How many of these 'educational' toys did you get as a child?

[LongTomH]

Cracked.com has a great article: The 8 Most Wildly Irresponsible Vintage Toys, with a list of 'educational' items, mostly from Gilbert, that let kids play with molten glass, molten lead, dangerous chemicals (including potential explosives!), and..........radioactives!

Don't believe me about the radioactives? Take a look........



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The only one of these toys I had (I wanted ALL of them!!!!) was the Gilbert chemistry set, which scared my mother. If she had known that the potassium permanganate was a key component of explosives, it would have scared her even more!



Yeah, yeah!! I know, we grew up playing with these toys and we're OK; kids today are wimps, yattada, yattada, yattada. But, I know Gilbert was sued over their chemist sets. How many kids suffered scarring from the glassblowing and lead casting sets -- or burned the house down.

[Broken_Hero]

1. Only the glass blowing kit, but it wasn't the same model/style

of the one posted in the article.

[jmowreader]

2. It's telling...

...that "how to blow shit up" is Experiment Number 1.

[csziggy]

15. I combined that experiment with how to make blue ink

Painted the ceiling of the Florida room in one impressive BOOM!

For some reason, that educational kit disappeared from our house.

[Mnpaul]

3. It wasn't any more dangerous

than the rest of the stuff in the home. Fireplaces, kerosene heaters etc... You could go out in the garage and possibly find dynamite(they used it to dig ditches back in the day), blasting caps for said dynamite, various nasty pesticides. I had a machine that vacuum formed pieces of plastic. You would heat the sheet of plastic over a heating element and flip it over the mold and pump the air out. I also had a creepy crawlers set that used some sort of goo that was heat cured. My grandfather had tons(literally) of calcium chloride which was used for blackbird scaring devices(which he sold) on the farm. It creates acetylene when mixed with water.

[trof]

7. I had a carbide miner's light when I was a scout.

It's a wonder we didn't set the woods on fire.

[talkingmime]

4. I didn't have the radioactive stuff, but my chemistry set was rather deadly.

It had sulphur, charcoal, potassium nitrate, and a lot of other scary things including magnesium strips. Those things get HOT! There were test tubes, a small bunsen burner, tweezers, clamps, and pretty much everything you needed to blow your face off. It's amazing I survived. But some of the reactions were really cool, well, in a hot sort of way.

[Moondog]

5. I had a Gilbert Chemistry Set, but

I think it was larger and more elaborate than the one shown. I guess that different versions came and went.

[TrogL]

6. mine had radium and uranium - no warnings

I used it to illuminate clock dials.

I started building a nuclear reactor but my father caught on and shut me down.

[bif]

8. I had a microscope, telescope, and a chemistry set

And I had a "lab" in our basement. I loved science as a kid.

[talkingmime]

9. "Crazy Harry plays with electricity - WAAA-HA-HA-HA!" BOOM!

[jmowreader]

16. That's when science was FUN!!!

I googled "chemistry sets" and found one with only one experiment in it: make polyurethane foam. Ages 12 and up.

Let's see...diisocyanate is on every environmental group's chemicals-of-concern list. It is acutely dangerous. It is a sensitizer...the more you use it, the worse for you it is. Essentially the worst shit in the known universe after chemical warfare agents (which, btw, it is made from). So...let's buy a barrel of MDI, package it in pint bottles and sell it to 12-year-olds. Who the hell thought this was a good idea? (Having said that, it's not expensive and I can think of many things I want to make from it, so I'm gonna get some.)

[Sekhmets Daughter]

10. I dated a fellow in high school who blew off most of his left arm

with a chemistry set when he was in middle school. They were, in fact, extremely dangerous.

[Mnpaul]

13. We were making batteries

mixing chemicals with electrodes in the beaker. We knew it was time to run when the needle on the meter pegged out instantly. We had accidentally mixed an acid and a base.

[Sekhmets Daughter]

14. Yikes!

I don't know what Rocky was doing, we moved to town after the accident and I never wanted to ask him. The first time we met he held up his prosthetic and said "I was making a bomb" and laughed. A friend confirmed that it was a homemade explosion, if you will, and that with the nearest hospital being 20 minutes away, it was touch and go. I loved Chemistry class but feared the lab like the plague after meeting him.

Sometimes it's amazing we survive to adulthood, yet alone old age!

[Archae]

11. I had the chemistry set, back in the late 60's.

Made stink bombs that got my butt paddled more than once!

[Ron Obvious]

12. I had the chemistry set too

I had the chemistry set too, one of the greatest educational toys ever even if I mainly recall making stink bombs (iron filings & sulphuric acid).

I feel sorry for the kids growing up today with its anodyne safety-first mentality.