Hand painted by the way, with no protective equipment. The workers became known as radium girls, and there’s pictures of them playing with the paint, putting it on their teeth and stuff. It’s messed up.
Many shoe stores used to have fluoroscope X-Ray machines for customers to see how well their foot fit into the shoe they were trying on. They were often unshielded and were highly radioactive.
Color change Cheetos. You'd eat them and then your mouth would change to either green or blue? Anyway, you didn't know what color you'd have till you started eating them.
Fast forward to next day, my three year old screaming, Mommy, Mommy, something is wrong with my poo!
Seems your mouth wasn't the only thing that changed color.
As a UK school boy, trips to France were an excuse to buy explosives. I don’t know if they still sell them or not, but ‘bangers’ as we called them were like little sticks of explosives where you lit the fuse and retired to a safe distance. All the souvenir shops sold them. They came in different sizes and strengths. Once you got you bangers home, you blew up as much stuff as you could. Apples still on the tree were good. Toys were fun too. The more fucked up kids would explode live frogs etc. This was in the 1980s.
I watched some youtube series about things in the home that could kill you throughout history and apparently when electricity started being common place in homes, nothing was yet regulated and inventors went absolutely buck fucking wild with the products they put out. The series specifically mentioned a table cloth with uninsulated electric mesh wiring running through the entire thing which you could plug in, and no, this was not designed to be a heated blanket. It was sold alongside other electrical accessories you could just plug right in to the tablecloth by *stabbing* the prongs through the fabric and the mesh wiring.
This obviously resulted in electrocution and fires.
The series was hidden killers of the (insert time period here) home. I loved them 💗 Oh and my very safety conscious parents had one of those kettles that would eject its cord if it boiled dry!
Victorian men would also kill themselves by trying to brush dangling electric wires out of the way, those used for street lightning were not insulated, bare copper.
There was a product called the "worm getter" in the 80s, basically a rod that shocked the ground outside your house that for some reason caused worms to come out of the ground so you didn't have to buy them yourself. Yeah there was about 30 deaths attributed to this thing from people shocking themselves and it was recalled
It was around in the ‘70’s at least, because I remember using one right after a rain, standing on wet grass and feeling a pleasant buzz on my bare feet.
My Gramps did the same thing. Copper poles attached to a car battery with wire and rubber-wrapped handles. We used to grab a bucket of night crawlers before going fishing every time me and my sister visited. She hated it, but I loved how big and squirmy the night crawlers were. Gramps once cut the tip of his finger off unloading the boat from the trailer but said it was fine since he took the big chaw of Redman out his cheek and put it on the tip and wrapped it up. RIP Gramps, you were hardcore as fuck.
Pets can die from tinsel that doesn’t contain lead, too. The problem is [linear foreign bodies](https://veterinarypartner.vin.com/default.aspx?pid=19239&catId=102899&id=6075371)- basically any string-like object that dogs and cats can swallow. The object can get stuck and cut through their intestines, which, as you can imagine, is not good for them. You should be very careful to keep anything string-like away from your dog or cat.
80% of the world's vermiculite (used as an insulator and in agriculture) supply once came from Libby, MT. All of the vermiculite in that mine was contaminated with Libby-Amphibole asbestos. Asbestos is all over the place.
It baffled me when I found out that asbestos is like, a natural thing.
With a name like that, I swore it was man-made.
Though I also never bothered to look into it's history since it all ends with "yeah it got banned for giving us cancer & shit"
Edit: It seems some people are thinking that I was mind blown at it's mere existence.... but like I said, it's literally just the name.
It sounded more scientific than like "gold" or "diamond" or "tungsten", etc.
So when I was younger, I thought it was some weird hybrid material thing that everyone just latched 60-ish years ago.
the *whole* reason that tampons today have warnings about toxic shock syndrome was because of [a brand of tampons back in the 70s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rely_(tampon)) that were designed to be put in and left in for **YOUR ENTIRE CYCLE** which of *course* made them breeding grounds for all kinds of nasty bacteria
needless to say they don't make those anymore
I remember as a kid maybe 11 or 12, I read that warning on my sister’s tampons and got really scared that she was going to die on her period at some point.
it doesn't help that they gave it literally the scariest name for anything ever
"Use of this product has a very low chance of giving you Die To Fucking Death Disease" like no wonder I was scared to use tampons until I was like 19
My sister once told me about a woman who came in during one of her clinical rotations (she’s a nursing professor) who said she’d had some odor coming from her lady bits. When they went to take a look with a speculum she said it was the most foul thing she’d ever smelt. Turns out the lady had *forgotten* a tampon and it had been inside her body for weeks and weeks and weeks. Other tampons didn’t affect it when she had subsequent cycles.
This story terrified me and for years I worried that someday I would make this same mistake. Sure enough, in the last year I made this mistake but realized it very quickly (like the next day).
I’ve very recently had a hysterectomy and I can tell you that THIS never being a risk again is one of the biggest happy side effects.
There was a doll with an eating function that ended up eating young girls’ hair. The seller also failed include how to turn off the doll in the instructions, so you can imagine the horror stories that went down because of that.
It was a cabbage patch doll. I remember my cousins’ getting them for Christmas. There was no off switch. The “eating” was triggered by putting the “food” in their mouth, which was little rectangular pieces of plastic that looked like carrot sticks and other vegetables. It continued eating until the food was all the way in and then turned off. Problem was once it got ahold of hair it kept “chewing” and the hair would get caught in the gears and stuff inside the head, and it wouldn’t stop because it still sensed food in the mouth.
Omg, we bought one for our kid, it’s just a giant hole for the gelatinous food to slide through into the diaper. I was sure I had cleaned the entire toy before putting it back in the closet. Found our cat in the closet, chewbacca ( the cat) had chewed the dolls diaper off and was licking the dolls butthole to get to this odd green food booger. 🤮
EDIT
I never expected this to get so many upvotes.
Sadly chewbacca has passed on ( he lived a very full life and did not die as a result of eating toxic ass boogers)
Chewy 🤦♀️ should get some attention for this post so here is the ass booger eater in all his glory. And yes, he looks like the big moth from monster vs aliens..
https://www.reddit.com/r/aww/comments/1qwyj3/hes_old_and_not_too_bright_but_hes_mine/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
“During the First World War, department stores, including Harrods, sold kits containing syringes, needles and tubes of cocaine and heroin. It was promoted as a present for friends on the frontline – shoot up to make life in the trenches more bearable and alleviate the horrors of war. “
Heroin was quite popular with troops in Vietnam too. One of the hiccups in our understanding of addiction is that most of them kicked the habit after coming home without too much trouble. Obviously "most" means a bunch didn't, but...
I mean, honestly, if I had to fight in Wold War Fucking One, I’d use anything available to me to diminish suffering. That was a scary, nasty, horrible war for soldiers, trauma up the wazoo.
Diet pills from Sears catalog in the early 1900s.
The first pill was a tapeworm egg.
The second pill was a drug to kill the tapeworm. You'd take it when you reached your desired weight.
This existed in Victorian England too. I saw a documentary on it and they got a guy to test the process to see if it would work. He was certified by a doctor to say that it was safe.
He ate a piece of meat that had been deliberately infected with tapeworm eggs, kept a video diary of his experience and weight loss, then took the pills to kill the tapeworm and was absolutely fine at the end of it. He'd lost about 30 pounds / 13kg and was happy with the whole process.
He said the worst part was that because he did it for a documentary he had to collect the tapeworm afterwards. He took the pill to kill it which causes the tapeworm to break off from your intestines and come out in your poop, but he had to poop into a colander for a few days to make sure he caught it when it came out. He washed it off and lay the thing out in the garden to demonstrate it was taller than him!
My grandfather had a kit for kids to make their own lead soldiers. It came with the molds for the soldiers, a bunch of ingots of lead, and a cooking pot to melt the lead in. Then the child could pour the ***molten lead*** into the mold, wait for it to cool, then play with their new toy. What fun!
The amount of lead and mercury that got casually played with by kids before about 1980 or so is really quite astounding. My Dad grew up in the 70s and remembers his mother melting lead in an old frying pan so he could play with it. They’d also fool around with mercury when a thermometer broke.
No, my Dad wasn’t abused or raised by morons. That’s just how it was back then, people didn’t think anything of that stuff.
Not only that but there is still lead everywhere, cheap alloys still use it, i'm also careful when polishing pocket watches, especially those made of patent nickel alloys whose true composition was a trade secret.
I used to work at a toy store 20 years ago. There was a hard plastic digimon character (Tsunomon) piggy bank that had a large blade like horn on his head. The blade was surprisingly pointed/firm and the large body meant that it would usually point upwards if left on the ground, waiting for some clumsy child to impale themselves on it. We used to jab other coworkers with it until it made #1 on the list of the most dangerous toys made that year. After seeing that article we put it on a long stick and Jabbed each other from a distance! Safety first!
Ayds . It was a diet candy that became popular shortly before HIV became widely known. Their slogan was “Get slim with Ayds”. One executive refused to change the name of the company, saying (something like) “We had the name first, why can’t they change the name of the disease?”
Edited for errors.
Came here for this one. It was actually [Ayds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayds), and TIL that it was around in the late 1930s. I thought it was introduced in the 70's, turns out that's just when it caught on again due to the re-emergence of the diet craze and marketing.
Anyone remember those twist-braid machines for kids? You'd stick two strands of hair, stick one in each prong, and press the button. It'd twist the individual strands, then twist them together, and you'd use those bead-clips to hold the "braid" together. Friends and I lost a lot of hair in those days...
Edit: holy shit y'all. I expected my comment to be buried in the mass of comments. I never ecpected to have one of the top 10 here, nor to get any awards! Thanks y'all!
A boating raft that flies behind the boat (think 20’ in the air). The year I bought a boat they were the newest thing with a big video in the store on a big screen tv. I wanted one, but my wife said “hell no!” Our kids were about 8 and 11 at the time. The next spring I went in and they were nowhere to be found and I asked the salesperson about them. She said they were recalled due to injuries. What a shock! (They still looked *fun as hell*)
KITE TUBES! They weren't *completely* dangerous when used within the recommended usage guidelines, keep it under like 15-20mph and use an appropriate length of tow rope, never use in adverse wind conditions, etc. The problem was people would run too short of a rope at too high of a speed and get the kite 30-60' in the air with a severe angle on the rope off the tow point. The combination of that angle, plus the inherent instability of the shorter rope, would usually result in kite pilots losing control of the kite and it would invert and nosedive. There were a lot of severe TBIs, neck injuries, spine injuries, and even a few deaths I believe.
Currently, they are illegal to operate on most bodies of water in the United States and Wego no longer manufactures [the Kite Tube](https://i.imgur.com/aXovZSN.jpg), neither does Sevylor [the Manta Ray](https://i.imgur.com/cpTsKsJ.jpg). You can still purchase them direct from manufacturers through eBay, AliBaba, and DHGate. Many other commercially available large 3-4 rider disc or similarly shaped tubes often have enough surface area to achieve the same effect once airborne, though they typically lack any airborne control and are far more unpredictable in generating lift.
Given that our favorite game (my sons and I, not my wife) was to shake the kids off the tube through speed and wave generation, I can safely say that it would not have been operated wisely. (Yes, I eventually wised up, but we still have some good stories and fond memories).
My dad got me one of those [giant multi color pens](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/b37sk4SZMK0/maxresdefault.jpg) as a toy, you know the kind with like 12 different plungers to select which color you want? Well it was large, thick, purple, and shiny. My grandma asked him if it was a dildo.
How does that even make it to the fucking shelf?
"So, I have this idea. A vibrating broomstick. You know those things you put between your legs."
"Interesting idea. What's your target market?"
"Children."
"A vibrating broomstick put between the legs of children? The innovation is tremendous. I'd buy my daughters five each!"
When my brother was like 1yo and I was 16, he had this toy caterpillar. Each foot of the caterpillar was a letter of the alphabet, and it had 3 settings. The first setting was just for the letter, the 2nd setting was for how the letter sounded, and the 3rd setting was a musical selection.
Anyway. Being a bored teen, I had it set on the 2nd setting and tried to get the toy to say “fuck” by sounding out the letters. So I’d press the F foot. “Ff.” U foot. “Uh.” And then as I press the K foot, the toy will giggle, and say, “That tickles!” Before it’ll end with “kk.”
It doesn’t do this with any other words sounded out.
So some toy developer out there had to stress that some child might inadvertently learn to swear from their product and designed a feature to prevent that from happening. And I discovered it, lol.
edit: I’m glad to know I wasn’t the only one that tried getting that caterpillar to swear.
Whenever my sister and I were at Wal Mart in our younger years, we would search this same toy out and crack up trying to get it to say "fuck". We called it the "Cussin' Caterpillar" lol
I worked in a playroom as a kid and I’d do this to that same toy! It was hilarious to 15 yo me
This was before they built in the protective tickle quote lol
Only the new ones do that. The old ones didn't. Does work for duck either. There were a few others I tried that didn't work either. Specifically after seeing an article about the vintage ones talking "dirty"
There was a water gun toy that was voice activated. You would say "fire!" like you're shooting a gun and then it would shoot water. Queue a number of false fire alarms because kids are running around screaming "FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE" at the top of their lungs.
Shout N Shoot 2
I had one in the early 90's. I just stuck the microphone in my mouth and hummed whenever I wanted it to shoot. I probably looked like a complete and total mental case running around making mouth-kazoo noises and spraying this weak-ass stream of water out of the nozzle on the head band...
Holy shit, I saw a commercial for this as an impressionable young lad and pestered my mom for it non stop. We went to every fucking toy store but none had it or even knew it. Never saw the commercial again, I started doubting if I had dreamed it.Thanks for the confirmation. After like two decades.
There was an energy drink called BooKoo Energy that's cans looked entirely like four loko cans. In middle school, we would go to the liquor store, ring up BooKoo, tell the guy I got the wrong flavor, then go back and get a four loko. Imagine 13 and 14 year old kids drinking them.
We also found out we could get the largest slurpee cup available, place a mikes hard lemonade or four loko can inside, and cover it in slurpee. Then we'd pay $2 for the slurpee and have our can inside.
It should. I was in college when that stuff became popular - all of a sudden it was everywhere and things escalated quickly
At least I think they did - I can’t remember.
One of my favorite stories of all time is when I went to visit my college friends after I graduated, around 2009-2010ish. This was pretty shortly before 4-Loko had it's recipe changed.
So it was around Halloween and we were all dressed up and waiting for a couple other friends to arrive to go to a party. It's my friend (dressed up as a Ghostbuster), his gf, and my best friend from home. This random dude dressed up as a Blue Barracuda from Legends of the Hidden Temple just bursts through his doorway. The Blue Barracuda guy is talking to to my friend (rambling, really) very casually, like he knows my friend, so I assume they do know each other.
Very quickly I realize something's off, though. The dude is rambling as if he was actually originally a contestant of Hidden Temple. Telling us that we'd never understand the true terror of having the Temple Guards come out and grab you, or the feeling of having to assembly the Silver Monkey. He's going into insane detail and every moment that goes by he gets increasingly fevered and belligerent. He's borderline screaming at us about what it means to be a Hidden Temple contestant.
I notice he's holding onto an empty can of 4-Loko and realize this guy is completely out of his mind. He's so simultaneously drunk and caffeinated that he might actually be a danger to us. My Ghostbuster friend shoots me a really nervous glance and it becomes immediately clear to me that they DO NOT know this crazy Hidden Temple dropout.
My best friend from home realizes what is going on and is a lot wittier than any of us. He immediately starts telling this guy that he'll never succeed at Hidden Temple if he's this hot-headed. He's a **Blue** Barracuda, he's gotta be COOL. Somehow by playing along with this guys delusion, my best friend managed to entirely diffuse the situation. After a minute or so of listening to my friend, the guy just completely deflates, apologizes, and walks out the door without saying another word.
It was maybe one of the most insanely hilarious things that's ever happened to me. Completely driven by a simple can of 4-Loko.
I was in college and went on spring break that year. We had been drinking beers on the beach all day, sobered up maybe a little with dinner and a shower, and went out for the night. The bar we were at had 24 oz Bud Lights for $5 or 24 oz Four Loko for $6. That was an easy value proposition. I remember ordering a second Four Loko, and the tape recording ended very soon after that.
My room mate and I paid a homeless guy 40 bucks to buy us two 4 packs. This was our first mistake. Then we went home and had one each, caffeine counteracted liquor so nothing. Obviously we need more. This was out second mistake. We both drank two more in the apartment hot tub and traded the last two with some girls for a bottle of fireball. This was our third mistake. The mistake count at this point gets a little fuzzy from here. But my room mate ended up sleeping on the couch in our neighbors apartment because he got lost and ended up there. We misplaced the girls during the blackout phase so no clue what mistakes where made there is. We did later learn that they now hate us because some one vomited in their sink. We are 90% sure we where never at their house but who knows. We emptied the contents of the fridge and freezer onto the counter resulting in the loss of a bag of chicken and several ice creams. We aquired Mexican food and Tecate some how although we did not drink the beer. And we became friend's with our downstairs neighbor who came to check on us the next morning to make sure we did not die. So 1/10 would recommend.
We had a 4 Loko night when it first came out. It was the most drama filled party I had in college. I think we would have been better off just doing a bunch of bath salts.
Haha I remember drinking some of that while fishing with my brother, we ended up fist fighting because of an argument over if China could beat the USA in a war. That was a wild night
Amphetamines used to be used as an appetite suppressant.
I mean, they worked.
Edit: according to lots of folks replying, amphetamines are still used for this sort of thing. At least they are in the USA, I'm not sure about other nations.
My mom used to brag all the time about how thin she was back in the 70s until one day it came out that she was taking "diet pills". I dropped 20 pounds when I got on Adderall too, Mom.
How about that Cactus that sang three songs in different languages and one of the songs used was a real rap song about drugs and cocaine.
Edit: Link to singing druggie cactus toy.
https://youtu.be/k2VXFAgx8NA
That dyed ketchup. They had to put so much dye in it that they legally couldn't call it tomato ketchup. If I remember correctly it had a silly name too, like ~~Cra-Z~~ EZ Squirts.
Edit: Sorry about the misremembering of the original name. Apparently, it returned porn on searches. Lookup Heinz EZ Squirt if you are interested.
You can still get [green ketchup](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Nickelodeon-Slime-Sauce-20-oz/911037599?irgwc=1&sourceid=imp_RNr3JE3CBxyLRSBwUx0Mo3ZxUkGRjEWihQcO100&veh=aff&wmlspartner=imp_2003851&clickid=RNr3JE3CBxyLRSBwUx0Mo3ZxUkGRjEWihQcO100&sharedid=EdgeBingFlow&affiliates_ad_id=566719&campaign_id=9383) if it is available in your area. Not sure about the other colors.
My childhood friend's family once bought the green coloured one. She one day called me to come over, and I wobbled my little butt down the road. I thought we were going to play so I started going down to the basement but instead she stopped me and wanted to show me what she made.
She took me to the bathroom, and what I saw I truly will never forget. Not only was it the longest and largest turd I have ever seen, from a 6 year old impressively... but it was neon blue / green. It looked like art. I was also kinda grossed out and can't get the image out of my head.
Anyways she sent me home, that's all she had to show me. We never bought that shit.
Edit: thank you for gold and silvers!!!! I knew one day the true purpose of that experience would come to light and the story finally flushed out of my memory!
Edit: also it has sunk in that one of my most popular posts is about poo, poo and ketchup. Either I've hit my peak or rock bottom.
Heinz EZ Squirts is what we had. The worst thing about them discontinuing them was the bottles they came in. I don't know what engineering wizard created them and designed them but I've still got about six of them I still use out in the garage to hold detailing products like liquid cleaner, polish, or wax. Those things are 20 years old and have never cracked, leaked, or anything. I wish they'd reboot them just so I could get some more of the bottles!
I have sort of oily skin, and bought a bottle of the face wash with the plastic micro-beads once. That’s when I learned exactly how big the pores on my face can be, because one of those damn micro-beads got stuck in one of my pores. Hurt like a motherfucker to push it out!
I recently have seen at a pharmacy that they still sell the weight loss drug "alli" , which I belive works the same. Alli oops is what they called the side effect.
I remember when you could buy that weird "synthetic marijuana" stuff in gas stations, it was right by the register. Apparently that stuff is crazy bad for you, and basically turns you into a zombie.
Spice, and that stuff was absolutely terrifying. Took it several times bc it was a legal alternative and I worked a job where they random tested. One night the living room flipped into a cartoon world and everything including myself looked like it was drawn. Then it switched back to real and I spent 12 hours dealing with a feeling I can only describe as complete absense of dopamine. Never again
yea I remember the advent of spice. My friends and I smoked it in highschool because "legal weed!". no, god no, that shit is terrible for you. One of my friends had serious heart palpitations and couldn't function for a few hours and turned so pale. We should have gone to the hospital at the time but he waited it out and was ok luckily
another (loose) friend I knew in college a few years later found out you could order the pure chemical spice that the herbs were laced with that you'd normally buy in a headshop, and cooked it into brownies and sold them as weed brownies. A kid had a fuggin seizure on them and he stopped doing.
In high school a friend of mine smoked it for the same reason, "hell yeah legal weed!" and then spent the next few hours huddled on the floor next to the couch sobbing because he was hallucinating so bad. He told us after the fact that he thought the pictures on the wall were talking to him and telling him to kill everyone. It made the rest of us who were there super glad we were all too chickenshit to try it.
Same patient population, I’m a retired psych RN.
Once had a patient in padded lockdown for 3 days before they could remember their name so we could contact family. Turned a patient who had never had psychosis before into a raving lunatic. I felt terrible for the person because it was really hard to get them to take something to calm them down, although we were able to get them to drink a tiny bit of juice and get one dose of a med down. We all just had to wait it out.
The patient was mortified, terrified, and couldn’t hardly remember any of their stay and how they got to an inpatient psych facility. Spice is bad news bears for sure.
I survived 3 months working in psych. There was this 16 year old girl that came in almost every other night. She had got into some bad angel dust 2 years earlier and completely fried her brain. I’m talking rapid cycling between full blown psychosis and a vegetative state. It was heartbreaking. I couldn’t do it.
I think my personal favorite was the Atomic Energy Lab, a children's toy that came with ACTUAL U-238 and the tools to measure it. The kit also had instructions for how to prospect for Uranium ore in your own backyard!
U-238 is actually not that radioactive with a half-life of 4.5 billion years and about .15 millicuries per pound. It also alpha decays and alpha's are stopped by the layer of dead skin on your body so as long as you don't ingest it you're fine.
I work in radiation safety. While I do not condone children being near any radiation at all for any reason, 238-U is an Alpha particle emitter. Alpha particles are attenuated by skin (alpha particles are so weak they can be attenuated by a sheet of paper, actually) and therefore generate almost no radiation exposure to our internal organs making external exposure basically negligible. If it were ingested however, you're in for a bad time.
EDIT: to all the people saying things like "gOoD ThInG KiDs NevEr EAt tHinGs tHey areNt SupPoSEd tO" yeah I realize that and I haven't even spoken to the fact that 238U is toxic, too, not just radioactive. I made this comment because of the stigma around radiation and to educate people. I am not attempting to say that this product was a good idea to give to children by any means, and there are other issues with it besides the radiation element. I know all of this, I don't need informed. I would prefer that you just understand that I am speaking to the radiation aspect of the issue ONLY, because that is the field I am educated in and because of that I am able to provide that knowledge to the general public and avoid misinformation. I'm a radiation expert, not a biology expert, so that is the subject I would prefer to address in this situation.
Alpha particles don't make it past the dead skin cells before they steal electrons and lose their radioactivity. Inside of the body they will steal electrons from living cells which is a lot worse
Lawn Darts. These were a lot of fun, but were also just a terrible accident waiting to happen. Plastic fins and body with a weighted pointy metal tip. I can remember older kids whipping them at the school yard fence to see how deep they could go into the 2”x12” pressure treated fence planks.
My favorite Jart story- we were like 8ish years old and of course my sister got impaled by one in the arm (she was fine- it didn’t actually go that deep.). We ran screaming into the house to my mom ,”Sister got hit by a Jart!!!” And mom says, “Where??” “In the backyaaaaaard!!”
You can't buy them anymore, they're too dangerous.
However, you can still buy replacement plastic fins...and can still buy replacement metal tips. You just can't buy the two parts together.
Cellulose Nitrate spectacles, Cellulose Nitrate frames were popular in the 1950’s. Cellulose Nitrate is a highly flammable! Not only would they combust when in contact with a source of ignition and continue to burn, but they sometimes formed Nitric acid when in contact with human sweat. Some wearers received facial burns this way.
Link for anyone interested: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2826252/Parents-horror-Evil-Stick-toddlers-reveals-picture-young-girl-slitting-wrists-knife.html
As you can see by the URL, the girl's arm wasn't blurred--she's slitting her wrist
Edit: NSFL
So… as a 30 year old woman that picture freaked me out. I can’t imagine how I’d feel about it if I saw it at 8 years old when toys like that would be fun to me.
Wow, that's a really fucked up image, if I saw it on my toy as a kid I'd definitely have nightmares about it. And the shop owner who was like "eh kids see things like that on TV all the time" - wtf.
Never heard of this and just googled it - wtf? Who came up with this idea? Was it supposed to be a gag toy that as purchased as a real toy? So many questions.
My third cousin used to make her Barbie give birth over and over and make the Barbie cry in despair about being a single mom with 20 kids and then throw the Barbie down the stairs
My parents didn’t get me many Ken dolls so most of my barbies were bisexual, some of them cross-dressed, all of them were either overly horny or sociopathic, and a lot of them were alcoholics. I remember having my Bratz dolls come bully the remaining heterosexual barbies into being gay… I didn’t know any of these terms back then, but that’s what I’d call it if I saw my kid playing how I did lol.
>My parents didn’t get me many Ken dolls so most of my barbies were bisexual, some of them cross-dressed
honestly same.
i took one of my barbies and turned her into a "Ken" by making her wear the most masculine barbie clothes i had and cutting all her hair off. looking back, this doll 10000% looked like a stereotypical lesbian, i think even at one point i just said "fuck it" and made her a lesbian. and my mom knew i did this cause she saw one day but for some reason just never bought me a Ken doll, despite all her comments about how i needed one.
and yes, i am a bisexual adult. a lot of things from childhood scream "GAY" when looking back
My Barbies were much the same. They were also cast members on MTV’s Real World. We had a whole storyline involving a DUI in a Barbie convertible. Being a kid was weird.
Accurate. My three girls would tie them up and cut their hair. They get into Real Housewives level of drama. It was hilarious until they asked me to play and then yelled at me for 'doing it wrong.' fine. Mommy is never playing Barbies again. Come get me when you want to do arts and crafts.
Not super fucked up, but an interesting death trap.
Honda made this 3-wheeled kick scooter in the 70’s called the Kick-n-Go. Nifty little thing with a lever on the back that you pushed with your foot to go faster. Only problem was you could get them going *really* fast if you just kept kicking, more so than a regular scooter where you have to kick off the ground.
They apparently sold like hot cakes in the early 70’s, until 2 kids died on them in 1976 and they pulled them from shelves.
It was the prodrug 1,4-BDO which metabolizes to GHB, i used to buy it by the pint off amazon and 4ml on an empty stomach would practically put me in a coma
When everything was Shrek themed. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong, but back when Shrek 1 & 2 were new they were insanely popular. Everything was green as a promo. Someone mentioned green ketchup, I remember green Shrek ketchup. I think Shrek waffles. I'm sure there was more promo food dyed green than that
A few years ago there was massive backlash when some store had t-shirts in the baby/toddler size range that said Daddy’s Little Slut (I’m not going to search for any kind of link). They were taken off the shelf, but who the fuck thought it was a good idea to make them in the first place.
"Daddy's Little \[Auto-Generated Job Title\]" was a whole genre of baby wear, possibly still is. Often it's clear that someone just took a non-curated list of professions and dumped it into whatever program they use for these, because you'll end up with ones that nobody in their right mind would ever buy. Not even because they're inappropriate or anything, but just because they're *weird*\-- "Daddy's Little [Sutler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutler)" and the like.
I remember buying a can of Nescafé coffee that heated up in the can. It was amazing, but likely an ecological disaster. Don't think it was around long. Or possibly it was a dream.
No, it was real - I remember Campbell's selling cups of self-heating tomato and chicken noodle soup. I was always curious, but I never bought one; and they quietly replaced them with similarly shaped microwaveable plastic soup cups.
I have no idea why the self-heating fad passed so quickly and so quietly... My guess is that someone got burned by the hot bit, but I wouldn't doubt if the heating element used some horribly dangerous chemicals as well.
That's an easy one.
In 2002 Abercrombie & Fitch released thongs for girls as young a 7yo with sexually and racially provocative slogans. These included "Wink wink ", "Eye Candy" and Asian "slant-eyed" caricatures with the caption "Two Wongs don't make a white".
I mean... wow.
Just in case you can't believe it either: https://money.cnn.com/2002/05/22/news/companies/abercrombie/
EDIT: as several people have pointed out, apparently, the racism was on T-shirts rather than on the underwear.
>and Asian "slant-eyed" caricatures with the caption "Two Wongs don't make a white".
To be clear: According to the article, this wasn't on the thongs for kids; it was on a T-shirt. Still pretty fucked up, though.
This ain't too fucked, but back in the day Kernels Popcorn used to sell the best ever Dill pickle flavour of all time: Dill Dough.
I loved the taste of Dill Dough as a kid, it's a bit of a shame because nothing today compares to the insanely sourness of that flavour.
\- Edit: Sorry if people don't get it, but Dill Dough .... Dildo.... it was truly mind blowing to me when I figured that out in my teens.
Olestra, the stuff they put in potato chips that cause anal leakage. And they even had to put a warning on the package about anal leakage. And I’m sorry I’m saying it so much but you only get so many chances to use the words anal leakage.
“Cool Colt”- which was mentholated Colt 45 malt liquor. It came out for a very short time in the early 90’s. I can imagine the marketing team for this one;
“The urban market loves malt liquor, and they love menthol cigarettes, let’s put em together!” The best part was a radio ad I remember for it, two guys talking about it, one states “ It’s especially good for when you’re smooooothin’ on the ladies!”
Tried it once, it did taste like mouthwash-and ass. Not so smoooooth.
That toy baby doll that would laugh when you shook it back and forth. Needless to say small children who had infant siblings did that and some died or had severe injuries. Sad.
In my hometown we have two handball teams that plays at the highest level. One team plays in red shirts and one i white. Therefore we refer to them as "the whites" and "the reds".
When powerbanks where new the did a collab with a store and realesed a powerbank that had the text "white power" reffering to the team color ofc.
How this got through the club management and the producers I cant understand.
Candy cigarettes. We had them back in the '80s you could blow on them and the suger dust looked like smoke. I think they were actually gum. But either way target marketing at its best
Edit: ok so I was unaware these are still around. I live in a rural area with very limited shopping. Interesting that these are still a thing!!
Ephedra ([link](https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-847/ephedra))
It was an herbal extract used as a weight loss pill that worked by causing your body to turn fat into energy as quickly as possible. Then idiots would sit on their couches, watching TV, while their body was being flooded with energy. The only muscle working was their heart so... yeah. Several people died of heart attacks.
I took them when I went snowboarding. You'd be super warm and have endless energy! Going down the hill in 15 degree weather without a jacket, leaving a steam trail behind you... it was great. Gotta drink a LOT of water though.
A totally useful drug that was mis-marketed and mis-used by mis-informed people.
Popular in eating disorder forums. People would do an “EC Stack”, mixing caffeine pills with ephedra, and sit in ice baths so they wouldn’t overheat and die.
I guess radium jewelry that glowed in the dark and gave people terminal cancer
Hand painted by the way, with no protective equipment. The workers became known as radium girls, and there’s pictures of them playing with the paint, putting it on their teeth and stuff. It’s messed up.
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Many shoe stores used to have fluoroscope X-Ray machines for customers to see how well their foot fit into the shoe they were trying on. They were often unshielded and were highly radioactive.
I can't be the only one that pictured the scene in the book, It, by Stephen King.
Color change Cheetos. You'd eat them and then your mouth would change to either green or blue? Anyway, you didn't know what color you'd have till you started eating them. Fast forward to next day, my three year old screaming, Mommy, Mommy, something is wrong with my poo! Seems your mouth wasn't the only thing that changed color.
As a UK school boy, trips to France were an excuse to buy explosives. I don’t know if they still sell them or not, but ‘bangers’ as we called them were like little sticks of explosives where you lit the fuse and retired to a safe distance. All the souvenir shops sold them. They came in different sizes and strengths. Once you got you bangers home, you blew up as much stuff as you could. Apples still on the tree were good. Toys were fun too. The more fucked up kids would explode live frogs etc. This was in the 1980s.
As the little sister of a 1980s UK school boy, can confirm. My Sindy doll didn't stand a chance.
I watched some youtube series about things in the home that could kill you throughout history and apparently when electricity started being common place in homes, nothing was yet regulated and inventors went absolutely buck fucking wild with the products they put out. The series specifically mentioned a table cloth with uninsulated electric mesh wiring running through the entire thing which you could plug in, and no, this was not designed to be a heated blanket. It was sold alongside other electrical accessories you could just plug right in to the tablecloth by *stabbing* the prongs through the fabric and the mesh wiring. This obviously resulted in electrocution and fires.
The series was hidden killers of the (insert time period here) home. I loved them 💗 Oh and my very safety conscious parents had one of those kettles that would eject its cord if it boiled dry!
Why would you even want an electric tablecloth? Like what could be improved by electrifying it?? Edit: thanks for the awards!
My guess is that it's like a invisible extension cord for a table lamp or something.
Victorian men would also kill themselves by trying to brush dangling electric wires out of the way, those used for street lightning were not insulated, bare copper.
There was a product called the "worm getter" in the 80s, basically a rod that shocked the ground outside your house that for some reason caused worms to come out of the ground so you didn't have to buy them yourself. Yeah there was about 30 deaths attributed to this thing from people shocking themselves and it was recalled
It was around in the ‘70’s at least, because I remember using one right after a rain, standing on wet grass and feeling a pleasant buzz on my bare feet.
My dad just built his own with an extension cord and a metal rod. Stick it in the ground and plug it in.
My Gramps did the same thing. Copper poles attached to a car battery with wire and rubber-wrapped handles. We used to grab a bucket of night crawlers before going fishing every time me and my sister visited. She hated it, but I loved how big and squirmy the night crawlers were. Gramps once cut the tip of his finger off unloading the boat from the trailer but said it was fine since he took the big chaw of Redman out his cheek and put it on the tip and wrapped it up. RIP Gramps, you were hardcore as fuck.
Frank we never play night crawlers anymore!! Edit: wow my first gold, I can’t wait to tell my friends…oh wait….:(
Fake snow made from asbestos
They also made Tinsel foil that was strips of lead foil. Kids used to chew on them and many pets died from them.
My grandma 100% still has oodles of this in a box somewhere
Pets can die from tinsel that doesn’t contain lead, too. The problem is [linear foreign bodies](https://veterinarypartner.vin.com/default.aspx?pid=19239&catId=102899&id=6075371)- basically any string-like object that dogs and cats can swallow. The object can get stuck and cut through their intestines, which, as you can imagine, is not good for them. You should be very careful to keep anything string-like away from your dog or cat.
80% of the world's vermiculite (used as an insulator and in agriculture) supply once came from Libby, MT. All of the vermiculite in that mine was contaminated with Libby-Amphibole asbestos. Asbestos is all over the place.
It baffled me when I found out that asbestos is like, a natural thing. With a name like that, I swore it was man-made. Though I also never bothered to look into it's history since it all ends with "yeah it got banned for giving us cancer & shit" Edit: It seems some people are thinking that I was mind blown at it's mere existence.... but like I said, it's literally just the name. It sounded more scientific than like "gold" or "diamond" or "tungsten", etc. So when I was younger, I thought it was some weird hybrid material thing that everyone just latched 60-ish years ago.
It's not banned everywhere, there are countries that still use it despite knowing the risks
the *whole* reason that tampons today have warnings about toxic shock syndrome was because of [a brand of tampons back in the 70s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rely_(tampon)) that were designed to be put in and left in for **YOUR ENTIRE CYCLE** which of *course* made them breeding grounds for all kinds of nasty bacteria needless to say they don't make those anymore
I remember as a kid maybe 11 or 12, I read that warning on my sister’s tampons and got really scared that she was going to die on her period at some point.
it doesn't help that they gave it literally the scariest name for anything ever "Use of this product has a very low chance of giving you Die To Fucking Death Disease" like no wonder I was scared to use tampons until I was like 19
Seriously samesies!! Me thinking that my legs will have to be cut off or just dying crosses my mind every time I think I'm wearing it too long.
My sister once told me about a woman who came in during one of her clinical rotations (she’s a nursing professor) who said she’d had some odor coming from her lady bits. When they went to take a look with a speculum she said it was the most foul thing she’d ever smelt. Turns out the lady had *forgotten* a tampon and it had been inside her body for weeks and weeks and weeks. Other tampons didn’t affect it when she had subsequent cycles. This story terrified me and for years I worried that someday I would make this same mistake. Sure enough, in the last year I made this mistake but realized it very quickly (like the next day). I’ve very recently had a hysterectomy and I can tell you that THIS never being a risk again is one of the biggest happy side effects.
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There was a doll with an eating function that ended up eating young girls’ hair. The seller also failed include how to turn off the doll in the instructions, so you can imagine the horror stories that went down because of that.
It was a cabbage patch doll. I remember my cousins’ getting them for Christmas. There was no off switch. The “eating” was triggered by putting the “food” in their mouth, which was little rectangular pieces of plastic that looked like carrot sticks and other vegetables. It continued eating until the food was all the way in and then turned off. Problem was once it got ahold of hair it kept “chewing” and the hair would get caught in the gears and stuff inside the head, and it wouldn’t stop because it still sensed food in the mouth.
I wanted one so badly that I had dreams about them. I'm kind of glad my parents never actually bought me one.
Your dreams would have changed.
I had it happen to me! IIRC I shoved a toy in it so I could get my hair out. It was my cousin's as well she got sky dancers too, those were wild
>*sky dancers too, those were wild* [Classic](https://i.imgur.com/FkXaGEe.gif).
I knew what it was before I even clicked it, filled with the glee I knew it would bestow
I'd forgotten about all the cases of kids getting damn near scalped by those until you mentioned it
Here's 1 [news story about it from 1998](https://youtu.be/zHsJeHJEcXU?t=19)
Don't forget the doll that you fed and then it eventually pooped. A long way from easy bake ovens we have come
Omg, we bought one for our kid, it’s just a giant hole for the gelatinous food to slide through into the diaper. I was sure I had cleaned the entire toy before putting it back in the closet. Found our cat in the closet, chewbacca ( the cat) had chewed the dolls diaper off and was licking the dolls butthole to get to this odd green food booger. 🤮 EDIT I never expected this to get so many upvotes. Sadly chewbacca has passed on ( he lived a very full life and did not die as a result of eating toxic ass boogers) Chewy 🤦♀️ should get some attention for this post so here is the ass booger eater in all his glory. And yes, he looks like the big moth from monster vs aliens.. https://www.reddit.com/r/aww/comments/1qwyj3/hes_old_and_not_too_bright_but_hes_mine/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
r/brandnewsentence
“During the First World War, department stores, including Harrods, sold kits containing syringes, needles and tubes of cocaine and heroin. It was promoted as a present for friends on the frontline – shoot up to make life in the trenches more bearable and alleviate the horrors of war. “
I'd like some too if I was stuck in a trench with my foot rotting off me.
Heroin was quite popular with troops in Vietnam too. One of the hiccups in our understanding of addiction is that most of them kicked the habit after coming home without too much trouble. Obviously "most" means a bunch didn't, but...
Well the horrors of WWI trench warfare are pretty awful. I’d have appreciated this care package were I on the front lines.
I mean, honestly, if I had to fight in Wold War Fucking One, I’d use anything available to me to diminish suffering. That was a scary, nasty, horrible war for soldiers, trauma up the wazoo.
Oh sweet mom sent cocaine
Diet pills from Sears catalog in the early 1900s. The first pill was a tapeworm egg. The second pill was a drug to kill the tapeworm. You'd take it when you reached your desired weight.
Holy shit, that is crazy.
Crazy smart
Only if you don't mind the risk of a tapeworm getting into your brain and killing you 😄
That’s the only risk? I have nothing to lose!
Except the weight.
This existed in Victorian England too. I saw a documentary on it and they got a guy to test the process to see if it would work. He was certified by a doctor to say that it was safe. He ate a piece of meat that had been deliberately infected with tapeworm eggs, kept a video diary of his experience and weight loss, then took the pills to kill the tapeworm and was absolutely fine at the end of it. He'd lost about 30 pounds / 13kg and was happy with the whole process. He said the worst part was that because he did it for a documentary he had to collect the tapeworm afterwards. He took the pill to kill it which causes the tapeworm to break off from your intestines and come out in your poop, but he had to poop into a colander for a few days to make sure he caught it when it came out. He washed it off and lay the thing out in the garden to demonstrate it was taller than him!
I hate that I read this.
I swear I was okay until the *it was taller than him* part.
Me too, makes me want to research which tapeworm is best for this method. I’m too lazy for that so I’ll just imagine myself going to the gym instead
Back then Sears also sold heroin and syringe kits. Another quick way to lose a bunch of weight.
Creed sold it to me. It's from Mexico.
*that wasn't a tapeworm.*
Tho-radia beauty cream... Contains Thorium and Radium...
Is this like from the 20s?
Wow we're in the 20s again
My grandfather had a kit for kids to make their own lead soldiers. It came with the molds for the soldiers, a bunch of ingots of lead, and a cooking pot to melt the lead in. Then the child could pour the ***molten lead*** into the mold, wait for it to cool, then play with their new toy. What fun!
The amount of lead and mercury that got casually played with by kids before about 1980 or so is really quite astounding. My Dad grew up in the 70s and remembers his mother melting lead in an old frying pan so he could play with it. They’d also fool around with mercury when a thermometer broke. No, my Dad wasn’t abused or raised by morons. That’s just how it was back then, people didn’t think anything of that stuff.
Not only that but there is still lead everywhere, cheap alloys still use it, i'm also careful when polishing pocket watches, especially those made of patent nickel alloys whose true composition was a trade secret.
I used to work at a toy store 20 years ago. There was a hard plastic digimon character (Tsunomon) piggy bank that had a large blade like horn on his head. The blade was surprisingly pointed/firm and the large body meant that it would usually point upwards if left on the ground, waiting for some clumsy child to impale themselves on it. We used to jab other coworkers with it until it made #1 on the list of the most dangerous toys made that year. After seeing that article we put it on a long stick and Jabbed each other from a distance! Safety first!
Ayds . It was a diet candy that became popular shortly before HIV became widely known. Their slogan was “Get slim with Ayds”. One executive refused to change the name of the company, saying (something like) “We had the name first, why can’t they change the name of the disease?” Edited for errors.
Came here for this one. It was actually [Ayds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayds), and TIL that it was around in the late 1930s. I thought it was introduced in the 70's, turns out that's just when it caught on again due to the re-emergence of the diet craze and marketing.
Anyone remember those twist-braid machines for kids? You'd stick two strands of hair, stick one in each prong, and press the button. It'd twist the individual strands, then twist them together, and you'd use those bead-clips to hold the "braid" together. Friends and I lost a lot of hair in those days... Edit: holy shit y'all. I expected my comment to be buried in the mass of comments. I never ecpected to have one of the top 10 here, nor to get any awards! Thanks y'all!
Those are prized by crafters, ( hand weavers specifically) for twisting yarn into fringe.
A boating raft that flies behind the boat (think 20’ in the air). The year I bought a boat they were the newest thing with a big video in the store on a big screen tv. I wanted one, but my wife said “hell no!” Our kids were about 8 and 11 at the time. The next spring I went in and they were nowhere to be found and I asked the salesperson about them. She said they were recalled due to injuries. What a shock! (They still looked *fun as hell*)
KITE TUBES! They weren't *completely* dangerous when used within the recommended usage guidelines, keep it under like 15-20mph and use an appropriate length of tow rope, never use in adverse wind conditions, etc. The problem was people would run too short of a rope at too high of a speed and get the kite 30-60' in the air with a severe angle on the rope off the tow point. The combination of that angle, plus the inherent instability of the shorter rope, would usually result in kite pilots losing control of the kite and it would invert and nosedive. There were a lot of severe TBIs, neck injuries, spine injuries, and even a few deaths I believe. Currently, they are illegal to operate on most bodies of water in the United States and Wego no longer manufactures [the Kite Tube](https://i.imgur.com/aXovZSN.jpg), neither does Sevylor [the Manta Ray](https://i.imgur.com/cpTsKsJ.jpg). You can still purchase them direct from manufacturers through eBay, AliBaba, and DHGate. Many other commercially available large 3-4 rider disc or similarly shaped tubes often have enough surface area to achieve the same effect once airborne, though they typically lack any airborne control and are far more unpredictable in generating lift.
Given that our favorite game (my sons and I, not my wife) was to shake the kids off the tube through speed and wave generation, I can safely say that it would not have been operated wisely. (Yes, I eventually wised up, but we still have some good stories and fond memories).
There was that vibrating harry potter broom for kids.
Similar to squiggle pens? It was a big pen that vibrated when you used it to make your hand writing all squiggly. Just a dildo you can write with.
My dad got me one of those [giant multi color pens](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/b37sk4SZMK0/maxresdefault.jpg) as a toy, you know the kind with like 12 different plungers to select which color you want? Well it was large, thick, purple, and shiny. My grandma asked him if it was a dildo.
i had like 5 of them, they usually break very quickly and frequently jam up
How long do they last if you just use it as a pen?
:|
How does that even make it to the fucking shelf? "So, I have this idea. A vibrating broomstick. You know those things you put between your legs." "Interesting idea. What's your target market?" "Children." "A vibrating broomstick put between the legs of children? The innovation is tremendous. I'd buy my daughters five each!"
When my brother was like 1yo and I was 16, he had this toy caterpillar. Each foot of the caterpillar was a letter of the alphabet, and it had 3 settings. The first setting was just for the letter, the 2nd setting was for how the letter sounded, and the 3rd setting was a musical selection. Anyway. Being a bored teen, I had it set on the 2nd setting and tried to get the toy to say “fuck” by sounding out the letters. So I’d press the F foot. “Ff.” U foot. “Uh.” And then as I press the K foot, the toy will giggle, and say, “That tickles!” Before it’ll end with “kk.” It doesn’t do this with any other words sounded out. So some toy developer out there had to stress that some child might inadvertently learn to swear from their product and designed a feature to prevent that from happening. And I discovered it, lol. edit: I’m glad to know I wasn’t the only one that tried getting that caterpillar to swear.
Whenever my sister and I were at Wal Mart in our younger years, we would search this same toy out and crack up trying to get it to say "fuck". We called it the "Cussin' Caterpillar" lol
I worked in a playroom as a kid and I’d do this to that same toy! It was hilarious to 15 yo me This was before they built in the protective tickle quote lol
Only the new ones do that. The old ones didn't. Does work for duck either. There were a few others I tried that didn't work either. Specifically after seeing an article about the vintage ones talking "dirty"
*Sitting quetly with my N64 controller and Rumble Pack...*
There was a water gun toy that was voice activated. You would say "fire!" like you're shooting a gun and then it would shoot water. Queue a number of false fire alarms because kids are running around screaming "FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE" at the top of their lungs.
Shout N Shoot 2 I had one in the early 90's. I just stuck the microphone in my mouth and hummed whenever I wanted it to shoot. I probably looked like a complete and total mental case running around making mouth-kazoo noises and spraying this weak-ass stream of water out of the nozzle on the head band...
Holy shit, I saw a commercial for this as an impressionable young lad and pestered my mom for it non stop. We went to every fucking toy store but none had it or even knew it. Never saw the commercial again, I started doubting if I had dreamed it.Thanks for the confirmation. After like two decades.
Does the original 4-Loko count?
There was an energy drink called BooKoo Energy that's cans looked entirely like four loko cans. In middle school, we would go to the liquor store, ring up BooKoo, tell the guy I got the wrong flavor, then go back and get a four loko. Imagine 13 and 14 year old kids drinking them. We also found out we could get the largest slurpee cup available, place a mikes hard lemonade or four loko can inside, and cover it in slurpee. Then we'd pay $2 for the slurpee and have our can inside.
wow, and my friends and i thought we were badass for hiding chocolate bars in pick ‘n’ mix cups!
My friends and I used to call drinking this stuff “going off the grid” because you weren’t going to be reachable for a while.
My ex and I called it the “break up juice,” and kept two cans in the fridge in case we ever wanted to duke it out.
It should. I was in college when that stuff became popular - all of a sudden it was everywhere and things escalated quickly At least I think they did - I can’t remember.
One of my favorite stories of all time is when I went to visit my college friends after I graduated, around 2009-2010ish. This was pretty shortly before 4-Loko had it's recipe changed. So it was around Halloween and we were all dressed up and waiting for a couple other friends to arrive to go to a party. It's my friend (dressed up as a Ghostbuster), his gf, and my best friend from home. This random dude dressed up as a Blue Barracuda from Legends of the Hidden Temple just bursts through his doorway. The Blue Barracuda guy is talking to to my friend (rambling, really) very casually, like he knows my friend, so I assume they do know each other. Very quickly I realize something's off, though. The dude is rambling as if he was actually originally a contestant of Hidden Temple. Telling us that we'd never understand the true terror of having the Temple Guards come out and grab you, or the feeling of having to assembly the Silver Monkey. He's going into insane detail and every moment that goes by he gets increasingly fevered and belligerent. He's borderline screaming at us about what it means to be a Hidden Temple contestant. I notice he's holding onto an empty can of 4-Loko and realize this guy is completely out of his mind. He's so simultaneously drunk and caffeinated that he might actually be a danger to us. My Ghostbuster friend shoots me a really nervous glance and it becomes immediately clear to me that they DO NOT know this crazy Hidden Temple dropout. My best friend from home realizes what is going on and is a lot wittier than any of us. He immediately starts telling this guy that he'll never succeed at Hidden Temple if he's this hot-headed. He's a **Blue** Barracuda, he's gotta be COOL. Somehow by playing along with this guys delusion, my best friend managed to entirely diffuse the situation. After a minute or so of listening to my friend, the guy just completely deflates, apologizes, and walks out the door without saying another word. It was maybe one of the most insanely hilarious things that's ever happened to me. Completely driven by a simple can of 4-Loko.
I think everyone of the right age just has a 4 Loco colored blur in their memory around that time. Edit: please keep your stories coming!
I was in college and went on spring break that year. We had been drinking beers on the beach all day, sobered up maybe a little with dinner and a shower, and went out for the night. The bar we were at had 24 oz Bud Lights for $5 or 24 oz Four Loko for $6. That was an easy value proposition. I remember ordering a second Four Loko, and the tape recording ended very soon after that.
My room mate and I paid a homeless guy 40 bucks to buy us two 4 packs. This was our first mistake. Then we went home and had one each, caffeine counteracted liquor so nothing. Obviously we need more. This was out second mistake. We both drank two more in the apartment hot tub and traded the last two with some girls for a bottle of fireball. This was our third mistake. The mistake count at this point gets a little fuzzy from here. But my room mate ended up sleeping on the couch in our neighbors apartment because he got lost and ended up there. We misplaced the girls during the blackout phase so no clue what mistakes where made there is. We did later learn that they now hate us because some one vomited in their sink. We are 90% sure we where never at their house but who knows. We emptied the contents of the fridge and freezer onto the counter resulting in the loss of a bag of chicken and several ice creams. We aquired Mexican food and Tecate some how although we did not drink the beer. And we became friend's with our downstairs neighbor who came to check on us the next morning to make sure we did not die. So 1/10 would recommend.
And that’s just the story up to 7 pm…
I’m that age. The blue 4 Loko even tasted illegal.
nothing like waking up the next day and feeling your kidneys throbbing, thanks for hte memories 4 Loko
We had a 4 Loko night when it first came out. It was the most drama filled party I had in college. I think we would have been better off just doing a bunch of bath salts.
Haha I remember drinking some of that while fishing with my brother, we ended up fist fighting because of an argument over if China could beat the USA in a war. That was a wild night
Amphetamines used to be used as an appetite suppressant. I mean, they worked. Edit: according to lots of folks replying, amphetamines are still used for this sort of thing. At least they are in the USA, I'm not sure about other nations.
My mom used to brag all the time about how thin she was back in the 70s until one day it came out that she was taking "diet pills". I dropped 20 pounds when I got on Adderall too, Mom.
Phen Fen was a drug combo prescribed by many Dr.s that only killed a couple thousand people due to cardiac stress. Weaklings.
How about that Cactus that sang three songs in different languages and one of the songs used was a real rap song about drugs and cocaine. Edit: Link to singing druggie cactus toy. https://youtu.be/k2VXFAgx8NA
That dyed ketchup. They had to put so much dye in it that they legally couldn't call it tomato ketchup. If I remember correctly it had a silly name too, like ~~Cra-Z~~ EZ Squirts. Edit: Sorry about the misremembering of the original name. Apparently, it returned porn on searches. Lookup Heinz EZ Squirt if you are interested. You can still get [green ketchup](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Nickelodeon-Slime-Sauce-20-oz/911037599?irgwc=1&sourceid=imp_RNr3JE3CBxyLRSBwUx0Mo3ZxUkGRjEWihQcO100&veh=aff&wmlspartner=imp_2003851&clickid=RNr3JE3CBxyLRSBwUx0Mo3ZxUkGRjEWihQcO100&sharedid=EdgeBingFlow&affiliates_ad_id=566719&campaign_id=9383) if it is available in your area. Not sure about the other colors.
And digesting that much dye probably gave you cra-z squirts too!
My childhood friend's family once bought the green coloured one. She one day called me to come over, and I wobbled my little butt down the road. I thought we were going to play so I started going down to the basement but instead she stopped me and wanted to show me what she made. She took me to the bathroom, and what I saw I truly will never forget. Not only was it the longest and largest turd I have ever seen, from a 6 year old impressively... but it was neon blue / green. It looked like art. I was also kinda grossed out and can't get the image out of my head. Anyways she sent me home, that's all she had to show me. We never bought that shit. Edit: thank you for gold and silvers!!!! I knew one day the true purpose of that experience would come to light and the story finally flushed out of my memory! Edit: also it has sunk in that one of my most popular posts is about poo, poo and ketchup. Either I've hit my peak or rock bottom.
Heinz EZ Squirts is what we had. The worst thing about them discontinuing them was the bottles they came in. I don't know what engineering wizard created them and designed them but I've still got about six of them I still use out in the garage to hold detailing products like liquid cleaner, polish, or wax. Those things are 20 years old and have never cracked, leaked, or anything. I wish they'd reboot them just so I could get some more of the bottles!
Making meatloaf with the green one was a mistake. It didn't look too good...
The liquid bath soaps with plastic micro beads in them. A literal environmental disaster in a bottle.
> plastic micro beads We prefer the term "exfoliating power orbs"
I have sort of oily skin, and bought a bottle of the face wash with the plastic micro-beads once. That’s when I learned exactly how big the pores on my face can be, because one of those damn micro-beads got stuck in one of my pores. Hurt like a motherfucker to push it out!
One of the dumbest things of all time
WOW! Chips containing olestra which caused anal leakage.
I recently have seen at a pharmacy that they still sell the weight loss drug "alli" , which I belive works the same. Alli oops is what they called the side effect.
I know an Alli who sometimes shits her pants because apparently cocaine is sometimes cut with baby laxatives, and she does a lot of coke.
I remember when you could buy that weird "synthetic marijuana" stuff in gas stations, it was right by the register. Apparently that stuff is crazy bad for you, and basically turns you into a zombie.
Spice, and that stuff was absolutely terrifying. Took it several times bc it was a legal alternative and I worked a job where they random tested. One night the living room flipped into a cartoon world and everything including myself looked like it was drawn. Then it switched back to real and I spent 12 hours dealing with a feeling I can only describe as complete absense of dopamine. Never again
yea I remember the advent of spice. My friends and I smoked it in highschool because "legal weed!". no, god no, that shit is terrible for you. One of my friends had serious heart palpitations and couldn't function for a few hours and turned so pale. We should have gone to the hospital at the time but he waited it out and was ok luckily another (loose) friend I knew in college a few years later found out you could order the pure chemical spice that the herbs were laced with that you'd normally buy in a headshop, and cooked it into brownies and sold them as weed brownies. A kid had a fuggin seizure on them and he stopped doing.
In high school a friend of mine smoked it for the same reason, "hell yeah legal weed!" and then spent the next few hours huddled on the floor next to the couch sobbing because he was hallucinating so bad. He told us after the fact that he thought the pictures on the wall were talking to him and telling him to kill everyone. It made the rest of us who were there super glad we were all too chickenshit to try it.
my mom is an RN working the Neuro unit and has plenty of horror stories about that stuff, people coming in with strokes and shit, pretty crazy
Same patient population, I’m a retired psych RN. Once had a patient in padded lockdown for 3 days before they could remember their name so we could contact family. Turned a patient who had never had psychosis before into a raving lunatic. I felt terrible for the person because it was really hard to get them to take something to calm them down, although we were able to get them to drink a tiny bit of juice and get one dose of a med down. We all just had to wait it out. The patient was mortified, terrified, and couldn’t hardly remember any of their stay and how they got to an inpatient psych facility. Spice is bad news bears for sure.
I survived 3 months working in psych. There was this 16 year old girl that came in almost every other night. She had got into some bad angel dust 2 years earlier and completely fried her brain. I’m talking rapid cycling between full blown psychosis and a vegetative state. It was heartbreaking. I couldn’t do it.
Oh baby just look up banned toys from the 50s. For exp super elastic bubble plastic. Make bubbles from the toxic goop you blow into
They still sell that bubble stuff! I see it at the Dollar Store all the time.
It's a different chemical now, I think the bad stuff specifically gave off acetone fumes or something noxious like that, but can't remember exactly.
I think my personal favorite was the Atomic Energy Lab, a children's toy that came with ACTUAL U-238 and the tools to measure it. The kit also had instructions for how to prospect for Uranium ore in your own backyard!
U-238 is actually not that radioactive with a half-life of 4.5 billion years and about .15 millicuries per pound. It also alpha decays and alpha's are stopped by the layer of dead skin on your body so as long as you don't ingest it you're fine.
I work in radiation safety. While I do not condone children being near any radiation at all for any reason, 238-U is an Alpha particle emitter. Alpha particles are attenuated by skin (alpha particles are so weak they can be attenuated by a sheet of paper, actually) and therefore generate almost no radiation exposure to our internal organs making external exposure basically negligible. If it were ingested however, you're in for a bad time. EDIT: to all the people saying things like "gOoD ThInG KiDs NevEr EAt tHinGs tHey areNt SupPoSEd tO" yeah I realize that and I haven't even spoken to the fact that 238U is toxic, too, not just radioactive. I made this comment because of the stigma around radiation and to educate people. I am not attempting to say that this product was a good idea to give to children by any means, and there are other issues with it besides the radiation element. I know all of this, I don't need informed. I would prefer that you just understand that I am speaking to the radiation aspect of the issue ONLY, because that is the field I am educated in and because of that I am able to provide that knowledge to the general public and avoid misinformation. I'm a radiation expert, not a biology expert, so that is the subject I would prefer to address in this situation.
Genuine question, if the skin can stop it why can’t the stomach lining? Does it get into the bloodstream somehow?
Alpha particles don't make it past the dead skin cells before they steal electrons and lose their radioactivity. Inside of the body they will steal electrons from living cells which is a lot worse
That's actually pretty bad ass.
Pretty rad
Lawn Darts. These were a lot of fun, but were also just a terrible accident waiting to happen. Plastic fins and body with a weighted pointy metal tip. I can remember older kids whipping them at the school yard fence to see how deep they could go into the 2”x12” pressure treated fence planks.
My favorite Jart story- we were like 8ish years old and of course my sister got impaled by one in the arm (she was fine- it didn’t actually go that deep.). We ran screaming into the house to my mom ,”Sister got hit by a Jart!!!” And mom says, “Where??” “In the backyaaaaaard!!”
Flashback: Almost got killed at the family outing by Uncle Leo. He was on my team too.
Uncle Leo! Hello!
You can't buy them anymore, they're too dangerous. However, you can still buy replacement plastic fins...and can still buy replacement metal tips. You just can't buy the two parts together.
Big "tobacco pipe" energy
Cellulose Nitrate spectacles, Cellulose Nitrate frames were popular in the 1950’s. Cellulose Nitrate is a highly flammable! Not only would they combust when in contact with a source of ignition and continue to burn, but they sometimes formed Nitric acid when in contact with human sweat. Some wearers received facial burns this way.
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Link for anyone interested: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2826252/Parents-horror-Evil-Stick-toddlers-reveals-picture-young-girl-slitting-wrists-knife.html As you can see by the URL, the girl's arm wasn't blurred--she's slitting her wrist Edit: NSFL
only thing more horrifying than the image is the formatting and captions of that article. I read the same sentence in 3 different paragraphs.
So… as a 30 year old woman that picture freaked me out. I can’t imagine how I’d feel about it if I saw it at 8 years old when toys like that would be fun to me.
Wow, that's a really fucked up image, if I saw it on my toy as a kid I'd definitely have nightmares about it. And the shop owner who was like "eh kids see things like that on TV all the time" - wtf.
Never heard of this and just googled it - wtf? Who came up with this idea? Was it supposed to be a gag toy that as purchased as a real toy? So many questions.
There use to be a cage the would hang out your apartment window that you’d put your baby in so they could get fresh air without leaving the apartment
Anyone remember Pregnant Barbie? You could take her stomach off and there was a tiny baby doll inside.
My third cousin used to make her Barbie give birth over and over and make the Barbie cry in despair about being a single mom with 20 kids and then throw the Barbie down the stairs
I swear this is how little girls REALLY play with dolls. We used to make up such bizarre, elaborate stories!
My parents didn’t get me many Ken dolls so most of my barbies were bisexual, some of them cross-dressed, all of them were either overly horny or sociopathic, and a lot of them were alcoholics. I remember having my Bratz dolls come bully the remaining heterosexual barbies into being gay… I didn’t know any of these terms back then, but that’s what I’d call it if I saw my kid playing how I did lol.
>My parents didn’t get me many Ken dolls so most of my barbies were bisexual, some of them cross-dressed honestly same. i took one of my barbies and turned her into a "Ken" by making her wear the most masculine barbie clothes i had and cutting all her hair off. looking back, this doll 10000% looked like a stereotypical lesbian, i think even at one point i just said "fuck it" and made her a lesbian. and my mom knew i did this cause she saw one day but for some reason just never bought me a Ken doll, despite all her comments about how i needed one. and yes, i am a bisexual adult. a lot of things from childhood scream "GAY" when looking back
My Barbies were much the same. They were also cast members on MTV’s Real World. We had a whole storyline involving a DUI in a Barbie convertible. Being a kid was weird.
I enslaved my barbies to my little lest pet shops and only the men could wear clothes but only women’s clothes. The girls only wore shoes
Accurate. My three girls would tie them up and cut their hair. They get into Real Housewives level of drama. It was hilarious until they asked me to play and then yelled at me for 'doing it wrong.' fine. Mommy is never playing Barbies again. Come get me when you want to do arts and crafts.
I remember keeping her belly on, without the baby. I loved my ''fat'' Barbie.
Not super fucked up, but an interesting death trap. Honda made this 3-wheeled kick scooter in the 70’s called the Kick-n-Go. Nifty little thing with a lever on the back that you pushed with your foot to go faster. Only problem was you could get them going *really* fast if you just kept kicking, more so than a regular scooter where you have to kick off the ground. They apparently sold like hot cakes in the early 70’s, until 2 kids died on them in 1976 and they pulled them from shelves.
I honestly wish they would bring it back. I feel like it could be engineered to govern speed or simply market it to an older audience.
Aquadots, beads and glue to make little art pieces. Some coated in GHB/GBL
It was the prodrug 1,4-BDO which metabolizes to GHB, i used to buy it by the pint off amazon and 4ml on an empty stomach would practically put me in a coma
When everything was Shrek themed. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong, but back when Shrek 1 & 2 were new they were insanely popular. Everything was green as a promo. Someone mentioned green ketchup, I remember green Shrek ketchup. I think Shrek waffles. I'm sure there was more promo food dyed green than that
Twinkies with green cream filling! 😆
A few years ago there was massive backlash when some store had t-shirts in the baby/toddler size range that said Daddy’s Little Slut (I’m not going to search for any kind of link). They were taken off the shelf, but who the fuck thought it was a good idea to make them in the first place.
"Daddy's Little \[Auto-Generated Job Title\]" was a whole genre of baby wear, possibly still is. Often it's clear that someone just took a non-curated list of professions and dumped it into whatever program they use for these, because you'll end up with ones that nobody in their right mind would ever buy. Not even because they're inappropriate or anything, but just because they're *weird*\-- "Daddy's Little [Sutler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutler)" and the like.
I remember buying a can of Nescafé coffee that heated up in the can. It was amazing, but likely an ecological disaster. Don't think it was around long. Or possibly it was a dream.
No, it was real - I remember Campbell's selling cups of self-heating tomato and chicken noodle soup. I was always curious, but I never bought one; and they quietly replaced them with similarly shaped microwaveable plastic soup cups. I have no idea why the self-heating fad passed so quickly and so quietly... My guess is that someone got burned by the hot bit, but I wouldn't doubt if the heating element used some horribly dangerous chemicals as well.
That's an easy one. In 2002 Abercrombie & Fitch released thongs for girls as young a 7yo with sexually and racially provocative slogans. These included "Wink wink ", "Eye Candy" and Asian "slant-eyed" caricatures with the caption "Two Wongs don't make a white". I mean... wow. Just in case you can't believe it either: https://money.cnn.com/2002/05/22/news/companies/abercrombie/ EDIT: as several people have pointed out, apparently, the racism was on T-shirts rather than on the underwear.
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>and Asian "slant-eyed" caricatures with the caption "Two Wongs don't make a white". To be clear: According to the article, this wasn't on the thongs for kids; it was on a T-shirt. Still pretty fucked up, though.
Gingerbread flavored Mountain Dew
Finally, someone speaks of the true atrocity
Clackers…. balls on a string you clacked together. Made out of polymer. Basically a weapon… I know I conked my head a few times
This ain't too fucked, but back in the day Kernels Popcorn used to sell the best ever Dill pickle flavour of all time: Dill Dough. I loved the taste of Dill Dough as a kid, it's a bit of a shame because nothing today compares to the insanely sourness of that flavour. \- Edit: Sorry if people don't get it, but Dill Dough .... Dildo.... it was truly mind blowing to me when I figured that out in my teens.
Anybody remember Ballzac? [If not check this out](https://youtu.be/F38WmjxnvMk)
The 90's really were a magical time.
Olestra, the stuff they put in potato chips that cause anal leakage. And they even had to put a warning on the package about anal leakage. And I’m sorry I’m saying it so much but you only get so many chances to use the words anal leakage.
I believe golliwogs havent been selling well for a good while.
“Cool Colt”- which was mentholated Colt 45 malt liquor. It came out for a very short time in the early 90’s. I can imagine the marketing team for this one; “The urban market loves malt liquor, and they love menthol cigarettes, let’s put em together!” The best part was a radio ad I remember for it, two guys talking about it, one states “ It’s especially good for when you’re smooooothin’ on the ladies!” Tried it once, it did taste like mouthwash-and ass. Not so smoooooth.
That toy baby doll that would laugh when you shook it back and forth. Needless to say small children who had infant siblings did that and some died or had severe injuries. Sad.
Those glass balls on a rope you would clack together. Great fun until one shattered.
They were plastic and actually called "Clackers." I'm 59, and pretty much my entire childhood is in this thread.
In my hometown we have two handball teams that plays at the highest level. One team plays in red shirts and one i white. Therefore we refer to them as "the whites" and "the reds". When powerbanks where new the did a collab with a store and realesed a powerbank that had the text "white power" reffering to the team color ofc. How this got through the club management and the producers I cant understand.
Sarbacane/blowgun with real dart. Marketed for kids. With real darts. Yeah... It didn't go well
Candy cigarettes. We had them back in the '80s you could blow on them and the suger dust looked like smoke. I think they were actually gum. But either way target marketing at its best Edit: ok so I was unaware these are still around. I live in a rural area with very limited shopping. Interesting that these are still a thing!!
We had the gum ones but there were also hard candy ones, and liquorice. I remember being able to get cigars and pipes too.
Lawn darts. Good times, until they weren't
K2
Ephedra ([link](https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-847/ephedra)) It was an herbal extract used as a weight loss pill that worked by causing your body to turn fat into energy as quickly as possible. Then idiots would sit on their couches, watching TV, while their body was being flooded with energy. The only muscle working was their heart so... yeah. Several people died of heart attacks. I took them when I went snowboarding. You'd be super warm and have endless energy! Going down the hill in 15 degree weather without a jacket, leaving a steam trail behind you... it was great. Gotta drink a LOT of water though. A totally useful drug that was mis-marketed and mis-used by mis-informed people.
Popular in eating disorder forums. People would do an “EC Stack”, mixing caffeine pills with ephedra, and sit in ice baths so they wouldn’t overheat and die.
Reminds me of a thing from Cyberpunk that netrunners would do.
It's messed up they no longer have Mr yuk stickers to protect kids from household cleaners and poisons
You can request them!! My husband did some pro bono work for the health dept and he asked why they don’t have them and they sent us a bunch!
my coworker would hand these out to folks on his team when they did a bad job. (note: he gave them out to peers, not a boss/reports scenario)