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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?
00:13Where the thing goes around your throat?
00:15It was that.
00:16Do you remember there was once a fun craft project that
00:20could slip you a roofie?
00:22They're coated with a chemical that
00:24is utterly insane to be on a child's toy, especially one
00:28that 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
00:39that has taken life into your own hands.
00:41Does it sound dangerous?
00:43Yes, that's the point.
00:45That'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.
00:56Were they dangerous?
00:58Certainly.
00:59Deadly?
01:00Occasionally.
01:01But, boy, wasn't it exciting.
01:13One of the must-have toys of the 1980s was an innovative new doll
01:18you very well might know.
01:20But what you might not know is that one time this cuddly, soft doll
01:26suddenly 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, and they truly can't make enough
01:39to keep up with the demand.
01:42It's anarchy.
01:46People are climbing over one another for this doll in its giant cardboard box.
01:53I got my doll!
01:55I got my doll!
02:10I got my doll!
02:21So just being a cute little doll in a Cabbage Patch isn't going to cut it.
02:25Your new thing better shake it, better wiggle it, better dance it, better talk.
02:29It's got to do something.
02:30To reignite their Cabbage Patch Kid craze, they give their doll 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.
02:48She really loves to snack.
02:50Wow!
02:50She really tunes!
02:52The Cabbage Patch Snack Time Kid has a mouth that opens and closes like a child.
02:57So you feed it.
02:58This 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 that you
03:17put 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
03:28its mouth, the lips start to move, and those rollers grab hold of that food, pop it into
03:33the doll's belly area, and then pops it right out into the backpack.
03:36It 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.
03:58And 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
04:07put in its mouth.
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
04:18it 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
04:25its backpack, which 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.
04:43Imagine 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.
05:13And that is, take the backpack off.
05:17Because if the backpack is off, the Cabbage Patch doll is no longer hungry.
05:22Make sense?
05:23No.
05:24When the backpack is off, there's no place for the plastic food to go, so the eating mechanism
05:29is disabled.
05:30Who would think backpack when a doll is eating your child?
05:34You're thinking off button, battery compartment, not backpack.
05:37There 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
05:52Snack Time dolls and issue a full refund, which costs millions of dollars.
05:57It'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.
06:09No other toy maker has ever 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.
06:34A 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,
07:01what could we make that would 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.
07:11Hula 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.
07:24But a toy company called Transogram lets the hula hooping phenomenon go to your head.
07:31It's a new thing, it's a fun thing.
07:34In 1965, something called the swing wing is born.
07:39It'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
07:49counterbalance and you 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.
08:09Kids are really into the swing wing, but it starts to hurt after a while.
08:14You're basically head banging 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.
08:28But the swing wing forces them to whip their heads around violently.
08:32It's not just the violent head banging that hurts.
08:34There's also a counterweight pulling in the opposite direction of the way that your neck is straining against.
08:39The 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, whiplash.
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? Because it really is crazy.
09:12You'd think that the Consumer Product Safety Commission would yank the swing wing off the market.
09:17And 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.
09:36But 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 by taking an iconic play thing to a terrifying
10:00new 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.
10:29She 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.
10:51And the way he's going to do this is by attaching an internal combustion engine.
10:56Does it sound dangerous?
10:58Yes, that's the point.
10:59That's what makes it awesome.
11:01Spitzmesser's version isn't going to raise the bar.
11:04It's going to 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, the fuel explodes.
11:23That pushes the piston down hard.
11:25That's going to 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.
11:37Hey, what's that kid doing?
11:41He's hopping on a hop rod.
11:43Can we just take a second to appreciate the name, the 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
12:10without expending any energy or using your leg muscles.
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.
12:21The 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 going to bust a hip.
12:29I 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,
12:40and 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.
12:47That's table height.
12:49It's pretty insane.
12:52Sure, three feet sounds fun,
12:54but it's not long before amateur daredevils
12:57are 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
13:23onto a thing about the 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
13:33and pray to 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.
13:42That 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, not from concussions or broken bones,
13:56but 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.
14:06So by 1975, hop rod was out of the market, but they didn't disappear before they made an appearance
14:13at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
14:15It's a publicity event. This TV personality gets on an hop rod and starts jumping,
14:20but falls off and breaks his shoulder.
14:22There's no footage that we can see, unfortunately, but the Indianapolis Motor Speedway banned pogo sticks.
14:29Still to this day, mind you, it 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. It 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. Sounds 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.
15:30So you're in a gunfight. Your opponent might be watching your hands, might be watching your eyes.
15:36But you know what he's not watching? Your 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. The belt would pop open and it would fire a little plastic bullets,
16:17but 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
16:24on these two little points right here, and 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,
16:34but perhaps hands-free shooting wasn't fully thought through.
16:39Firing projectiles at waist level. What 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. It 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 going to be dumb, you got to
17:16be tough.
17:17Mom'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,
17:48parents buy a lot of these things. It's a big hit.
17:52I 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, questions were fading, and the Derringer belt buckle rode off into the sunset.
18:13What parent doesn't love a toy that inspires creativity? Something you can leave a kid alone
18:19with for hours? Well, 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. You basically set up these little
18:33beads on this pegboard, and then you essentially melt them together with a hot iron. Really fun. You can
18:40make all sorts of cool designs and decorations. But five-year-olds can't handle a hot iron, so you have
18:45to wait for your mom or dad to come around and fuse your whole creation together. That just sucks.
18:51So an Australian company thinks to itself, well, what if there was a way to create a toy where
18:55kids could do this on their own? You're going to have to make some sort of chemical reaction
19:00for the beads to bond and essentially glue themselves together. They get some engineers
19:05to help design a toy that can do just this, and it's called Aquadots. Here's the trick. Spray with
19:11water to make them stick. Kids have a little spray bottle. They're going to spray their little
19:17Aquadots, and 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, oh, these are a choking hazard,
19:35but that's actually not the real hazard of the Aquadots. They're so small, kids are just
19:44swallowing them, and then parents start reporting really strange symptoms.
19:50Parents are reporting children getting dizzy, nauseous, passing out, and in some cases,
19:55even falling into comas. There are enough reports of sick kids
19:59that the Consumer Product Safety Commission opens an investigation.
20:04Researchers find out that they're coated with a chemical called butanidiol. That's a chemical that
20:10is utterly insane to be on a child's toy, especially one that looks like candy and can be easily swallowed.
20:17Butanidiol is essentially an industrial solvent. It'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. It's not the kind of thing you want to lick off your
20:36art
20:36project. But it gets worse. When this chemical is ingested, it turns into a compound called gamma
20:40hydroxybutyrate, or GHB. GHB was developed as an anesthetic. It knocks you out cold by suppressing
20:49your central nervous system. Today, it's classified as a Schedule I substance. Extremely powerful.
20:59GHB, also known as the date rape drug. And that's what they're using to coat a children's toy.
21:09What's wild about this toy is that nobody thought, what happens if, like, maybe a child thinks to put a
21:14small colorful object in their mouth? Of course that's gonna happen. And then beyond that, they never
21:18looked at the way in which it was toxic. No one says, okay, so this thing that used to take
21:26heat
21:26to bond, we're just gonna spray water on there and that's all it's gonna be? Yeah. No one raised their
21:33hand and said, so what are we putting on there that makes it do that? And is that safe for
21:38children?
21:39Nope, that didn't happen. The US government hits aqua dots with a $1.3 million judgment. And of course,
21:48millions of packs are recalled. But how insane is it a children's toy made with this chemical
21:58made it to market in the first place? Wow, talk about hard to swallow. And when one toy icon from
22:05the 1960s
22:06got an upgrade, the dangers were more of a burning sensation. In 1963, a toy company in Ohio comes up
22:15with one of the greatest ideas of all time, the Easy Bake Oven. You make your batter, you put it
22:21in the
22:21tin receptacle and you slide it through a narrow slot in the Easy Bake Oven. The idea is genius. Use
22:28a box
22:28with 200-watt incandescent light bulbs to bake cakes on demand. And then you're suddenly everybody's
22:35favorite friend. Over 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.
22:47The government starts to ban incandescent light bulbs in order to move to energy efficient LEDs
22:54that produce the light without the heat. The manufacturers of the Easy Bake Oven suddenly
22:59have a giant problem on their hands. The Easy Bake Oven was engineered around all the wasted
23:05energy that came off as heat from those incandescent bulbs. So when you put LEDs in the oven,
23:09you don't have any heat and you're not baking anything. Rather than scrap a toy icon,
23:15designers go back to the drawing board. They 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. There's fake burners on top and
23:31the
23:31baking slots aren't on the side. The baking slots in the front, much like you would put a cake in
23:37and
23:38take a cake out of a real oven. To get out the hot pan, you have the magic cool pan
23:43grabber.
23:44You reach in with the grabber to slide it out. It's basically your parents' oven, but more fun.
23:49Kid bakers across America rejoice. The Easy Bake is more powerful than ever and can crank out cakes
23:56faster than they ever had before. Every kid in the country wants to get their hand on one.
24:00But the trouble starts when kids get their hands in one. With the new redesign of the Easy Bake,
24:08with the opening in the front of the oven, it's got to be wide enough for the pan grabber to
24:13get
24:13inside, which means there's a lot of room for little fingers to get stuck and for little fingers to get
24:22burnt. This is about as big as a VHS tape. I could see how a little kid could get their
24:28hand under this
24:29metal slot and not get it out. Now imagine this is on at a temperature hot enough to bake a
24:37cake.
24:37We'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. I mean, it's a perfect recipe
24:52for disaster. But 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. And kids are literally showing up with an
25:05oven attached to their hands. Within months, there are more than 200 reports of kids getting their hands
25:12stuck in the Easy Bake oven. Almost 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. So that limits your
25:31capacity to actually burn yourself. It's wild to think that the original design was safer than the
25:37remake in the 21st century.
25:42When it comes to safety and fun, sometimes you cannot have your cake and eat it too.
25:50In the late 70s, kids were obsessed with galaxies far, far away. So space toys came out fast and
25:59furious. In one case, maybe a little too fast.
26:05In 1977, Star Wars Mania hit the country. It'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, trying to harness that Star Wars magic.
26:20Battlestar Galactica premieres on ABC in 1978. And much like Star Wars, with the series,
26:28come the toys.
26:30The line is so popular, it sells 2 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, freighter, missile base, open. Cylon, freighter, 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, there's nothing more frustrating than firing a
27:06missile at your friend's ship saying, oh, I got you. And he's saying, no, you didn't. But with real
27:12projectiles, instead of just flashing lights, there's no questioning. You fire, you hit, um, 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. Either the darts are soft,
27:31or they don't go too far, or the firing mechanisms are weak, or more than likely, all three.
27:38But the Battlestar Galactica line shoots these hard plastic missiles with the force of a low-powered BB gun.
27:45It shoots them far and fast and straight, which sounds awesome because it was. But the force with
27:52this 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. But at the time, choking hazards, we're not really thinking about it. We're
28:07just 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
28:14close together, especially on the Colonial Viper. So it was very easy to slip and accidentally fire
28:21that missile right down your own throat, lodge there, and it was very hard to get it out.
28:26There are so many stories of parents running to the emergency room. One kid had a half-hour
28:32surgery 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. However, the company knows they have a problem,
28:48so they voluntarily put labels on the toys saying, don't fire at your face or mouth. But they don't
28:55put the labels on the ones in the stores. They just put them on the ones in the factories that
29:00are
29:00about to be shipped. Sales are still going strong through the holiday season. And then a couple
29:07days after Christmas, a kid actually chokes on a missile from a Cylon radar. And that's kind of it.
29:15The fun is over. They recall existing Battlestar Galactica spaceships and redesigned new ones with
29:24non-firing missiles. It's such a big deal. They actually highlight it in the commercials.
29:30B-designed toys do not launch missiles. Sales drop like crazy. Their biggest selling point has become
29:37their greatest liability. They've become more safe, but as far as kids are concerned, they are a lot less
29:43cool. It is the Battlestar Galactica toy line that is responsible for toys that come with small plastic
29:51pieces bearing the warning of choking hazards. Unsurprisingly, those dangerous OG Battlestar
29:58Galactica missile firing ships, they are now considered rare and valuable collectibles.
30:05Today, there's a standard warning on toys that say, not for children under three. But back in the 90s,
30:14there was an attractive new toy marketed just for girls that delivered high-speed action. Whether it meant
30:20to or not. In the early 90s, a toy designer notices his daughter playing with a fluttering seedling
30:28and gets an idea for a toy. He imagines something that flies. It's like a fairy or a ballerina or
30:35a
30:35little sprite that can move through the air with the same grace as those seedlings he saw his daughter
30:39playing with. So he and his partners develop these dolls with these beautiful wings. They work at a deal
30:45with the toy company and they land on the name Sky Dancer. Through the years, flying toys are mostly
30:51aimed at boys. They're rockets or airplanes that are meant to be used outside. These ones are aimed at
30:57girls and meant to be used inside too, like dolls. These fill a big gap in the market. Wow, they
31:04really fly!
31:05By the end of 1995, they hit 70 million dollars in sales. This is the number one doll on the
31:13market.
31:13Turns out, sky dancers do a lot more than just fly off the shelves. If you watch the commercial,
31:20these berries spin up very gently and come down very delicately. This 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. But the wings are really more like helicopter blades. The harder you pull that string,
31:38the faster and higher they're gonna go. And if you launch it straight up, like you're supposed to do,
31:43they can go up to 10 to 12 feet off the ground. But girls soon discover that if you pointed
31:49at
31:50another angle, say at a whiny brother or sister or anyone who's annoying you, you can shoot it right at
31:55them.
31:56This fairy becomes a projectile with hard spinning blades. It's basically a flying blender.
32:03These are like kamikaze fairies and this thing is hitting you at 40 miles per hour. It's like
32:07getting drilled in the face by a baseball. Kids are getting scratched corneas, broken teeth, broken ribs
32:13from a toy that's supposed to be this beautiful fairy flying through the air. The toy manufacturer actually
32:20figures out there's a problem, but they don't tell anybody. This is before social media, so they're like,
32:25let's just not say anything. Maybe if we don't tell anyone, it'll just go away. Soon, there are more
32:31than 150 recorded injuries from Sky Dancer dolls. So the Consumer Product Safety Commission steps in
32:38and says, look, you can't give your little girl attack drones to play with. And in 2000, the US
32:44government finds the toy company $400,000 and they demand a full recall of all 9 million Sky Dancers
32:52which had been sold. Sky Dancers were later reintroduced with a new design. They would only
33:00launch when you pointed them up toward the sky and not at your little brother.
33:07Remember that old catch phrase, up your nose with a rubber hose? Well, a hot toy back in the 60s
33:14asked, 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
33:26that you do not have a pool. Your parents aren't going to buy one, and you're probably ticked off
33:31about it. If you want to get cool in the dead heat of summer, you don't have many options. You
33:37have a
33:37hose, and you can attach it to a sprinkler. And there is nothing more boring and predictable
33:43than a sprinkler. It might be a sprinkler that moves like this. Maybe it's the kind that moves
33:48like this. Those are kind of your options. Toy companies soon realize that whoever makes
33:53the everyday garden hose more exciting is going to cash in. In 1962, toy makers decide that the secret
34:00ingredient to backyard fun is chaos, and they introduce the water wiggle. It's practically
34:07alive. You never know what the water wiggle will do next. It's wild, cool, splashing fun.
34:14This thing is next level. I mean, it is just bringing the party to everybody. Essentially,
34:20it's this seven-foot-long hose that then has this head on the top. It looks like a giant half
34:26of a
34:26potato, and it will fling itself around just on the water pressure alone. Inside the head is where
34:34the magic happens. There's a hook on the end that narrows the stream, turns it into a jet, and so
34:41now
34:41this 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? It's unpredictable. It chases you.
34:53It runs around. You 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. They sold 200,000 of these a year.
35:04Kids 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. This thing has such high water pressure
35:18that it's less a toy and more like a mechanical serpent with a mind 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.
35:36Today, if you put that ad on social media, within 30 minutes, that sucker's going viral.
35:44They're going to call senators. But in the 60s and 70s, parents watched this and were like,
35:49we 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. And now you've got this exposed,
36:02hard 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. It can drown you very
36:25quickly or, you know, if it's lodged deep enough, it 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. But the Consumer Product
36:38Safety Commission, which has only existed for three years at this point, says,
36:42seems like a freak accident. You know, let them keep playing.
36:45In 1978, it happens again. And this time, there's a full recall and it gets pulled from the market.
36:51But very few of these things were returned. Was it because they were broken and thrown away?
36:56Or was it because people just ignored the warning? Maybe. I mean, it was the 70s.
37:01I 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. But proceed with caution.
37:20There used to be a famous slogan that promised us better living through chemistry. And in the 1950s
37:27and 60s, toy makers thought chemicals could also make toys better. What could go wrong? It was science.
37:36In 1961, Disney comes out with a movie called The Absent-Minded Professor. And it's this huge hit.
37:43The movie itself has this miraculous substance that the lead character invents.
37:50You can put it on your shoes and suddenly you can jump 20 feet. You can throw it in your
37:54gas tank.
37:54It'll do things for your car. If I'm a kid watching that, I want Flubber.
37:59In 1962, a toy version of Flubber hit store shelves. Coming out with the Flubber toy was a no-brainer.
38:07It was this mix between like slime and silly putty. You can stretch it. You can bend it. You can
38:13bounce it.
38:13You can press it down on a newspaper and lift up the image. There's a lot you can do with
38:18this toy version of Flubber.
38:19We don't really know what this substance is made of, but who cares, right? Kids are having such a great
38:25time.
38:26In the first several months, four million balls of Flubber are sold. It is gangbusters.
38:33But Flubber's success is short-lived. The LA Times starts reporting that local and state health
38:40officials are investigating a breakout of strange rashes among school children.
38:45This thing could be anything, a fungus or a bacterial epidemic. And the government is like
38:51oddly unconcerned about this at the time. One government official actually says the rash is so
38:57faint that you can hardly see it. But when people begin to look more closely,
39:01they notice a trend. These 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? Oh, you can see them.
39:12These are full body rashes. Plus, a lot of these kids have extremely sore throats.
39:18Kids are out of school for days with intense itching and swelling. And we're not talking about
39:23just 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, we do know that there
39:44was probably synthetic rubber, mineral oil, and borax. Borax is a hardcore cleaner that you use to
39:54remove rust stains and deodorize toilets. It's good for killing ants and cockroaches. You don't
40:01play with it. Some countries have actually banned the use of borax. In America, it's not banned outright,
40:08but it is banned from being included in food products. When kids were playing with Flubber,
40:12they were getting it all over their hands, they're touching their faces, and inevitably,
40:16it made its way into their mouths. So kids were basically eating this stuff. But at the time,
40:21there's no regulatory structure around regulating the safety of toys. However, the US Food and Drug
40:26Administration finds that there's evidence to suggest that Flubber is actually making people
40:31sick. So the company orders a recall. But there's something about Flubber that makes it not so easy
40:38to get rid of. Today, we have a ton of regulations, state and federal, about waste disposal. But we
40:44really didn't have that back then. There are stories of, at first, them trying to just basically
40:50take it all to the dump. But there are kids that are trying to break into the dump because they
40:54want
40:54access to Flubber. Next, they try to burn it. But burning rubber isn't great. Releases all kinds
41:00of toxic chemicals into the air. Next up is dumping in the ocean. And then they make a startling new
41:07discovery for Flubber. It floats. Ultimately, the rumor goes that they buried the rest of the Flubber
41:14and paved over it to make a parking lot. It sounds like the plot of a horror movie. Like it's
41:19just
41:19waiting underground for some disaster to reanimate it. Maybe at the end of the world, all that will
41:25be left is cockroaches and Flubber. Thinking back about the toys that made us tempt fate,
41:31whether they fired speeding projectiles or sent us soaring too high or even tried to eat us alive,
41:38it was all fun and games and someone was bound to get hurt. But looking back now,
41:43that's why our hazardous history was child's play.
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