 million Easy Bake Ovens.
22:42But in the early 2000s, the heart and soul of the oven comes under fire.
22:48The government starts to ban incandescent light bulbs in order to move to energy-efficient LEDs that produce the light
22:56without the heat.
22:57The manufacturers of the Easy Bake Oven suddenly have a giant problem on their hands.
23:01The Easy Bake Oven was engineered around all the wasted energy that came off as heat from those incandescent bulbs.
23:08So when you put LEDs in the oven, you don't have any heat, and you're not baking anything.
23:12Rather than scrap a toy icon, designers go back to the drawing board.
23:17They decide that the best approach is to add a heating element.
23:21The same basic thing as you have on your oven, those coils, it's that.
23:25They even redo the whole design such that it looks like a real oven.
23:29There's fake burners on top, and the baking slots aren't on the side.
23:33The baking slots in the front, much like you would put a cake in and take a cake out of
23:39a real oven.
23:40To get out the hot pan, you have the magic cool pan grabber.
23:44You reach in with the grabber to slide it out.
23:47It's basically your parents' oven, but more fun.
23:49Kid bakers across America rejoice.
23:52The Easy Bake is more powerful than ever and can crank out cakes faster than they ever had before.
23:58Every kid in the country wants to get their hand on one.
24:01But the trouble starts when kids get their hands in one.
24:05With the new redesign of the Easy Bake, with the opening in the front of the oven,
24:09it's got to be wide enough for the pan grabber to get inside,
24:14which means there's a lot of room for little fingers to get stuck and for little fingers to get burnt.
24:22This is about as big as a VHS tape.
24:26I could see how a little kid could get their hand under this metal slot and not get it out.
24:32So now imagine this is on. Got a temperature hot enough to bake a cake.
24:38We're talking like 375 degrees. Kids are touching that heating element and getting 30 degree burns.
24:45It's nuts that they would put this real heating element in a toy oven.
24:50I mean, it's a perfect recipe for disaster.
24:53But even if it's not hot, some kids get their hands stuck inside the metal door for hours.
24:59Parents have to call 911. There's emergency room visits.
25:03And kids are literally showing up with an oven attached to their hands.
25:07Within months, there are more than 200 reports of kids getting their hands stuck in the Easy Bake oven.
25:15Almost 1 million Easy Bake ovens with this design have to be recalled.
25:21The company ultimately reverts to the old slide-in, slide-out design.
25:26Now the slots are even narrower and the heating element is further away,
25:30so that limits your capacity to actually burn yourself.
25:33It's wild to think that the original design was safer than the remake in the 21st century.
25:42When it comes to safety and fun, sometimes you cannot have your cake and eat it too.
25:51In the late 70s, kids were obsessed with galaxies far, far away.
25:56So space toys came out fast and furious.
25:59In one case, maybe a little too fast.
26:05In 1977, Star Wars Mania hit the country.
26:08It's the biggest thing around. It's the highest grossing film to date.
26:12Every single company on Earth is out there with their clones,
26:16trying to harness that Star Wars magic.
26:20Battlestar Galactica premieres on ABC in 1978.
26:24And much like Star Wars, with the series, come the toys.
26:29The line is so popular, it sells two million toy spacecraft in the 1978 Christmas season.
26:37Turns out Battlestar Galactica has a secret weapon to thank for their huge Christmas sales.
26:44Cylon, radar, missile base, open. Cylon, radar, launch.
26:49Four of the ships from the Battlestar Galactica range can launch projectiles at each other.
26:55No other space story, not from Buck Rogers, not from Star Wars, can do that.
27:01When you're a kid playing in interstellar warfare,
27:04there's nothing more frustrating than firing a missile at your friend's ship,
27:08saying, oh, I got you, and he's saying, no, you didn't.
27:11But with real projectiles, instead of just flashing lights, there's no questioning.
27:16You fire, you hit, you know.
27:19But these fake space battles turn out to be real-life dangerous.
27:25Compared to back then, today's modern projectile toys are neutered.
27:29Either the darts are soft or they don't go too far,
27:32or the firing mechanisms are weak, or more than likely, all three.
27:38But the Battlestar Galactica line shoots these hard plastic missiles
27:42with the force of a low-powered BB gun.
27:44It shoots them far and fast and straight, which sounds awesome because it was.
27:50But the force with the small size of the missiles, that's a big problem.
27:57They're really small. They're only about an inch, an inch and a half.
28:01It's a choking hazard.
28:03But at the time, choking hazards, we're not really thinking about it.
28:07We're just buying toys for our kids that are fun.
28:09And to make matters worse, where you load the missile and where you fire it are actually very close together,
28:15especially on the Colonial Viper.
28:17So it was very easy to slip and accidentally fire that missile right down your own throat,
28:23lodge there, and it was very hard to get it out.
28:25There are so many stories of parents running to the emergency room.
28:31One kid had a half-hour surgery to get this out.
28:35Despite these incidents, the Consumer Product Safety Commission doesn't order the toys recalled.
28:42That is what responsible looks like in the 1970s.
28:46However, the company knows they have a problem,
28:48so they voluntarily put labels on the toys saying,
28:52don't fire at your face or mouth.
28:54But they don't put the labels on the ones in the stores.
28:58They just put them on the ones in the factories that are about to be shipped.
29:03Sales are still going strong through the holiday season.
29:06And then a couple days after Christmas, a kid actually chokes on a missile from a Cylon radar.
29:12And that's kind of it.
29:15The fun is over.
29:17They recall existing Battlestar Galactica spaceships
29:21and redesign new ones with non-firing missiles.
29:26It's such a big deal.
29:27They actually highlight it in the commercials.
29:30Redesign toys do not launch missiles.
29:33Sales drop like crazy.
29:35Their biggest selling point has become their greatest liability.
29:39They've become more safe, but as far as kids are concerned, they are a lot less cool.
29:44It is the Battlestar Galactica toy line that is responsible for toys that come with small plastic pieces bearing the
29:53warning of choking hazards.
29:55Unsurprisingly, those dangerous, OG Battlestar Galactica missile firing ships, they are now considered rare and valuable collectibles.
30:05Today, there's a standard warning on toys that say,
30:09Not for children under three.
30:12But back in the 90s, there was an attractive new toy marketed just for girls that delivered high-speed action,
30:19whether it meant to or not.
30:22In the early 90s, a toy designer notices his daughter playing with a fluttering seedling and gets an idea for
30:29a toy.
30:30He imagines something that flies.
30:32It's like a fairy or a ballerina or a little sprite that can move through the air with the same
30:37grace as those seedlings he saw his daughter playing with.
30:40So he and his partners develop these dolls with these beautiful wings.
30:44They work at a deal with a toy company and they land on the name Sky Dancer.
30:49Through the years, flying toys are mostly aimed at boys.
30:52They're rockets or airplanes that are meant to be used outside.
30:56These ones are aimed at girls and meant to be used inside too, like dolls.
31:00These fill a big gap in the market.
31:03Wow, they really fly!
31:05By the end of 1995, they hit $70 million in sales.
31:10This is the number one doll on the market.
31:13Turns out, Sky Dancers do a lot more than just fly off the shelves.
31:18If you watch the commercial, these berries spin up very gently and come down very delicately.
31:24This is not how they're being used.
31:26The doll stands on a base and when a kid yanks the drawstring, the doll starts spinning around and the
31:32wings open up.
31:33But the wings are really more like helicopter blades.
31:36The harder you pull that string, the faster and higher they're gonna go.
31:40And if you launch it straight up, like you're supposed to do, they can go up to 10 to 12
31:45feet off the ground.
31:47But girls soon discover that if you point it at another angle, say at a whiny brother or sister or
31:53anyone who's annoying you, you can shoot it right at them.
31:56This fairy becomes a projectile with hard spinning blades.
32:00It's basically a flying blender.
32:03These are like kamikaze fairies, and this thing is hitting you at 40 miles per hour.
32:07It's like getting drilled in the face by a baseball.
32:09Kids are getting scratched corneas, broken teeth, broken ribs from a toy that's supposed to be this beautiful fairy flying
32:17through the air.
32:18The toy manufacturer actually figures out there's a problem, but they don't tell anybody.
32:23This is before social media, so they're like, let's just not say anything.
32:26Maybe if we don't tell anyone, that'll just go away.
32:30Soon, there are more than 150 recorded injuries from Sky Dancer dolls.
32:35So the Consumer Product Safety Commission steps in and says, look, you can't give your little girl attack drones to
32:42play with.
32:43And in 2000, the US government finds the toy company $400,000, and they demand a full recall of all
32:509 million Sky Dancers which have been sold.
32:55Sky Dancers were later reintroduced with a new design.
32:59They would only launch when you pointed them up toward the sky and not at your little brother.
33:07Remember that old catch phrase, up your nose for the rubber hose?
33:11Well, a hot toy back in the 60s asked, what if that rubber hose whacked you across the head instead?
33:21If you're an American kid in suburbia in the 1960s, there's probably like a 95% chance that you do
33:27not have a pool.
33:28Your parents aren't going to buy one and you're probably ticked off about it.
33:32If you want to get cool in the dead heat of summer, you don't have many options.
33:37You have a hose and you can attach it to a sprinkler.
33:40And there is nothing more boring and predictable than a sprinkler.
33:45It might be a sprinkler that moves like this, maybe it's the kind that moves like this.
33:49Those are kind of your options.
33:50Toy companies soon realize that whoever makes the everyday garden hose more exciting is going to cash in.
33:58In 1962, toy makers decide that the secret ingredient to backyard fun is chaos.
34:03And they introduce the water wiggle.
34:06It's practically alive. You never know what the water wiggle will do next.
34:11It's wild, cool, splashing fun.
34:14This thing is next level. I mean, it is just bringing the party to everybody.
34:19Essentially, it's this seven foot long hose that then has this head on the top.
34:24It looks like a giant half of a potato.
34:27And it will fling itself around just on the water pressure alone.
34:33Inside the head is where the magic happens.
34:36There's a hook on the end that narrows the stream, turns it into a jet.
34:41And so now this head can move around in unpredictable ways, utilizing the force from the jet of water.
34:48The water wiggle is like what kids have been waiting for, right?
34:51It's unpredictable. It chases you. It runs around.
34:53You can't compare this to a boring sprinkler. It's not even a fair fight.
34:57Through the 60s and 70s, this is an absolute backyard staple.
35:01They sold 200,000 of these a year.
35:03Kids may love it, but behind its smile and googly eyes, the water wiggle hides a dark side.
35:12It doesn't take long for problems to reveal themselves.
35:16This thing has such high water pressure that it's less a toy and more like a mechanical serpent with a
35:23mind of its own.
35:24If you watch that commercial, the water wiggle actually wraps around the girl's throat twice.
35:31Did you ever see the movie Alien where the face hugger comes on and the thing goes around your throat?
35:35It was that.
35:37Today, if you put that ad on social media, within 30 minutes, that sucker's going viral.
35:44They're going to call senators.
35:45But in the 60s and 70s, parents watched this and were like, we got to get one.
35:50It soon revealed that strangulation isn't the biggest danger hiding inside the water wiggle.
35:56The plastic head on this thing is not secure. It can come off.
36:00And now you've got this exposed hard spout just flailing around waiting to take someone out.
36:06Now, there's nothing protecting you from getting smacked in the face by the spout itself
36:10or getting blasted by the jet of water that's coming out at 45 miles per hour.
36:16That's faster than some roller coasters.
36:18If your mouth is open, pressurized water can actually fill your airways.
36:23It can drown you very quickly or, you know, if it's lodged deep enough,
36:28it could also just sort of block the airway itself.
36:31In 1975, the spout gets lodged in a boy's throat, cuts off his airway.
36:36But the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which has only existed for three years at this point,
36:41says, seems like a freak accident. You know, let them keep playing.
36:45In 1978, it happens again.
36:48And this time, there's a full recall and it gets pulled from the market.
36:52But very few of these things were returned.
36:54Was it because they were broken and thrown away?
36:56Or was it because people just ignored the warning?
36:59Maybe. I mean, it was the 70s.
37:00I think the water wiggle really shows you how much tired parents are willing to risk
37:06just to have their children be entertained.
37:11Today, you might find an old water wiggle at a garage sale or on eBay.
37:15But proceed with caution.
37:20There used to be a famous slogan that promised us better living through chemistry.
37:26And in the 1950s and 60s, toy makers thought chemicals could also make toys better.
37:33What could go wrong? It was science.
37:36In 1961, Disney comes out with a movie called The Absent-Minded Professor.
37:40And it's this huge hit.
37:43The movie itself has this miraculous substance that the lead character invents.
37:48We dump the flubber.
37:50You can put it on your shoes and suddenly you can jump 20 feet.
37:53You can throw it in your gas tank. It'll do things for your car.
37:56If I'm a kid watching that, I want flubber.
38:00In 1962, a toy version of flubber hit store shelves.
38:05Coming out with the flubber toy was a no-brainer.
38:07It was this mix between like slime and Silly Putty.
38:10You can stretch it. You can bend it. You can bounce it.
38:13You can press it down on a newspaper and lift up the image.
38:16There's a lot you can do with this toy version of flubber.
38:19We don't really know what this substance is made of, but who cares, right?
38:24Kids are having such a great time.
38:26In the first several months, four million balls of flubber are sold.
38:31It is gangbusters.
38:33But flubber's success is short-lived.
38:36The LA Times starts reporting that local and state health officials are investigating a breakout of strange rashes among school
38:45children.
38:46This thing could be anything. A fungus or a bacterial epidemic.
38:50And the government is like oddly unconcerned about this at the time.
38:54One government official actually says the rash is so faint that you can hardly see it.
38:59But when people begin to look more closely, they notice a trend.
39:03These affected kids were all playing with this flubber toy.
39:08And the rashes that were supposed to be so faint you could barely see them?
39:11Oh, you can see them. These are full-body rashes.
39:15Plus, a lot of these kids have extremely sore throats.
39:18Kids are out of school for days with intense itching and swelling.
39:22And we're not talking about just a few kids. We're talking about thousands of children.
39:26There's outbreaks in Kansas City, New York, Phoenix. It's going across the country.
39:31So on the packaging of flubber, it says non-toxic, harmless, parent-approved.
39:37Well, as it turns out, not so safe.
39:39Although an official ingredient list for the flubber toy was never released,
39:43we do know that there was probably synthetic rubber, mineral oil, and borax.
39:52Borax is a hardcore cleaner that you use to remove rust stains and deodorize toilets.
39:57It's good for killing ants and cockroaches. You don't play with it.
40:02Some countries have actually banned the use of borax.
40:06In America, it's not banned outright, but it is banned from being included in food products.
40:11When kids were playing with flubber, they were getting it all over their hands,
40:14they're touching their faces, and inevitably, it made its way into their mouths.
40:18So kids were basically eating this stuff.
40:20But at the time, there was no regulatory structure around regulating the safety of toys.
40:24However, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration finds that there's evidence to suggest that flubber is actually making people
40:31sick.
40:31So the company orders a recall.
40:34But there's something about flubber that makes it not so easy to get rid of.
40:40Today, we have a ton of regulation, state and federal, about waste disposal, but we really didn't have that back
40:45then.
40:46There are stories of, at first, them trying to just basically take it all to the dump.
40:51But there are kids that are trying to break into the dump because they want access to flubber.
40:56Next, they try to burn it. But burning rubber isn't great. Releases all kinds of toxic chemicals into the air.
41:04Next up is dumping in the ocean. And then they make a startling new discovery for flubber. It floats.
41:11Ultimately, the rumor goes that they buried the rest of the flubber and paved over it to make a parking
41:16lot.
41:17It sounds like the plot of a horror movie. Like it's just waiting underground for some disaster to reanimate it.
41:23Maybe, at the end of the world, all that will be left is cockroaches and flubber.
41:28Thinking back about the toys that made us tempt fate, whether they fired speeding projectiles, or sent us soaring too
41:35high, or even tried to eat us alive.
41:38It was all fun and games, and someone was bound to get hurt.
41:42But looking back now, that's why our hazardous history was child's play.
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