Delve Deck: What toys did you have as a kid that would be considered too dangerous today?

 

My childhood was less sheltered that that of my kids.  Just the presence of parents changes risk, and my parents were absent for much of my youth.  Not absent in a bad way, just occupied with adult life, leaving their kids to find their own diversions.  This wasn't markedly different than the way their parents raised them.  Something definitely changed about parenting in my generation.  We were more involved, competitive with other parents, longing to be friends with our kids and needing their approval in so many ways.

This is evidenced by our childhood activities and especially in our toys.  One major difference is the marketing and branding of toys.  Manufacturers improved the realism of toys and now give kids accessories to play that require very little imagination.  Toys look like the real thing, and advertisements show kids how to properly play with them.  This is a far stretch from the sticks my friends and I picked up that became guns, swords, magic wands, flying brooms, and anything we needed to communicate the nuances of our play to other participants.  Parents joked that some kids turned everything into guns, but I don't think they should have taken that as a cue to replace them with realistic ones.  Daisy Red Ryder BB guns are one thing, but even as a kid, I had an M-16 assault rifle that produced the Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r sound of automatic fire until your index finger grew too tired.  Later Nerf introduced foam bullets and neon colored alternatives to ensure fewer SWAT tactical responses and arguments over whether your friend was actually hit by the barrage of bullets fired in their direction.

The infamous steel-tipped "Jarts" were part of my childhood and yes, we played with them without supervision.  Jarts were lawn darts with weighted and sharp tips tossed underhand in a high arc towards a hoop on the ground some 35 feet away.  Land inside the hoop and you scored a point.  If your opponent also lands a dart inside the ring, they cancel each other out.  Play continues until one team scores 21 points or a jart becomes impaled into another player's foot or head.  Usually.  Sometimes game play continues until the victim's parent arrives or a first responder arrives.  After the first dozen deaths were reported, the steel-tip lawn dart was replaced with weighted soft tips.  Jarts popularity went downhill after the risk of death was decreased.  At least that was my observation.  Later the game of bag toss (colloquially known as "bags" or "cornhole" took over.  The fact that it was safer to drink beer while playing it helped the lawn game regain the Jart crowd.

Another toy that warranted brief reconsideration was the steel wheel roller skate.  These predated urethane wheel models and had the tendency to slip sideways on smooth surfaces.  This was achieved frequently at the funeral home across the street from my childhood home, with joined sidewalks and driveway that formed a perfect oval for racing.  Concrete sidewalks were the intended surface for roller skates, and when pulled on a rope behind a bicycle driven by a friend or sister, still provided some adhesion in order to make the sharp 90 degree corner.  The remaining corners were wider and allowed higher speeds, but they were also asphalt and coated with a slick sealant that could pool rainwater and become oily in the summer sunshine.  This initiated a move now called "drifting" where centrifugal force exceeds traction.  All of this resulted in more than a few falls, but we returned to the practice each summer, once the road rash had healed.

Now a grandparent of three great kids, I wonder whether the whole safety thing is overblown.  While healthcare has grown exponentially more expensive, mental health has declined significantly.  Maybe being exposed to danger and mayhem through childhood play formed some insulation that made us more resilent.  It sure made more more cautious as an adult, knowing that some things in your toybox can kill you.