Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry rolling in there, and this is stuff you should know for all the kiddies out there. For the cats, the kiddies, there was a D d oh, two d s and an I E. Not no, not the nice call back man. Yeah, that was a good one, Bass Salts. Probably shouldn't mention that on the one for the kiddies. Uh, Chuck, Yes, have you ever tested a toy? Um? No? Did you ever want to? Well? Yeah, I mean I've done some product testing before because I have a friend or had friend that worked in market research and she would occasionally hit me up for a burger taste or a beer drink or a tool test, but never toys. Wow, I'll bet the beer drink was fun. That's great, drink a little beer and you get paid like a hundred bucks. But she's like, no, no, you can't swallow. You have to switch it around in your mouth and spit it out. Actually, most of the beer one is the only one I did. I think there was only one that was a taste a lot of times it's just like, what do you think of this logo type of thing? Oh? Really? So, like the beer wasn't even in the room with you? What a tease? Yeah? They just throw things up and I just go boring. Yeah where you like, you probably could have explained this better when you asked me to test the beer. Well you get that little envelope with a hundred bucks? Also, who cares? Oh nice? Is that how much that pays? Sometimes more sometimes fift. I did a frozen yogurt one for fifty bucks one time, but it ranged between fifty and a couple of hundred. Very cool. Yeah cash money? Yeah, why not? You know you can go buy a lot of beer with that. Totally well. I remember hearing about the idea of toy testing as a kid and just being like, how how do I do this? My parents are like, I don't know, we both work, we're busy to go be a latch key kid. Especially after the movie Big Oh. Yeah, there was like a lot of toy testing in that right, Yeah, I mean that was his job, and I forgot about that, totally forgot about that. I just remember the piano scene and then the scene at the end, Well, don't spoil it. Okay, I didn't. I said the scene at the end hopefully didn't spoil it for anybody that big ends eventually. Yeah, don't spoil it. But it has something to do with it a dirty bomb, right, that's the next st episode, the big surprise ending. So anyway, I remember wanting to be a toy tester and it never panned out for me. And now that I have grown up a little bit and I've read this article, especially doing a little research, toy testing still sounds awesome if you're a kid, but if you're a parent, it does not sound all that great. What do you mean, like if your kid does that, Yeah, it sounds like a lot of work, man, Like getting the toy and having your kid play with it. Yeah, I mean, it's not like that's the end of it. Like there's a lot of a lot of extra stuff you have to do. You have to pay attention to your kid while they're playing with it. You have to uh, you've got to write reports and stuff. There's like if there's work to it if you're the parent, for sure. So in other words, you have to take them out of there. Uh, they're small plane brick room and actually let them play, Yeah, take off their hannibal lector face mask and their straight jacket. I never thought about it that way to work, and then put them back in after they were done with their toy. Um. No this again. If you're the kid, great job. If you're a parent, it seems tough. Plus also, one of the things that's tough about it is that this is not something that UM is easily come by. I think, although it's a lot easier today to get a job for your kid as a toy tester than it was, say like in yeah, I think back then you had to literally depend on someone getting in touch with you, right, or you had to like go show up at headquarters and be like, hey, what do you think you kid? Huh? You know? All right, well, let's let's go a little further, a little further back, because there's a lot of different testing that goes on with toys. There's the kind I was just talking about research market research, right, like you and your beer logos? Yeah, like playing with this toy, kid, what do you think stink? There's also the kind that UM that has to do with like actually making sure it's safe, which is another kind of toy testing. And we're going to cover both. Um. But the idea of testing toys to make sure that they didn't you know, disembowel the kid that was playing with them with some weird sharp edge or missile that was actually you know, could would would stick in your gut and catch fire or something like that. That's actually a relatively new concept, like surprisingly new. Actually yeah, I mean toys have been around for thousands of years. Like they found toys that are potentially four thousand years old. I saw a rattle that was from Turkey that maybe like four thousand years old. And by all accounts, this Italian find was a sort of like an early easy bake oven kit. Yeah, it was like a toy kitchen basically kitchen stead. Yeah. So, like little kids have always wanted to play with stuff. It's just part of being a child. Whether it's took Took Jr. Or uh, you know, all the way up to modern times. Uh. And in the eighteenth century it became a thing to where the Enlightenment philosopher said, you know what, learning through play is a really valuable thing. So, like legit toys started being developed for the first time. Yeah, I think this is about the time maybe a little before. But this is probably the seeds of where childhood came from, and we need to do an episode just on childhood. I think, man like when it was allowed. Yeah, like, this is not it's not like a a natural. It may be natural, but observing it is not a longstanding thing among humans. It was like, well, you're five years old, time for you to get to work. Exactly Like here you get a little more cold dust on your face. You look jobless, you know. So, Um, the idea of kids playing, especially to kind of learn and grow into adults. That that, yeah, that's like finds its roots in the Enlightenment. And so you've got that that that one branch or that one sapling coming up and it starts to integrate and merge with another one that comes up later on in the nineteenth century industrialization. Yeah, so now you have the idea that kids should play with toys because prior to industrialization, families may have made them themselves. It may like the kid may have been just playing with a kitchen utensil, forced to use its imagination. Um. And I just realized it keep referring to the kid as it yeah, his or her imagination. Um, like a broom becomes a horse pretty easy. Yeah, or you know, I mean, look at stickball. Is there anything simpler than cutting a broom into a broomstick and and playing baseball? Right? Or um, A a nice ladle can become an electric guitar. Sure, that was always my thing. I always played air guitar or whenever I could, I would give entire God Man, when I'm like, now that I am older, how torturous must this have been? I would give entire concerts of like bon Jovi's Slippery when Wet, but like it would be an either air guitar or a drum set made of like country croc lids for symbols and then the tubs for the drum themselves, or like a quicker Roads box or something like that. But I have like a whole like Tommy Lee drum kit made up. All right, I got some questions here, I wasn't I wasn't done. I was on us there more. Yeah, we give this whole concert, and like everybody would come into my room and sit there and listen to like the first song and be like, okay, one more, and I try to go through at least one whole side of the tape. Okay, I don't think I ever made it through a whole side, but my aim was to do the whole album. All right, Well, that that answered all my questions. Actually, Okay, I want to know how long were these performances? Who you subjected them to? My family? And they were long, and they must have been excruciatingly long. Okay, Yeah, that pretty much sums it up, right, So I'm not even sure how I got on that. What my point was, Well, because of your imagination of turning household items into fantastical toys, that's right. So thanks to industrialization and mass production, toys could be made and sold and distributed, and all of a sudden, now you have something like the beginning of a consumer culture, especially in America. Yeah, and we're talking nineteen fifties. It became a real thing. Except back then the toys were highlyly to injure or kill your child. Right, I'm not highly like it, but but a lot of them were pretty dangerous. But there, I found this one stat from nineteen sixty eight, and like I've seen it, like question, no one was keeping track. Apparently no one really started keeping track two toy injuries and deaths until like the twenty one century, isn't that jaw dropping? Man? UH century is when they started releasing reports with injury and death statistics from toys. So I saw this one. It was a guestimate, but I saw seven hundred thousand injuries from toys in nineteen sixty eight. And that's not including jungle gyms and swing sets, bikes, trampolines, probably scooters, nothing like that. These are just straight up toys. By two thousand twelve, I saw that there were eleven children who died in the US. Um five of them were from tricycles, two of them were from scooters, two or from balloons. So really technically only two children died from what you would consider like just a straight up toy, like a dollar stuffed toy or something like a crane or plato. I think both of them were asphyxiation. So the idea that there was this huge change from very very very dangerous toys into actually a pretty safe industry that has to do largely with toy testers. Yeah, And it was that they finally passed what's known as uh while, the first Federal Safety Standards for toys into law, and then the National Commission on Product Safety that same year, said, all right, we've got eight recommendations for banning toys. And I look these up in picture because they're they're kind of fun to look at. The Empire Lady Empire Little Lady stove, which is basically an easy bake oven, uh mixed with a pottery kiln six hundred degrees fahrenheit. This thing would kit's sixteen degrees celsius like your home of and doesn't get up to six hundred degrees. Probably it genuinely does not. I think mine goes to five fifty. Maybe in cleaning self cleaning mode it gets up that high. But this is not something a little a little toddler needs to play with, right and self cleaning mode it locks itself, shuts he can't open the door even uh what else? The Bird of Paradise sling shot, which looked um innocuous enough, but it uh. The deal with that one was that had these sharp missiles that could make you bleed. But yeah, I think sling shot it just begins and ends at that as far as the safety is concerned. I looked up sling shots today because I had remember the wrist rockets, Yeah, I do. Those things were so dangerous did you have one? No, I was never allowed to have one, So I had a wrist rocket And I looked up today after this article. I was like, I wonder, what what's going on in the world of sling shots? And dude, you should see some of the sling shots on the market today. Are they even more dangerous than the wrist rocket? Oh? Yeah? And like there are YouTube videos with people with these things that, uh they look like little musket balls that you can fire. And I mean this guy was shooting these balls with a sling shot through like half inch plywood. It's like a gun that is a dangerous toy. Wow. Yeah, it's it's really just look up extreme sling shots at some point and uh and go get one. Yeah, if you're eighteen year older and don't have like some you know, grudge against anybody. This last one, the Zulu blowgun. Um, was was that period in America where you could have some kid's toy that was highly raised, just in very dangerous, all in one one convenient box. Yeah. I can't imagine what the packaging looked like on that one. It looks like what do you think it looks like? So um kids were choking on the darts, I'm sure, like putting the dart in then taking a deep breath exactly. They were like, I should have thought this through first, pretty much no thing, and that was that, right, So that that was That was the first time they started taking toy safety seriously. And prior to that, the last time they had looked out for little kids was I think in the fifties, because in the forties there was a lot of um like flash fire deaths among children wearing like pajamas because pajamas were made of ray on, this new material at the time, and I guess no one had ever tested it around a flame. And it turns out that it could burn up real quick, and not only could it burn the kid badly, possibly to death, it could also of them from smoke inhalation from their pajamas, right, And even if they survived, they were again very badly burned. So Congress passed the flammable um not flammable. Flammable um fabric act, I think is what it's called, not flammable. And can we can I go off here for a second, can we all come together and just agree to drop the word inflammable together. There's no reason for it. It's just a dangerous word. Uh yeah, I'm still I'm still beating the druma on that one too. Yeah, it's dr Nick. He's like, flammable means flammable. Uh okay. So they so Congress passed this Act to basically say all kids wear UM needs to be flame retarded. Now, the problem is is the chemicals they used to make the close flame retardant was um. They were not. They were the opposite of flammable in their credit, but they supposedly were linked to kids um an increase in hyperactivity and a decrease in i Q. And still today it's very, very tough to get kids pajamas that aren't flame retardant with those same chemicals in them. But apparently in the mid nineties Congress allowed a loophole they keep going where if the pajamas were of a snug fit, they could be not flame resistant, right, they didn't have to have the flame retardant chemicals because um, to to burn fire needs oxygen and if there's no oxygen really between the kid's skin and the pajamas because they're snugly, snug fitting pajamas, then um, the fire is probably not gonna happen. So they don't have to have flame retardant chemicals. That's the one loophole. Isn't that fascinating? Well, yeah, and now we can get back to the long standing tradition of leaving a lit candle in your baby's for the first month. Well, there was one other thing I saw, chuck too. There is a long standing rumor that it was actually the tobacco industry that got the Flammable Fabrics Act pushed through because they were trying to deflect the blame for um death by fire accidental fire from cigarettes to the actual fabric manufacturers, even though a lot of people die in their beds from their mattress going up because they fell asleep with a cigarette in their mouth. Smoking in bed it seems like such a such a thing that nobody would do anymore. But I know people still do it, yes, but it's still shocking when you see it in a in a movie or TV show, which I used to us see that all the time in movies, But now when you see it, you think people really smoke in bed. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know either. I don't I don't smoke. All right, Well, let's take a break, um and we will come back and talk a little bit more about different kinds of toy testing right after this. Alright, so, um, there are mechanisms in place and regulatory bodies in place now that are in charge of making sure toys are safe, and these are constantly It's not like they wrote the book on it and said all right, we're good. Um, as toys expand and are developed, the safety standards need to be changing all the time, and they do, which is great. So um. One thing I saw, ironically enough, is that somebody actually did write the book on this. Well yeah, but it's not a finalized version, right Oh yeah. See do you mean like they updated as new science comes in? Yeah, yeah, agreed, agreed. Um. But even that, you know, just the idea of creating standards again is pretty new because I think until like the nineties, Um, they they didn't really update the toy safety requirements for a while. It started to finally pick up, I think in the nineties, and then in the two thousands there is a group, um, an organization called a st M. Could not for the life of me find what that stands for, but they created the Standard Consumer Safety Specification for Toy Safety, which apparently is the universal guidelines for toy safety, American standards for toy manufacturers. Maybe that's not bad, Chuck, all right, that was my first stab at it. That's pretty good. Uh. You also have companies like in our article here at how Stuff Works called Intertech, not in a tech? What's in a tech? I think that was office space, wasn't it? Oh? I think so um Interchech, which basically they they're professional toy testers. They have laboratories where they have technicians that say, here, let me um, let me see if I can bite the eyes off of this doll into my mouth, and let me see if it's so small that I can swallow that I let me rip it apart, let me light it on fire. Uh. In England they have I think actually not even just England and all of Britain. They they have a rule that a toy burn rate can be no more than one inch per second, with the idea that if a toy does catch on fire, at least your kid has enough time to throw it away, throw it towards the gas can and run. And then the EU has their own set of standards too. So with that burn thing, I should say, at least if if a toy burns faster than thirty millimeters a second, which is a little over an inch, um, then it can't be sold in the EU. Right. And then if it burns between ten millimeters second in thirty millimeters a second, it still has to have a warning that says warning, keep away from fire, right right? Um? And yeah, the whole idea is like, if the kid sees the thing on fire, they're gonna throw it and run and the household kitch on fire. But the kid's not gonna burn up, right unless the kid goes and tells the grown up. I think that should be in the in the warning too, Throw doll, run, tell grown up, right, don't go make like a ham sandwich. I saw this really great video from inter Tech and uh, it's called Teddy Bear testing. Did you see it? It is great. It's that they clearly are aware of what that what they're doing is bizarre and morbid if you just start standing there watching it as an observer. But you know, the point to the whole thing is actually quite quite noble and heroic. But one of the things that they did was there's this like three pronged It was almost like you know those things that a jeweler uses to pick up diamonds with tweezers kind of. But they have one that's like a three pronged thing where you push down on the end and the prongs extend and open a little bit, and you pick something up and then release the end and it it draws it up and tightens it and holds it. Snuck's that's gonna be in the O E. D one day, I think. But with this that was a little bigger and much sturdier. And they hooked the dolls, the teddy bears I to this thing and then pull the teddy bear back to see how many pounds of pressure it could be saying before it came off. And that's the other thing too. They're not just like pulling this and like having fun like they're they're making measurements and they're using like standardized um like force that they're applying to this, right, Like the the seems the sewing has to um be able to withstand like one kilogram of wait for ten seconds without opening up. Just things like that, right, And it's thanks to these groups like the EU or the A S. T. M and who who have gone through and said this is like if your toy makes a sound, it should be no louder than this. Or if you are manufacturing a toy gun, it should be marked like this, so it's obviously a toy and not a real gun. Like, just comprehensive standards that everyone could adhere to to keep little kiddies two d's safe. I just think it's great that there's people out there doing that because it's a kind of a new thing. Well sure, and they ostensibly have done the research on, like they really cover all their bases, like what what could we imagine a child doing with this thing? You know, I suspect that even as much time as they spend doing that, kids still come up with some black stuff to do with toys. Yeah, I mean, I told the story during the Evil Kneedl thing, we used to make uh coat hanger hoops and dip them in gasoline to jump. I wish I would have known you back then so I could stand there and watch that. Man. Well you would have been putting on your we would have been running the pyrotechnic for your bon Jovi concert. Oh wow, good thinking, Gott and I would have been all over that. You know, it's not too late, that's true. Um, all right, so that's toy making sure toys are safe. Um. Once the toy is safe, then there's this whole second thing that we were kind of talking about from the movie Big. Um, like the great scene when Tom Hanks is first and uh, growing up Josh Baskin is in the office. What did you look up his name? Or do you just walk around knowing it? No? No, I know the movie Big Inside. Now, Wow, is that one of your favorites? I you you've been running around asking people on movie Crush with their favorite movie? Is what's yours? It's Big It No, no, no, but it's up there. I love the movie Big I've seen it a dozen times or more easily. Josh bat Yes, a little Josh Baskins all grown up in the office, and um, what's his name? Was it? John? Heard that he recently passed away. He's the the evil corporate executive that has his idea and remember his famous line stop having fun? Yeah? And he he makes his big presentation. I think it was like a building that turns into a robot. And Tom Hanks very sweetly just raised his handset. I don't get it. He's like, what do you mean? I don't get it. Uh, And that's basically what they want to ask kids, like, do you want to play with this? Is it fun? Like? Adults design these things, and they might. I would assume that if you're a toy designer, you have a mind of a child to a certain degree, but you're still not a kid. Yeah, it's got to pass that test, right exactly. That's the whole point of having toy testers. It's it's kids like that's they're not adult toy testers. Maybe their parents are there or something like that. But the whole point of actual market development toy testing is by just giving did some toys and seeing what they do with it. That's right. And there's a lot of a lot of places that do this right, Like um, apparently Mattel has something called the Mattel Imagination Center in El Segundo. And if you live around Al Sagundo or willing to travel to Al Sagundo, and you have a child at zero to thirteen, there's a pretty high likelihood that you will be able to get into the door and your kid will be able to play with some toys and and be watched by scientists behind two way mirrors. But that's pretty I mean that's a little I think that's pretty close to reality. I think that the places where you go to actually test on site with toys are a little more fun than like a like a room with a two way mirror, But it's still the same principle. Generally, you're being observed while you're playing with toys as a kid. Yeah, and there's um to get these gigs, the dream job for a kid or I guess you think the job from hell for a parent. Um attention, Like sometimes they might get in touch with you. Sometimes you might can follow the social media page of like the Mattel Imagination Imagination Center. Uh they I mean if you just google toy testing jobs, there are pages and pages on places where you can submit your name and uh it's you know, from there. It's probably a bit of a lottery like experience, depending on what exactly they're looking for. Like you might fit your kid might fit a demographic, but there's still a lot of kids in that demo that they have to sip through. So it's not like you can say, you know, don't promise your kid you can get them a job as a toy tester. Right, Well, yeah, you may want to. I don't even tell them that that's a job until you've secured it. Just don't even say the word toy around your kid. Yeah, that exactly. Um, So there's that's there's The old school way is like going directly to the company, like to go to Mattel or um Fisher Price maintains something called its play Lab, and you can email these companies directly and basically send your kids resume, maybe a video of your kid playing with a toy. Um. What they would be looking for, Like you said, they might be looking for a certain demographic um, but they more often than not if they're just looking for like a go to toy tester to where your kid actually has the job of being a toy tester, where somebody, some company or companies are mailing your kid toys to test you. You basically need to audition for that, and you would want to include a video and that your kid in the video would want to be using like coherent words that express how he or she's feeling about that toy at that moment um, and you may get picked up. That's the old school way of doing it, although if you want to do super old school, like use a video camera and sending like a VHS tape of your kid playing with the toy. That's the old school way to do it. Now you can go onto onto social media, like you were saying, Chuck, and um, they there's a lot it's a lot easier for companies to reach out in a targeted way, um to to basically tap kids to become toy testers. Yeah, if you are a mom, mommy blogs are huge. They are huge on the Internet and they get sent everything from you know, um baby products that they can use to mommy products to toys. So tell your mom start a blog, become a top blogger, and she'll thank you because then she'll be rich. Yeah, say, mom, start a viral blog today? Who is it? Ellen degenerous as a as a show feature where she has these kids that come out and test toys on TV. Um, you're not gonna get that job because these two kids already have it. Well that one of the kids. I'm not sure what trade Hearts background was, but Noah Ritter, he was the apparently kid on Allen Remember him, m No. He he came off ride and was asked by a local newsperson like what he thought of the ride? He's like, well, apparently Um, I thought it was great. Had me scared half to death. You've never seen the video of that kid. It's beyond adorable. He's one of the two toy testers now, so that's how I got that gig. Yes, good for him. What else? You can start a YouTube channel? There are actual kids out there with their own YouTube channels where they test toys. Uh. And beyond that, I want to recommend have you ever seen our buddy Joe Randazzo's Lego Dude reviews? Yeah? I have. I don't know if you have to be a friend of Joie or not, but go out there and look at Lego Dude reviews, Lego City Logging Truck and our friend Joe formally of Onion, informally of at Midnight Fame, our comedian writer friend. It's just the funniest thing I've ever seen. And it doesn't translate everyone because there are comments like is this guy for real? Right? Yeah? Because it straight But it's like all those reviews like they start off with the box that it comes in and said Joe starts off of the box and how well taped up it is. It's just it's just really funny. He's a nice, nice spoof leg reviews, Lego Dude reviews, and there are all kinds of those, but specifically Lego City Logging Truck. Uh. And you'll you'll just see that sweet face of Joe's and you'll know it's him. But there's a boy called well, I don't know what his full name in was. Evan tube HD is a YouTube channel. Yeah he didn't his sister do reviews. Yeah, and he is. He has four and a half a million subscribers. Is that as of today? Yeah, yeah, four point six. I noticed that they did like a pizza challenge where they just put weird stuff on pizza and it has like sixty five million views. Unbelievable. It is unbelievable. It's crazy, Chuck. If you if you ask somebody like back in to conceive of like what TVs like in the future, and they said, Um, it's people just opening up toys on on TV and that's it. And you'd be like, that's a pretty good, pretty good description. I would buy that. Well the futures. Now, well there's the other one, the um Disney Collector. Br Right, this is who I'm talking about. Nine and a half million subscribers, and like you said, there It is literally nothing but the hands of some woman, some anonymous uh robot ai creature. Right now, it's a real person's hands opening up toys and playing with them and talking a little bit in a very creepy voice. If you ask me, I think it's great. You think the voice is great? Dude? Yeah, Pepper Pig. It creeped me out. Oh I liked it. Her Okay, So her name probably is Vera crid didiou woman, vera money bags. Yeah, a woman. Yeah, get this, she's she's even more wealthy than you realize. She's a woman in winter Park, Florida. If her, then that's so. That's that's that's supposedly her and her husband, messiest critdio um. He has something called Blue Toys Club Surprise, which is the boys version basically of Disney Collector b R. And together they seriously are probably clearing twenty plus million dollars a year, making a video every day and uploading it. And she will say Peppa Pig or something like that and say what it is the product that she's holding or opening or playing with or whatever, and that like that's it. Man, It's like you were saying, like all you see her her hands. She's opening the packaging. She's actually really good at opening packaging. She never gets frustrated. I didn't see her like, um, I didn't see them have to cut and like there was no jump cut or anything like that. She's really good at opening packaging. Um. And then she kind of says what it is out loud and then just like sets it down to the side. And I was watching it like, this is ridiculous. This is the first ten seconds. This is ridiculous. People actually watch this. I can't believe this. And then the next thing I knew. The next four minutes were me sitting there with my mouth kind of open a little bit, just zoned out watching this. I think that's the whole point. It's um, kids love it. Toddler's love watching. I can see why her husband though, or I should say Blue Toys Club Surprise, he didn't talk at all. And then I find a little creepy. He he just like plays with them. He plays with them more than she does. She just opens them. He opens him and plays with them, but he doesn't talk. But again, you just see the hands. Twenty million dollars a year. What a world. It is quite a world. It's the future. All right, should we take another break? Yes, all right, let's do that, and we're gonna come back and finish up with a little fun with some of the most dangerous toys of all time right after this. Okay, we're back, man, Are you ready? I'm ready. So this, this list could go on for years. Yeah, there are lots of lists like this out there, so in this and it's not meant to be comprehensive. This is just a selection of some of our favorites. Huh so um. One that I saw was the snack Time Kid cabbage Patch doll, yes, which you could feed real stuff to her that in the ad they feed like the cabbage Patch kid a French fry or two or maybe I think it came with food, That's what it was. It came with food and you could feed it and it would just keep chewing and swallow and then bam, the plastic French fry was gone. Your cabbage Patch kids just ate a French fry, can you believe it? And that was the whole thing, right, But they they would chew no matter what was placed in their mouth, yeah, like fingers or hair, right, and they wouldn't stop either. Yeah. So you're a little kid could end up with like a crushed finger, lose a big tuft of hair, and the cabbage patch kid would just be all fists and elbow saying more and more and more, give me more. Yeah, that's a here's that's something for your nightmares. Is a cabbage patch kid just chewing their way towards your exactly connected by your hair to you. Uh so that was recalled by Mattel So they did the right thing there, Yeah, they did. Um. Probably the most famous one of all time is lawn darts. Yeah, lawn darts. Uh, I played it when I was a kid. If you haven't seen lawn darts, just you're of a newer generation, just google it. And they were you. You would have two big kind of hula hoop rings, uh, kind of like a horseshoe game, and you would launch these large plastic, sharpish darts plastic on one end. Yeah, the fins were plastic. Yeah, that the stick part or the what would you call that the dead end? The pizzer sure, yeah, was metal and it was sharpish. It wasn't like a you know, like a a razor or anything, but it was sharp enough to where if you launch this thing from across the yard and you look up and go, I can't see it. It's in the sun. All of a sudden, it's in your eyeball and you're blind. Yeah, that happened to some people. Like people were getting injured by these things. Apparently there were seven thousand reported injuries from lawn darts. Would you call them jarts? M M no, I never said that. I thought you'd call them charts earlier. Okay, Um, that is the thing, though, I've heard of yarts. What are they? I thought that was the same thing. So maybe that was the brand name. Maybe I'm not sure, but they they were banned. Actually, they didn't even have a chance to be recalled. They were banned in so it is illegal to manufacture, sell, possess, and certainly play with lawn darts in the US by punishment of death by lawn darts. Yes, I just looked it up quickly. By the way, darts was the brand name for at least one of them. I'm sure there was more than one kind. There definitely was, because the one I saw was Franklin yard Darts. Franklin. They made the shuttle cocks that my family used to play badminton with Did you know I was like a world class badminton player. I'm just learning so much today now that I think about it. World class is probably misleading. Neighborhood class. Neighborhood class for sure. Yet I could destroy the neighborhood at least. Yeah, I will still play a game of badminton. My brother set one up a couple of years ago. Of course, how did you do? It was okay? Good enough? Yeah? Have you ever watched like Olympic Babin. Oh, it's it's awesome. It's so it is amazing, But I can't even follow it. I'm just they might as they could be out there faking like there is no shovel cock and I would never know. Yeah. The only way it could get better is if Disney collector b R commented on it but didn't even talk about what was going on. She just said extra squeezy. Alright, So this next one is um Actually, these next two are legit scary. The atomic energy Laboratory in a. C. Gilbert invent of the Erector set, and he released this energy lab like a it's sort of like a little chemistry lab set thing, but it actually had uranium. It had real radioactive materials, so you could see, like you could create mistrails and things. Yeah, it was like a chemistry set for kids, but with radioactivity. That was the point of it. This is at a time when the government was like, no, no, it's all fun radio activities. Fine, it's good for you. It gives you a healthy glow. Yeah. And the next one the c s I Fingerprint Examination Kit. Uh, this was on I O nine's list, was the number two most dangerous toy of all time. Yes, I think also thanks for saying that. The last three were from the Band Toy Museum online. Yeah, And like we said, all these and I've looked at a bunch of these lists and it's mostly the same stuff, which is good to know that it's not you know, like, there's really a hundred things and we're just picking our favorite. Uh. So the c s I Fingerprint Examination Kit, you could play c s I get dust for fingerprints, uh with trim a light, which is one of the deadliest kinds of asbestos. The powder that you used to dust had about seven percent trim a light. And this was really scary and it's amazing that it got through because this was not the nineteen fifties. Yeah, No, it was just like the early two thousands, I believe because it was a C s I brand fingerprinting kit and I guess so I saw that that that, um what is it trema light? Yeah? Is it's an actual like I think they used actual fingerprint dust and that's like part of something that fingerprint technicians have to work with. Is this asbestos? Um? But they packaged it up and sold it for kids, and the company went bankrupt pretty quickly. Yeah, I would imagine. So what about Buckie Balls. It's kind of a legendary one. Do you remember those? Yeah. I didn't know that these had a had a a bad ending because I remember my nephew and niece got Bucky balls for Christmas, um whenever, I mean not too long ago, and they were awesome and cool and I played played with them like crazy at their house. Yeah, they're fun. There, There were great. They're like ball bearings that are super strong magnet. Right. Yeah, it's really neat, so far, so good. You can build stuff out of them, you can hold stuff to a refrigerator with him, whatever you want to do. It's just a great round magnet. But um, the problem is is that if you swallowed more than one, you could be in big trouble because these things were very strong magnets, and if you had one in your intestine and another one and a part of a different part of your intestine, they would come together and your intestine would be pinched off right there. Yeah, and this actually happened to the extent where um about a thousand or so kids required surgery to get these out. And they were a big hit. It was kind of one of those, uh, just one of those Christmas toys that really captured. Yeah, must have Christmas toy. And the I guess the inventor did not want to acknowledge this, so he basically said, I'm not recalling these. These are a hot item. The federal government sued him. He dissolved his company instead of funding a recall, and so they went after him personally to try and get fifty seven million bucks out of him. Yeah, supposedly settled for about one percent of that. I know, fifty seven million down to what Yeah, that's that was my calculation too, But I was like, that's so small. I'm not very confident about saying it out loud. Thank you for swooping in. Well, I think that's right, And I didn't calculate it, and I'm terrible at math. We'll find out I am too, buddy. Um, and look look how far we've gotten in life. Yeah, uh so, thank you for using the UM. And then lastly, Chuck, we've mentioned it before. We mentioned the prototype four that was banned, the Easy Bake Oven itself, the famous one that was in the National Hall Toy Hall of Fame in two thousand and six. Um, was itself banned? Yeah, this one did not. So was that to deal with the other one that was a prototype? No? No, I mean it was like a predecessor to is what I mean? Yeah, because Easy Bake Oven never got up to six hundred degrees No, but it got up to two hundred degrees celsius four hundred degrees fahrenheit. That's it's that's you don't bake anything that like that much like that hot? That is hot? Yeah, like you could go campizza in that thing. Yes, not well but you could, yes if you had time. Sure, But they had some problems with him over the years. I mean, this is a is a like you said, a Hall of Fame toy. It's been around forever and beloved by boys and girls for generations and two hundred and fifty incidents reported, uh, sixteen cases of second or third degree burns. Yeah, and it was specifically a design flaw that that got little kids fingers trapped in the oven when it was hot. Um, and one one little girl apparently had to undergo a partial finger amputation, says I. Oh nine, very sad. It is sad, But we know about this stuff if it weren't for consumer protection. And I guess that that's the moral of the story. That's becoming the moral of the story lately our Restaurant Inspector's episode. Now it's toy testing. Yeah, there you go. Good point. Uh. If you want to know more about toy testing, you can type those two words into the search bar houseolforks dot common and will bring up an article. And since I say that it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call this, uh something we missed in the FOIA episode. Hey guys, a long time listener, first time writer, just listen to the Freedom of Information Act episode acknowledges he's a little behind and I wanted to bring something to your attention. Many states have laws modeled after the FOIA and there's a disturbing trend the last few years. There are many special interest groups and activists out there that have begun using FOI request to stall legitimate research. This sounds familiar, Yeah, exactly. With facilities having hundreds of terabytes of data to potentially sift through complying with the request or say every interdepartmental email from two thousand to sev they can completely shut down an operation with only a handful of researchers. Another tactic is to cherry pick from tons upon tons of data to attempt to piece together an argument to discredit unfavorable study results. The group's making the request know this, so it's a win win for them. They get tons of private emails to look through to spend into something nefarious, and even if and when they find nothing, they still throw a wrench into legitimate research and endeavors. How about that man, He said he was a little disappointed we didn't mention it. But um, first of all, Brandon I didn't know about this sore, that's why. Uh. But he said, you guys, I realized you focus more on the federal version, so that's not much of an issue there. So yeah, he says, you guys are awesome. Keep up the great work. Uh, sincerely, Guy you should Know, Brandon ben Zack. Thanks a lot, Brandon, it was pretty smart. Um. Thanks for letting us know so we could, in turn let everybody else know terrible stuff. I gotta look into that now. UM. If you want to alert us to something that we walked right past, please do. We always want to know that kind of thing. You can tweet to us at s y ESK podcast or joshuam Clark. You can hang out on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant or Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email the Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, is that how stuff Works dot com