Chilling Childhood Toys

As a kid growing up in the 80's and early 90's, we had a lot of weird toys that I think about now and I am surprised they were even created/sold...There's even a website dedicated to toys of the 1980's.

These are just a few of my all-time childhood favorites:
I had Teddy Ruxpin:


who was kind of creepy and used to tell me "bedtime stories" through his motorized mouth and slow, calculated eye blinks...and he palled around with Grubby, a....worm?:



....Terrifying!


And of course, Rainbow Brite, who was clearly created out of a drug induced haze. She rode on a white horse that had rainbow hair named Starlite who ran on rainbows and there were all these little fuzzy things running around talking to her, and there was a villain named...Murky? yep, Murky Dismal.



And Cabbage Patch Kids. They smelled like baby powder, had tattoos of some guy's name on their butts....and grew out of...cabbage? Who thinks of this shit?

Oh my god, did you watch those commercials? Telling kids they're 'premies"....a doctor gave the cabbage patch doll a real checkup?! A dad calling his mother to tell her she's a grandma and that his 6 year old had twins?! Isn't this taking it way too far?! The lifeguard child molestor?! Fashion minded cabbage patch kid?! HORRIFYING!
As an aside, there were Cabbage Patch Snacktime Kids, that have since been recalled, because they have a chewing mechanism that can't be turned off and kids lost fingers and ponytails in it:


AHHH!!!

Snacktime Cabbage Patch Kids are just one on this great list of the Top 10 Most Dangerous Toys Ever. Also included are:

Sky Dancers:

They caused temporary blindness, skin lacerations, and broken ribs and teeth!

And Lawn Darts....which are banned in the U.S. and Canada because they killed 3 kids. Today, we play Cornhole instead.

Moving along, Pound Puppies were depressed dogs that you would "rescue" and grow to love. They were cute in a sad, starved, pathetic kind of way.


reading their wiki page, I learned that the bad guy is named "Captain Slaughter", and he is trying to "get rid" of the puppies....WTF?!

Madballs had disgusting faces on them and had gross names and mannerisms.


There's a million of them....

Of course, other than creepy and bizarre, some were very, very dangerous....

Like, the Pogo Ball.

Shaped like a planet, this thing had to break at least a few ankles. It's meant to be a pogo stick, minus the stick, plus a ball. Good luck not breaking bones on this one.

Or the Skip-It:

Ugh. My ankles still feel bruised from this frigging thing.


This commercial always infuriated me. How is there being a counter on the ball considered the "very best thing of all"? Is that really "the best"? Also, when I would Skip-It to major injuries, the ball would get scraped and destroyed and smash against everything on the concrete. So it looked like a car ran over it and a dog gnarled it after owning it for a week. You also looked like a fool, because one leg stayed straight while the other one jumped. My ankles were never the same.

And of course, the Slip'n Slide. Slip'n Slide was manufactured in 1961 by Wham-O, which is also responsible for the Hula Hoop and Frisbee.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has a report online about how dangerous the Slip'n Slide truly is. Apparently, only smaller children should be using S'nS because older children and adults can suffer traumatic spinal chord and neck injuries.



I don't really feel that much else can be said after that, so....practice spOOoOOKY safety when playing with toys!