If parents could ban a toy, it
would probably be that little shark that keeps singing that one
song…over and over and over again. But countless toys have wound up in
permanent time out over the years. Some were defective. Some were
offensive. And some…were even deadly. Many of the most popular toys let kids pretend
to be grown-ups. That was the enduring appeal of the Easy-Bake Oven, which let kids safely make
small baked goods out of cake mix and molds. Well, semi-safely. The toy was on the market since 1963,
but in 2007 it suddenly became very hard to find. Hasbro received many reports of kids
getting their fingers burned or caught in the front-loading door, and voluntarily
pulled it from the market. It was eventually re-released - but with added safety
features and a much smaller entry that didn’t let kids anywhere near the
heating element. Bake away, kids - carefully. Sometimes, even the simplest toys can be hazards. They didn’t get much simpler than Clackers.
A pair of spheres attached to a string, they were played with by swinging them
around, making a large clacking sound when they smacked together. It seemed like a
harmless game and a way to annoy mom or dad, and the worst that could happen was a bruise when
a clacker went in the wrong direction - right? Wrong! Clackers were originally made out of
tempered glass, and they would eventually shatter. Nothing says playtime like some
shrapnel, right? They were pulled from the market not long after their 1968 introduction
and replaced with a plastic version. Sometimes, a little error can cause a big problem. Polly Pocket was a popular toy
line in the 1990s and beyond, playsets featuring a little girl who can
shrink. And it was tiny things that caused one toy’s undoing. The Quick-Clik Polly Pocket was
designed to let kids accessorize her in seconds with outfits with magnets in them - but the
magnets hadn’t been glued on properly. They were starting to come loose with regular play,
which not only made the toy useless but raised the risk that kids or their little siblings
might eat the magnets and have to undergo emergency surgery. From then on kids would have
to accessorize their dolls the old-fashioned way. Teachers everywhere were probably
happy this next product went away. Slap bracelets were one of those weird
fads that only 90s kids would understand. A flat strip of layered, flexible metal
covered with a colorful coating made of fabric, silicone, or plastic, it didn’t look like much
- until you slapped it against your wrist. The impact would make the bracelet curl into
an instant bracelet, and it became a must-have fashion item for kids everywhere. The problem was,
not all slap bracelets were created equal. Many used steel that was too thin or inferior covers,
and the metal would break or tear out and cut the user. Bandages were NOT a great fashion accessory,
and this led to school bans and recalls. This next one seems like a bad idea. If you were going to build a floatation
device for small children, especially babies, you’d probably want it to be pretty secure,
right? Which made it all the more shocking when Aqua Leisure’s inflatable Baby Boat proved
to be lacking in exactly that area. Sure, the colorful little inflatables looked adorable
and made for irresistible mommy blog photos, but the leg straps had a flaw that meant at any
moment the baby could drop straight out of the boat into the water. While thankfully no children
drowned, there were enough close calls that the government issued a recall of four million boats
and fined the company over half a million dollars. This next one may be familiar to movie fans. What is Flubber? It’s most famous for
being the title of a 1997 Robin Williams film about a wacky scientist who invents a
bouncing goo - but it was actually a real toy decades before. In the 1960s, the bouncing
goo was sold to slime-loving kids everywhere, but it didn’t live up to its promise
of being non-toxic and harmless. Kids who played with it started coming
down with sore throats and rashes, and it was determined it caused an inflammation
of hair follicles. The product was recalled, but there was so much of it that Hasbro couldn’t
burn it due to the toxic fumes it would create. No one knows what happened to it, but legends
say it was buried at one of their warehouses. This next one went flying off the
shelves - but also sent kids flying. Which kid wouldn’t like to jump like Shaq? That
was one of the big selling points of Moon Shoes, novelty footwear that was packed with
trampoline-like springs in the base. The original 1970s models had powerful springs
which sent kids flying down the street. They caused a multitude of broken legs and ankles -
no doubt boosting orthopedists’ business - but could also send kids flying into objects
head-first and causing more serious injuries. The moon shoes were eventually pulled off
the shelves, returning in the 1980s with a safer model which had much less jumping
power. They’re still on the shelves, but given how rarely you see kids wear
them, the danger might have been the appeal. Water toys are always popular
- but some go terribly wrong. Wham-O is one of the most iconic toy makers in the
United States, but one of their 1960s inventions had terrible fallout. The Water Wiggle was a
simple toy - a hose with an aluminum jet nozzle and a silly plastic face attached. When hooked up
to the main hose, it would flop around and shower kids with water on a hot day. The problem is -
kids put things where they’re not supposed to. The extra hose’s nozzle was just
the size to fit in a kid’s mouth, and two young children died from drowning
because of this in the 1970s. Ultimately, Wham-O decided to pull more than two and a
half million Water Wiggles from the market. A new soft plastic one was later introduced -
but most reviews indicate it just doesn’t work. They had other products to fall back
on - but they weren’t without problems. What kid doesn’t have fond childhood
memories of the slip-and-slide? You and your siblings are sliding away on a hot
day, and sure, you might crash into a few things, but young bodies are made to take it. That’s the
key word - young bodies. The iconic Wham-O toy is little more than a plastic sheet that becomes very
slippery when wet. When it debuted in the 1970s, it became a hit - but when teenagers
and adults used it, some turfed out and suffered serious neck injuries. This led
to it being taken off the market and retooled, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued
warnings that it’s not to be used by adults. That hasn’t stopped it, though - thirty
million slides were sold in 2011 alone. This next one probably led to
the creation of a common warning. “You’ll shoot your eye out!” Not only is
it an iconic line from a beloved movie, but it’s something kids have heard
any time they even look at a toy gun. That was probably the appeal of the Wham-O
Air Blaster Gun. Can’t shoot your eye out if there’s no ammo - the gun used compressed
air to blast things off the shelf and make a dramatic sound. Maybe a bit too dramatic -
not only did the gun annoy parents to no end, but there were reports that kids were damaging
each others’ eardrums by aiming it at close range. Ultimately, Wham-O voluntarily recalled
the product. You’ll shoot your…ear out? Even some of the biggest franchises
out there can be health hazards. Barbie can do it all! Dance, perform surgery, even
run for president, despite being approximately nineteen years old for half a century. But when
she decided to take up rollerblading, things got dangerous. Rollerblade Barbie, a 1991 variant,
took advantage of the new craze for in-line skates. Her skates had a cool feature - built-in
LED lights that flashed as kids pushed them. Unfortunately, these skates also released
sparks when rolled over a flat surface, which turned out to be a fire hazard. The toy was
quickly recalled, and the only way to get it now is through very expensive second-hand sources who
managed to get ahold of a vintage Arson Barbie. This next iconic toy made
mealtime a little dangerous. Kids love to play pretend with their toys, and
taking care of baby dolls is a common activity. But it’s rare that the dolls actually
eat the food they’re offered! That changed in 1996 when the Snacktime
Kids Cabbage Patch Kids were introduced. They could eat plastic snacks that would
be pushed into their mouth, with their mechanical jaws pulling the toy in and releasing
it into an attached backpack. The problem was, the jaws were pretty strong - strong enough to
pull in and crush little fingers that got stuck in there! While the toy did have a release mechanism
and there were no reports of serious injuries, Mattel and the government agreed to recall
the product less than a year after release. This next toy sent danger flying everywhere. If there was a cartoon on the air in the 1990s,
the odds are it had a toy line attached. That was the case with Sky Dancers, a show about young
heroes with magical powers that let them fly. The toy line got a lot of hype in 1994 for
actually being able to fly - when you released a pull-string base, the foam-winged dolls
would actually take off into the sky - in any direction they wanted. That was the problem
- they were powerful and hard to control, and would occasionally go flying into faces and
eyes. As a wave of emergency room visits - not to mention a lot of broken vases - proved they were
dangerous, the toys were recalled by manufacturer Galoob, resulting in any animator’s worst
nightmare - a cartoon with no tie-in products. Sometimes, danger can lurk
in the most unlikely places. Parents are probably pretty relieved when they
see their kids playing with cards. After all, what’s the worst that could happen - little
Billy taking his sister’s allowance in Poker? But one card game packed a hidden danger.
Branded after a popular TV show. Hannah Montana, the Miley Cyrus Disney Channel sitcom, this card
game spin-off from 2007 packed a hidden danger due to the manufacturer cutting corners. The
cards were tainted with lead - a shocking seventy-five times the recommended amount!
It was part of a mass expose of the lead content of toys that led to more than
six million playthings being recalled. Usually, one reason is enough to get
a toy banned - but how about three? Yo-yo water balls were more of a novelty
than a beloved plaything in the 1990s, but they were still everywhere. Neon-colored,
liquid-filled plastic balls attached to a stretchy string, they were mostly used by kids twirling
them around and whacking each other with them. But these little novelties packed a
lot of hidden danger. The stretchy cords could get tangled around necks,
the liquid inside wasn’t actually water but a chemical solution that could cause poisoning
- and the elastic material was highly flammable! Kids could get strangled, poisoned, and
burned by a single product! It’s no wonder that several states banned them outright and
the company had to eventually redesigned them. One popular franchise launched an
iconic toy - with deadly consequences. Battlestar Galactica might have been a cult hit,
but kids loved its colorful spaceships. In 1978, the Colonial Viper ship was a
hit not just for its design, but for its missile-launching action. However,
this proved to be its undoing - because the tiny plastic missiles were just the
perfect size for a little kid to swallow. When a four-year-old boy shot a missile
into his mouth and choked to death, the toy was yanked off shelves. Not only did
the original ship never resurface, but it became the origin of most toys with small parts like
projectiles getting choking warnings on the box. But sometimes, toys seem dangerous from the start. Who wouldn’t want to see a little
kid behind the wheel of a car? Fisher-Price wasn’t concerned when
they released the Power Wheels toy, a battery-powered mini-car that could send kids
around the neighborhood in style. Many parents were already worried due to the chance kids could
drive into traffic or other danger, but it soon turned out there was another problem - the brakes
in a 1991 model could fuse together, making it impossible to stop the car. Then in 1998, the
vehicles had the unfortunate tendency to catch on fire. But despite these failed models, the brand
continues to send kids zooming around to this day. Parents didn’t even have to buy these next toys. Is there any greater joy as a kid than finding
out what toy you’re getting in your fast food kids’ meal? Burger King upped the ante in 1999
with one of the most popular franchises of the day - Pokemon. Kids would open up a plastic ball
to find a plastic figure of a random critter, and parents found themselves buying a
lot more nuggets and burgers. But the figures themselves weren’t the danger - the
shell was. The halves of the plastic ball were the perfect shape to fit over
little mouths and get suctioned on, which led to two babies dying. The company
sprung into action, recalling twenty-five million of these fast food toys in one
of the biggest toy recalls of all time. Turning back the clock, a lot of toys in the
1940s and beyond were shockingly dangerous. The Easy-Bake Oven may have been unintentionally
dangerous at times, but that wasn’t the case for its predecessor, the Little Lady Stove.
No, this one was designed to be dangerous! This was a fully-functioning electric
stove with both a pair of compartments to cook food and a heated stovetop
for simmering rather than baking. That meant it could get hot. Very hot. Needless
to say, this caused no shortage of burns, but ultimately it wasn’t the many, many hazards
that spelled the end of the Little Lady Stove. It was the metal shortages of World War 2
that saved the fingers of many children. Cooking isn’t dangerous enough
for kids? How about glass-blowing? Gilbert was a craft and toy company in
the first half of the twentieth century, known for the Erector Set and toy trains.
But many of its craft sets packed a hidden danger - starting with its glass-blowing kit.
Glass blowing is dangerous even for professionals, as it requires heating glass to around a thousand
degrees Fahrenheit, but it used to be an essential skill for students taking chemistry - they had
to make their own test tubes! Gilbert decided to train them in this skill early, with predictable
results. The toy, which came with a portable torch for heating the glass, resulted in many cuts
and burns and was soon taken off the market. Gilbert just couldn’t stop giving kids
the opportunity to maim themselves. Glass-blowing is pretty dangerous, so how
about letting kids make model figurines? Sounds nice and safe, which was the
goal of the Gilbert Kaster Kit Jr Set. The problem was, kids wouldn’t just
paint figures, they would make them by pouring molten lead into molds! This had
many of the same problems as the glass-blowing kit - namely, little kids playing with hot
flames. Making it even worse, this was long before people knew just how dangerous lead
poisoning was to kids. No surprise this kit too was soon pulled off the market. It’s enough
for mom to say “Stop playing and watch some TV”. But Gilbert was about to top themselves
with their most dangerous kit ever. In 1950, nuclear technology was the talk of
the world - both in terms of weapons of war and domestic energy. But that doesn’t
mean anyone should be letting children in on the fun. That didn’t stop Gilbert from
introducing the U-238 Atomic Energy Laboratory, which let kids conduct experiments to
determine if objects were radioactive. And that meant, you guessed it - the toy
actually contained traces of uranium, one of the most dangerous substances on
Earth. As soon as word of this got around, the toy was quickly pulled off the market,
with less than five thousand kids being sold. With products like this, it’s no wonder
Gilbert went out of business by 1967. But dangerous play kits aren’t
just a thing od the past. What would make a better kids’ playset than…CSI?
The gory detective thriller was all the rage on CBS in the early 2000s, spawning multiple
spinoffs. The network wanted to get new fans started early, so they introduced the CSI
Fingerprint Examination Kit. This let kids get an up-close look at their own fingerprints
thanks to a special fingerprint-dusting powder that the toy company hyped up as just like
the one real crime scene investigators use. There was just one problem - a bonus
ingredient in the form of toxic asbestos. Fortunately, the non-profit Asbestos Disease
Awareness Organization blew the whistle early, and no aspiring detectives
were harmed in this toy caper. This next toy sounded harmless
- but it was anything but! Aqua Dots were a simple craft toy, consisting
of small colored beads that could be turned into artwork by arranging them and then pouring water
on them. The water triggered glue in the beads, permanently fusing them. A great rainy day craft
project - wait, why are the kids throwing up? Kids will always put small things in their mouths,
and while the beads were too small to be choking hazards, it soon turned out that there had been
a big mistake in manufacturing. The Chinese subcontractors that made the beads had used
chemicals that combined into gamma-hydroxybutyrate - otherwise known as the powerful drug GHB. The
companies had been accidentally dosing kids and quickly rushed to recall the entire product
line in 2007. One rebrand later, they were re-released as Pixos and Bindeez, and remain on
the shelf to this day - minus one key ingredient. The name on this next toy
alone should have been a clue. Who wouldn’t want a Creepy
Crawlers’ Thingmaker in their house? Not only was the name of this craft kit
vaguely terrifying, but the Mattel playset also packed multiple health hazards way
back in 1964. It was another one of those “toys” back in the old days that came with
a working oven - giving kids the chance to burn themselves on an element that heated
up to almost two hundred degrees celsius. Maybe the burn center was secretly funding
them. But this one made its plastic critters with a synthetic compound called “plastigoop” -
that turned out to emit toxic fumes when heated up in the oven. Predictably, it was pulled off
the shelves once kids started becoming sick, but Mattel was never one to let a bad idea die -
they re-released a safer model ten years later. This next one proves that not everything
that works for adults, works for kids. Is there anything better than relaxing
in a hammock after a hard day’s work? Lots of kids saw dad lounging away and
went “I would love a hammock of my own”. And the toy companies went “I would love
the money from them having a hammock of their own”. And so many companies released
mini-hammocks, adapted to kids’ small bodies by removing the spreader bar that kept
them apart. This went horribly wrong, as it turned out the lack of this feature made
it very easy for the hammocks to get twisted up. Not only did countless kids get tangled in the
hammock or unceremoniously dumped out, but many small children got the hammocks twisted around
their necks. After twelve deaths by strangulation, the companies recalled almost three million
mini-hammocks off toy store shelves in a hurry. And now we’re heading into the most notorious banned toys of all time -
and we’re starting small. Construction toys are among the most popular
genres of toy - as any parent who has stepped on a Lego in the middle of the night can
attest. When Magnetix debuted on the market in the early 2000s, the magnet-based
tubes and blocks were an instant hit. But just like the Polly Pocket set, where magnets
go, pain and recalls follow. Unlike Polly Pocket, the Magnetix sets didn’t have a few magnets that
could get detached - they had hundreds attached both to the pieces and in the individual
balls that could be used to connect them. Predictably, little kids started swallowing the
loose magnets, causing serious stomach issues. When one toddler died and other
children required emergency surgery, Magnetix was quickly taken off the market - but
did eventually make a comeback with a safer model. This next one falls into “Exactly what
did you think was going to happen?” Jet-skiing is a risky activity on its own, so
naturally, some enterprising toy-maker thought “What if you could jet-ski, but also fly at the
same time?”. That led to the introduction of the WeGo Kite-Tube, a plastic disc that would be towed
behind a speedboat, catching air under the boat and being launched into the air at high speed.
It was a thrilling activity - but what comes up, must come down. The kite tube didn’t
have any method to control it, which meant the kid riding behind the boat was
at the mercy of the wind and the driver’s skill. Naturally, this soon resulted in horrible
accidents, including two fatalities. Soon, the device was recalled by the manufacturer
- but no one could actually say there was a defect in the toy that caused it. It was
just a bad idea from beginning to end. But no toy packed more
danger into it than this one. It was the 1940s, and kids’ toys were dangerous.
Heck, they could just shoot each other with BB guns and their parents would be more likely
to yell at them to keep the noise down. Toy manufacturers knew they needed to up their game -
and they delivered with the Austin Magic Pistol. Because what did toy guns need? Actual firepower
and maybe some fire. The Austin Magic Pistol was packed with an actual gas-powered combustion
device. As for the “magic crystals” advertised on the box? Those were calcium carbide,
a hazardous chemical that could create an explosion when mixed with water. All this combined
to fire a plastic ball more than seventy feet, with an explosive force that could seriously
injure or kill a child at close range. It was too dangerous even for the wild and wooly 40s and
was off the shelves by the 1950s. It would not be making a comeback - and was ultimately classified
as a legitimate firearm by the government. Want to know more about unusual
things the government banned? Check out “20 US Foods You
Never Knew Were Illegal to Eat”.
