15 Most Dangerous Toys

government regulations today ensure that children's toys are safe to play with but in earlier times regulations were either non-existent or insufficient to ensure safe play let's take a look at 15 of the most dangerous kids toys ever made number 15 rollerblade barbie generally speaking barbie dolls are pretty harmless but in the 1990s a more fiery version hit the market known as rollerblade barbie she stood apart thanks to her two little yellow rollerblades now each one of these rollerblades used a wheel mechanism similar to the kind found in cigarette lighters so that when the barbie was rolled her boots would shoot out sparks this effect could be accentuated with things such as spray and as a result a few fires were reported to have been sparked so it didn't take long for the roller blade barbie to be pulled from shelves and they're now considered to be a collector's item number 14 mini hammocks put simply hammocks are some of the best outdoor beds around and while regular hammocks pose no harm the mini versions of them have proven to be extremely deadly how you might ask well it turns out that the regular hammocks have spreader bars which are essentially wooden or plastic bars on either end that ensure that the hammock does not collapse however the many renditions that became popular with kids in the 1980s and 90s didn't have these spreader bars and as a result they could easily twist around a child and strangle them to death after a report that showed 12 children fell victim to these hammocks between 1984 and 1995 over 3 million were recalled in 1996. as a result hammocks now have to have spreader bars in order to be deemed to be safe to sell number 13 the csi fingerprint examination kit as far as mid-2000s television show goes few are as popular as csi miami and while almost most of those watching it were in the 20-plus crowd in 2007 they had the bright idea of creating a csi based toy for kids known as the csi finger examination kit it was essentially a toy that allowed kids to use fingerprint dust to detect fingerprints on surfaces however after some reports of irritation the asbestos disease awareness organization paid 165 thousand dollars to conduct an independent report they were shocked to find that about seven percent of the dust found in the kit was made of tremolite which is a form of asbestos since asbestos is extremely toxic the kits had to be discontinued soon after the report went public number 12 the austin magic pistol in the 1940s the regulations around toys were virtually non-existent yet the austin magic pistol was so dangerous that even by the standards of the day it was considered to be a little crazy released in 1949 in order to profit off of the rise in space themed toys it was a toy gun that shot out ping pong balls with the help of magic crystals in reality these magic crystals were calcium chloride and these were problematic for two reasons the first was that it allowed the ping pong balls to shoot out at ridiculously fast speeds making it very easy to severely injure someone however what was more dangerous about it was that even just tiny amounts of water or saliva could cause the calcium chloride to explode leading to a large fireball that would engulf both the toy and the child's hand alike so it didn't take long for them to be taken off the market and today lawmakers consider them to be actual firearms number 11 the easy bake oven easy bake ovens are easily one of the most beloved toys of all time bringing the fun of baking to small children these little ovens would allow kids to make tiny cakes all on their own and while the toy's popularity led it to being inducted into the national toy hall of fame in 2006 shortly afterwards hasbro created a version of the toy that gave it a really bad look that's because this new addition had a very poorly conceived oven door and as a result countless children got their hands stuck inside this led to numerous second and third degree burns and in response hasbro was forced to recall approximately 985 000 units however ever since the ovens have been redesigned so that they're now much safer and the easy bake oven can now be found in stores around the world number 10 buckyballs of all the desk toys out there few aren't quite as fun as buckyballs that's because these tiny little ball-shaped magnets can be swirled to make many types of shapes and designs they're able to do so thanks to them being super magnetic these magnetic forces are present thanks to them containing a rare earth metal known as neodymium and while they make for a cool toy they don't make for a very good snack yet this hasn't caused many a toddler from putting buckyballs into their mouth this is problematic because these balls have magnets that are so strong that they will not only form into various shapes inside one's stomach or intestines but will often stick together through the intestinal walls this can cause large holes to form with symptoms often including vomiting blood and intense pain sometimes doctors even have to perform surgeries where they remove part of a person's intestine and as a result doctors consider the ingestion of two or more buckyballs to be a medical emergency this led to the balls being banned in the united states in 2013 yet after a lengthy legal battle they were reinstated in 2016. regardless we suggest keeping these desk toys far away from your kids number nine clackers if you grew up in the late 1960s and you may have had this simple yet addictive toy known as clackers they were two heavy balls on a string that would make a loud sound when hit together modeled after the bulliadores used by argentinian cowboys to hunt they were marketed as a way to help with hand-eye coordination typically made out of wood metal or acrylic plastic they would constantly clack thanks to them following the laws of newton's cradle now if these were just to be an annoying toy they wouldn't be too much of an issue but after some time it turned out that the plastic renditions were very dangerous this is because these would often shatter into a million pieces and blind unsuspecting kids when the shrapnel hit them in the eyes as a result in 1971 the fda decided to act by placing strict measures such as prescriptive testing and stringent record keeping on clacker making this made it far too costly to make the toys and as a result they were taken off the market shortly afterwards [Music] we are constantly adding more people to the top fives production team to bring you all the best content be sure to subscribe with notifications on and hit the like button number eight skydancer dolls well there are several dolls out there that can talk sing sleep or even eat there are a few out there that can fly yet that's exactly what the sky dancer dolls could do when they were released by hasbro in 1994 as a result millions of them were sold over the years these dolls worked by having kids pull a long string on their back which then allowed them to launch into the air and spin like a helicopter the idea was that they would then land gently however the reality is that they would often barrel into the ground fast while moving in an erratic flight pattern this led to over 150 injuries these including scratched corneas temporary blindness chipped teeth broken ribs and facial lacerations as a result hasbro was ordered to recall all 8.9 million that had been sold in the year 2000 leading to many being returned for a refund of between 8 to 25 bucks however if you'd like one for your own you'll have to spend about 85 bucks for just one number 7. creepy crawlers while toy manufacturers is typically a job left for factory workers in developing countries creepy crawlers brought the fun home in a pint-sized box first released back in 1964 kids would use the creepy crawlers thing maker by pouring liquid plastic into a mold which would then be heated up by the thing maker until it became a plastic toy one of the main problems with it is that it became extremely hot as kids could easily be burned themselves while using the oven that insult to injury the heated plastic would also let off toxic fumes which led to many kids being poisoned while playing with the thing maker despite this the toy was wildly popular various renditions such as a hot wheels car maker and an edibles edition were released in fact the toy even went on to have its own cartoon series that lasted for a total of two seasons yet after some time they were pulled from shelves and only made a reappearance in the 1990s after the toy was made so that the plastic fumes wouldn't be toxic and the oven would stay locked until the toys were completed regardless despite the nostalgia surrounding it the toy has pretty much been phased out of use number six hoverboards if you happen to be on the younger side chances are you've tried out a hoverboard becoming popular around 2015 they were essentially little electric scooters that would allow you to zoom around your neighborhood at the approximate speed of someone taking a light jog now while these hoverboards may have looked silly rather than scary it turns out they were responsible for a lot of injuries the reasons for this are twofold the first is that many kids were using them while looking at their phones this caused countless collisions that led to everything from sprained wrists to broken bones yet beyond distracted hoverboarding the scarier issue was that they had a tendency to explode you see hoverboards became extremely popular almost overnight and this led to thousands of chinese factories pumping them out at record rates this heavy production meant that the hoverboards were made with thousands of parts and came in several different brands and in the rush to produce many of them were not made very well this led to the lithium-ion batteries in several hoverboards exploding after being subjected to simple things like an electric charger or short ride and as a result hundreds of thousands of them were cancelled yet it turned out that the recalls weren't even all that important as in just a few short years the hoverboard fad was almost completely forgotten five aqua dots at first glance aqua dots look pretty harmless after all this toy allows kids to make designs on a tray by using little multi-colored beads once the design is made then it's sprayed with water and it's at this point that the water binds the beads together into a 3d creation at the time these fun little crafts proved to be extremely popular and in 2007 aqua dots even won the australian toy of the year award however while the creations themselves were pretty neat what was not so neat were the beads used to make them that's because while they were supposed to use the non-toxic plasticizer 1.5 pantaniol in 2007 the distributor accidentally used a toxic compound known as 1.4 butane diol this was problematic because when it was ingested it would metabolize into a sedative and hypnotic drug it wasn't long until children started to have seizures and in some cases fall into comas after snacking on some nasty aqua dots this caused regulators from around the world to start recalling the toy while it's not known how many of them were distributed in the united states alone the figure was pegged at 4.2 million and there were even concerns that some people would get their hands on these discontinued toys in order to purposefully get high off the beads once all was said and done aqua dots had to completely rebrand to several other names in order to brush off their old association and now all the beads are only made with regulated materials the company even went the extra mile by covering beads with a bitter coating to discourage snacking and ever since the toy has been chugging along without picking up any major legal issues number four the gilbert u-238 atomic energy lab if you want to get a glimpse of a nuclear experiment chances are that you'll have to find your way into a high-tech science lab however in 1950 ac gilbert company encouraged kids to bring the fun of uranium home by selling atomic science kits while this idea may sound crazy today they were the real deal as they not only had four tins of uranium but and please bear with us here beta alpha beta and gamma radiation sources a cloud chamber a spin therascope to watch adam's decay an electroscope a geiger counter a 60-page instruction book and a guide on how to mine uranium kids were expected to read the comic book-like instruction book to understand how the experiments would work and from there they would split atoms of uranium-235 measure the samples radioactivity observe radioactive decay and even go prospecting for radioactive oars all of these could get really dangerous if an experiment were to go wrong so the kids incentivized safety not by saying that uranium was dangerous but by rather warning kids that by removing the samples they would increase the surrounding radioactivity and invalidate their results but what perhaps the most shocking is that these kits weren't made by some amateur salesmen looking to make a quick buck but by professionals who had even consulted physicists from the manhattan project with the primary purpose supposedly being to educate the public however while these kits were super cool they were discontinued in 1951. this is because at an inflation adjusted price of about five hundred dollars they were far out of the reach of the average family and so after fewer than five thousand were sold they were pulled from shelves regardless these kits are still remembered for being some of the craziest toys ever made number three lawn darts if you've ever been to a backyard barbecue chances are you've played a game of lawn darts and while relatively safe editions of the game are quite easy to find today in the 1980s these darts were the cause of a lot of controversy back in the day a brand known as jarts was all the rage these were quite similar to regular darts except that they were very large and the intention was for them to be aimed at a hoop on the grass of someone's lawn however it wasn't long until injuries began to pile up they came to a head when a young girl was killed after a misthrowned dart sailed over a backyard fence and punctured her skull this event made newspaper headlines across america and upon further investigation it was found that a lot of shady things were occurring in the lawn dart industry that's because the game was only meant to be marketed to adults and was supposed to come with a warning label yet despite this the darts did not meet any safety requirements to make matters worse the danger of the darts had also been covered up by the consumer product safety commission and it was soon revealed that over an eight-year period lawn darts had sent 6 100 people to the emergency room of these cases about half an involved kids ages 10 or younger and the majority of the injuries sustained were to the head face eyes or ears with many leading to permanent injury or disability these shocking findings led to a massive public outcry and as a result they were officially banned from being sold in the usa in 1988 and banned in canada in 1989 as a result while safer versions of the toy still exists the original jarts are now near impossible to find number two snack time cabbage patch kid cabbage patch kids were all the rage when they came out in 1982 and over the years various versions of them were made in order to convince consumers to buy more of them and while strange creations such as the swimming cabbage patch kid and cabbage patch kid with growing hair made all the rounds perhaps the craziest of them all was this snack time cabbage patch kid made in 1996 for the christmas shopping season the idea behind them was that you could feed them plastic food that they would then chew swallow and poop out this worked by putting the food near the doll's lips so that a powerful battery-powered motor could pull it in this motor used a series of small plastic rollers to push the food backward into its head with the setup working similarly to the grinding mechanisms found in the mouths of stingrays while this allowed for optimal chewing it also meant that the motor only went in one direction this meant that when you put something in its mouth the doll would keep chewing until its mouth was clear and this meant that anything from human hair to human fingers would be torn to shreds in order to meet the doll's insatiable appetite this led to a wave of consumer complaints and in response mattel was forced to recall a total of five hundred thousand snack time cabbage patch kids while pulling a further 200 000 from shelves while most returned the doll and received a forty dollar refund some still decided to keep it and today you can still buy one for yourself if you're willing to cough up a couple hundred bucks but we do think that you'd agree these were some of the most terrifying dolls of all time number one laser pointers if you've ever been to rome chances are you've seen a street vendor hawking green laser pointers at first glance the toys are pretty cool as they shoot out a powerful green laser that can hit objects very far away and some even have a fun attachment that can make the light dance across the room in a pattern yet it turns out that they have the potential to be a lot more dangerous than you might think you see in most countries laser pointers can only be sold legally if they have a power output of five milliwatts or less as at this level they're relatively harmless however the one sold by illegal street vendors often reach intensities of 10 milliwatts or greater with the help of a pair of simple double or aaa batteries and while it may seem fun to point them around there are two main reasons as to why they're so dangerous the first is that they have the potential to seriously damage someone's cornea if flashed in one's eyes and even at long ranges there have been reports of people sustaining eye injuries so bad that they resulted in full or partial blindness beyond physical injury these lasers also have the potential to disable an airplane that's because when someone aims it at one the light will flash across the windshield blinding the pilot and making it near impossible for them to operate the plane safely therefore while these toys may look cool they are technically illegal to own due to the potential damage they can deal as such we just hope that governments begin to better clamp down on the sale of these lasers watch our binge watching playlist if you'd like to watch all of our most popular top 15 videos grab a drink grab a snack and get ready to binge you

Channel: Top Fives

Views: 2,171,910

Keywords: Most Dangerous Toys

Id: 92m06jZlGcE

Length: 18min 15sec (1095 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 16 2021