Jump to content

Weird Stuff From Childhood


Guest

Recommended Posts

I was looking at some action figures that I used to own as a child. They were the pocket size G.I. Joes that were popular in the 80s, one of my favorite toy lines. But they had information on the back of the card that gave a little personality to each one. Three of the bad guys I owned had extremely weird professions before they became evil. Cobra Commander was a used car salesperson before he started an international terrorist organization. Dr. Mindbender, a torturer and hypnotist, was an orthodontist and Raptor, already a weird hawk man hybrid, was an insurance salesman. Its just weird to me now that I didn't realize how weird that was as a child. Do you guys have any experiences realizing how weird things supposedly made for children could be?

Link to post
Share on other sites
RoseGoesToYale

I had a handful of Barbies as a kid, and those things are pretty creepy. The older ones are hard plastic, but ones made after 2000 were this rubbery plastic substance. You could bend their appendages backward and in weird positions, it was disgusting. Their heads were also hollow so you could squish their faces in.

 

Baby dolls are also creepy af. Especially the ones with the open-close eyes. Occasionally the mechanism would jam and baby's eyes would get stuck open, even if you laid it down. Weirder still if they were the kind that had a velcro back that allowed you to open the back and access the stuffing. Like, why would you need that?? Rooting around someone's insides isn't exactly a staple of future parenthood.

Link to post
Share on other sites
17 minutes ago, RoseGoesToYale said:

Rooting around someone's insides isn't exactly a staple of future parenthood.

Maybe not your idea of parenthood....😈

Link to post
Share on other sites
Rockblossom

I have tons of them, which makes me wonder how any of the kids in my generation grew up well-balanced. ( Assuming, of course, that some of them did.  I can't speak from personal experience. ☺️)

 

Songs for babies and small children.  Has anyone really listened to the lyrics of some of those classics, like "Rockabye Baby"? 

 

Cap guns.  We had (sometimes quite realistic-looking) toy guns with rolls of "caps" that made a popping sound when fired.   Kid One would shoot Kid Two, who would promptly fall over "dead" while making appropriate "I'm dying" sounds.  This was referred to as  "playing outside", which was heartily recommended to later generations as superior to staying indoors using a computer because a lot of 'puter games are violent.

 

BB guns.  This was a step up from the cap guns because we could use real "ammunition" to shoot things, like birds and annoying neighbors.  I had a cousin who lost an eye playing with BB guns.

 

Fireworks, which the fireworks stands were perfectly willing to sell to kids.  Cherry bombs and M-80s.  M-80s now can carry no more than 50mg of explosive.  When I was a kid, they had as much as  3000mg of explosive.  Nobody I know, but some kids lost hands because they were dared to hold onto the M-80 while it was lit.  

 

Bubblegum cigars, candy cigarettes, and bottles of root beer that were made to look like popular brands of beer.  Because it's never too early to start training kids for their future vices.  :rolleyes:

Link to post
Share on other sites

M-80s were also waterproof and you could destroy porcelain toilets with them. I never did, I was always scared of loud noises, but it happened at the local high school. 

Link to post
Share on other sites
39 minutes ago, Rockblossom said:

I have tons of them, which makes me wonder how any of the kids in my generation grew up well-balanced. ( Assuming, of course, that some of them did.  I can't speak from personal experience. ☺️)

 

Songs for babies and small children.  Has anyone really listened to the lyrics of some of those classics, like "Rockabye Baby"? 

 

Cap guns.  We had (sometimes quite realistic-looking) toy guns with rolls of "caps" that made a popping sound when fired.   Kid One would shoot Kid Two, who would promptly fall over "dead" while making appropriate "I'm dying" sounds.  This was referred to as  "playing outside", which was heartily recommended to later generations as superior to staying indoors using a computer because a lot of 'puter games are violent.

 

BB guns.  This was a step up from the cap guns because we could use real "ammunition" to shoot things, like birds and annoying neighbors.  I had a cousin who lost an eye playing with BB guns.

 

Fireworks, which the fireworks stands were perfectly willing to sell to kids.  Cherry bombs and M-80s.  M-80s now can carry no more than 50mg of explosive.  When I was a kid, they had as much as  3000mg of explosive.  Nobody I know, but some kids lost hands because they were dared to hold onto the M-80 while it was lit.  

 

Bubblegum cigars, candy cigarettes, and bottles of root beer that were made to look like popular brands of beer.  Because it's never too early to start training kids for their future vices.  :rolleyes:

I had caps guns, one of which was made of clear plastic. Others had the barrel blocked, supposedly to eliminate muzzle flash. I also recall those tiny metal front-heavy bomb-like things that one would load a single cap into and then throw it. Sometimes I would just take an entire roll of caps and smash it with a hammer, it made for a good blast. However, blowing up an old-style electrolytic capacitor with line-level AC makes a lot more noise, not to mention a nice cloud of white smoke. The older ones don't have safety vents so the pressure just builds and builds until POW.

 

Oh geez, it's a miracle I didn't lose an eye to the BB gun I had. I fired countless rounds at INDOOR targets, not smart! I even fired one at the edge of the shelf in my closet; it ricocheted and hit me square in the forehead which hurt like crazy. Soon enough an oversized BB got jammed in the barrel and ruined it, a good thing in retrospect.

 

I'm pretty sure M80s and cherry bombs are illegal here. I saw a Rescue 911 episode in which a boy was mucking around with a M80 which blew up in his hand. Ultimately he lost the tip of one finger and needed a lot of physical therapy to be able to use that hand again.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Popsicles that looked like cartoon characters, or rather looked like deformed versions of cartoon characters.

Link to post
Share on other sites
SorryNotSorry

Have a look at some of the Hot Wheels cars on the display racks at the stores that stock them. A goodly number of them would be mechanically impossible, illegal to drive on public roads, or both, if they were full-size cars. If you were a kid who liked cars and collected Hot Wheels, you likely wouldn't have thought about that.

Link to post
Share on other sites
5 hours ago, Woodworker1968 said:

Have a look at some of the Hot Wheels cars on the display racks at the stores that stock them. A goodly number of them would be mechanically impossible, illegal to drive on public roads, or both, if they were full-size cars. If you were a kid who liked cars and collected Hot Wheels, you likely wouldn't have thought about that.

Oh, man, I had a load of those as a kid!  

Thinking back, it must have driven my parents crazy when I left them lying around to get stepped on.

 

My dad still has some of his model cars from when he was younger.

Link to post
Share on other sites
SorryNotSorry
43 minutes ago, Ardoise said:

My dad still has some of his model cars from when he was younger.

The one decent thing my old man did was that he got my mother into building those Hubley die-cast metal model cars about 50 years ago when those kits were still produced.

 

As a kid in the 1970s, some of us kids still built models back then (I eventually gravitated toward WW2 Japanese planes). Then home video game consoles became all the rage, and by middle school I was the only kid who still built models...

Link to post
Share on other sites

Furbies. Those things that looked like weird bird/cat hyrbrids and sounded like demons.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Those plush cats or dogs that had babies in their bellies. It's kinda creepy that little kids were ripping open their stuffed animal's abdomen to get the babies. How cute? 

Link to post
Share on other sites
KuraTheChibiSleepingBeauty

I liked taking the clothes off the few dolls I had. Years later, and I'm still perfectly fine with nudity. *shrug* 

Link to post
Share on other sites

I used to have a collection of 7 microscopes. 

Link to post
Share on other sites

-The sheer violence of the many Disney cartoons, under the pacifying melodies of classical music. 

 

-Super soakers guns with what seemed like enough PSI, to cut through granite. Mercifully, they eventually took some of the power out of the water guns. 

 

 

 

 

Link to post
Share on other sites
SarahSomeone

Popeye cigarette candies, I only see them in specialty stores now.

My siblings and I would pretend to smoke... I guess looking back it’s a little weird...

 

Link to post
Share on other sites

-Jawbreaker candy twice the size of average child's mouth. Why?

 

-Super sour candies with what seemed like pure citric acid in the center. 

 

Someone really hated kids back then. 

Link to post
Share on other sites
Bel aka catcrazylady
On ‎4‎/‎22‎/‎2019 at 9:34 PM, Firefly8 said:

Those plush cats or dogs that had babies in their bellies. It's kinda creepy that little kids were ripping open their stuffed animal's abdomen to get the babies. How cute? 

I always wanted one of those! They are creepy looking af with their plastic heads and furry bodies but I really wanted a bunch of little puppies and always hoped I could get one that had 5 puppies. 
I did get one of the puppies for Christmas one year. He was awesome. I think the first toy I had that was filled with tiny beans which made him really tactile and quite unique among my toys :) he came with a costume so I could dress him as a pilot ^.^

Link to post
Share on other sites
Bel aka catcrazylady

Probably the weirdest thing I had was a "my magic copier" where you draw on a screen and then you can print out the image. Really basic crap. Like, why do you need to make all these copies? Surely it would be easier just to draw on paper rather than use this expensive roller and "print" out a basic image instead. 

Link to post
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...