by A J Grape

Created on: December 09, 2010

Beware of the toys!

Gone are the good-ole-days before the nanny-state emerged seeing fit to prevent us all from any possibility of injury or disfigurement by our own hands. But alas, the horse is out of the barn.

The first to go was Clackers. In 1970, Clackers, the successor to the yo-yo, was introduced to international markets. These were nothing more than a long string with a hanging acrylic ball on each end. What could be more harmless? But, by 1971, all schools and stores were shamed into banning them and pulling them from the shelves. Kids loved them, adults hated them.

Hold the string in the middle and bounce the balls off each other to make them clack. Clacking the Clackers together was great fun; so much fun that Clacking the Clackers never ceased. It became a national obsession. Kids everywhere at all times were at it; clacking their clackity-Clackers all along their merry way. The sound of the Clackers, click-clacking, disturbed solemnity everywhere, driving everyone to the edge of insanity. But, producing the sound of the clickity-clack was not the most fun of clacking the Clackers. Clacking furiously and at accelerations beyond durability was the natural goal.

Kids are only interested in discovering the structural limit of a toy. They are a group of people (as any parent will attest) who collectively and individually will intentionally test a toy to find its point of disintegration. This is what makes playing with any toy fun. And, this was exactly what was so intriguing about Clackers. Yes, it was rumored that some kids were injured by acrylic chips flying into their eyes; and some were knocked to the ground by a loosed projectile ball sailing off when the string broke. But hey, isn’t that the price of fun? And scary rumors didn’t help the situation. The idea that these things could explode at any moment made them all the more exciting to play with.

But if history has the guts to come clean on this, then it will not hide the fact that it was not the danger, but that awful noise, the ceaseless clacking of those Clackers together that was the source of their own demise. It is the way of all good things. What is annoying to adults is therefore bad for kids.

It is also miss-use that brings down the trouble. There was the Lawn-Dart accident we heard about. A neighbor-kid received a terrible ear injury when he played with Lawn-darts in his swimming pool. When he threw a Lawn-dart as high as he could into the air, it dropped from the sky and

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