Yeah, but only in stores with blacked out windows. My kid was once heavily invested into a growing in popularity form of yo-yo called the diablo. Bought him like 8 of these things over time including one that had fire in the center. He hooked up with this chick at school that did a kid circus on free time. Little dude took his act in and they adopted him into the show. I can honestly say my kid left for the circus. Was cute till somehow they expected us to pay for his participation. Guess we missed the school part over the fact his diablo act drew a bigger crowd than the hot chicks on a 5 ft. high wire.
I also had a bag of Krauts that were popular bb gun targets. The Red Ryder didn't hurt them but fireworks taped to them caused some partial amputations. Did you have any of the mini-soldiers? I had US, Japanese and even a batch of Revolutionary War soldiers.
Well, I once saved enough to order from one of those ads in the back of comic books for 132 Roman Soldiers for $1.98. I actually taped eight quarters to a card and mailed it to them. They turned out to be tiny cardboard cutouts. What a gyp! But I learned my lesson and didn't waste any money on the X-Ray Specs . . .
I remember this. I also remember the stuff in the tube had a pretty toxic stench. Fun with poly vinyl chlorides! Most toys from the 30's, 40's and 50's were some toxic shit. My MIL had a toy set she saved from the 40's where figurines were made with molten lead poured into another metal form. Old cars and trains were made from lead.
Forget about Bag 'O Glass. This was the most dangerous toy ever Science kits these days don’t contain many items that you couldn’t already find around the house: salt, balloons, magnets and a few odds and ends. But kids who were lucky enough to have wealthy parents in the early 1950s had the unprecedented chance to play with uranium ore in this very cool science kit. The Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab was only sold from 1951 to 1952, and at the time its $50 price tag was too steep for many families. The kit came with four different types of uranium ore, a geiger counter, a miniature cloud chamber, an electroscope, a spinthariscope and an educational comic book called “Learn How Dagwood Splits the Atom!” Kids could perform their own experiments at home to discover the secrets of radioactive materials and learn how they made “clean, safe” atomic energy. The kit even included a government manual called “Prospecting for Uranium,” which claimed to be able to help kids discover new sources of uranium and be rewarded with $10,000 from the US government. Because the radioactive sources only have a finite life, the instruction manual came with a handy re-order form on the back cover. Unfortunately, the product wasn’t on the market long enough for those ores to degrade, much less be re-ordered. There’s no way parents today would let their kids play with radioactive materials, but this science kit has become a much-sought-after collector’s item. Complete sets can sell for more than 100 times the kit’s initial cost.
Another Toy from Gilbert The Metal Casting Set gave boys (it was a hundred years ago – girls weren’t really expected to be interested in toys that didn’t involve cooking or cleaning) the ability to melt down lead and play with actual molten metal. The kit came with a melting pot, molds to make little metal figures, and lots of metal for small children to melt in their own homes. Despite the obvious and almost unbelievable level of danger represented with this toy, it might have been kind of fun to live in an era when this sort of things was allowed to exist. The company produced over 50 molds that you could buy as accessories to the casting set, letting you produce an entire metal figuring army complete with weapons and ships.
Endorsed by Superman, the Gilbert Chemistry Outfit Endorsed by Superman himself, the Gilbert chemistry sets went through several iterations through the years. But they all had one pretty important thing in common: they included ridiculously dangerous materials. Things like hydrochloric acid, potassium nitrate, and formaldehyde were not only sold with a children’s toy; they were considered to be chemicals everyone had “about the house.” Doing chemistry experiments at home might actually have led to a generation of great scientific minds. But having a set of chemicals like this in your home today would pretty much guarantee you’d be arrested and put on the NSA’s watch list.
Another fun toy for your little girl or boy from Gilbert. If it ain't made by Gilbert, it ain't no fun This is far and away our favorite. Sit a kid down with some glass, a tube, and an open flame and just let him go ahead and make something awesome. Setting aside the potential for permanent scarring, blinding, and just overall long-lasting suffering, it would genuinely have been fun to have a set like this as a kid. Not to mention the kid can go into business himself manufacturing his own like of Bag O' Glass The glassblowing set, and indeed all of the Gilbert science kits, taught the fundamentals of science along with letting kids do quite dangerous experiments on their own. Maybe it was this blind trust that instilled a sense of responsibility in past generations of kids. Or maybe those scarred-for-life kids grew up to make laws that prevented other kids from playing with molten lead, hydrochloric acid, and melted glass.
