5 Dangerous Toys That Were Banned
Toys are usually made with safety in mind in order to ensure there are no injuries to the primary user, especially since the primary users tend to be children.
But sometimes companies make mistakes, manufacturers are negligent, or someone just wasn’t paying attention to what they were selling, leading to injuries and death.
Here are five toys that were banned for being too dangerous:
Aqua Dots / Bindeez
(Deez are Poison)
This picture feels like the early 2000’s
You know what’s really awkward? Calling a toy one of the best toys of 2007 and then having to recall it for being essentially poison.
You know what’s worse? Awarding a toy the “Toy of the Year” in 2007 and then having to lead an international recall of the same toy… looking at you Australia.
Manufactured in China, Aqua Dots, also called Bindeez depending on what country you were buying it in, were small plastic beads that could be adhered together using water to create a bunch of different things. Sort of like Lego, if Lego were small beads instead of bricks and if you had to use water to get the Lego to stick together.
The problem? Looking at the beads you might think, ‘oh it’s a choking hazard’ and you’re not wrong, but it gets worse.
Around the time Australia awarded it the ‘Toy of the Year’, reports were popping up that children swallowing the beads were falling into comas. That’s something that doesn’t usually happen when you swallow plastic.
“Toy? No we meant ‘Fuck Up of the Year’.”
It was then discovered one of the factories in China creating the toy was using a cheaper chemical to make the plastic beads. When the beads were swallowed they metabolized into the drug, GHB, commonly referred to as the ‘date rape drug’.
Australia quickly pulled the toy off the market followed by the United States, Canada, and Europe. By November of 2007, over 4 million units were recalled and made illegal to sell or resell.
Although several children became ill and fell into temporary comas, luckily none died. Aqua Dots eventually returned to the market under a different name, PixOs which probably translates to ‘Not Poison Anymore’.
2. Sky Dancers
(Shoot for the Skies, Hit an Eye)
Pictured Above: Barely safe throwing knives
In 1994 Galoob Toys Inc. released a new toy that became instantly popular, Sky Dancers. They were flying off the shelves and into the homes of plenty of kids. All they had to do was set up a little platform and pull a string to send their hard plastic toy flying into the air without any direction or control… you might have detected the problem here.
Without any control, the toys came down pretty fast and hard on anything and everyone. Over the course of six years the toys caused over 150 injuries to adults and children including eye injuries, scratched corneas, temporary blindness, broken teeth, a concussion, a broken rib, and facial lacerations requiring stitches.
In 2000 Galoob recalled 8.9 million Sky Dancers at the behest of the U.S Consumer Product and Safety Commission.
Read our full article on Sky Dancers, here.
Related Article: Cabbage Patch Snacktime Kids: The Doll That’ll Eat Your Hair
3. Lawn Darts
(Missed the Target)
“Okay now add the sharp spike at the end… hey guys, this is safe right?”
Around the mid-20th century, someone thought it would be a good idea to stick a 2-inch metal spike onto a foot of plastic and sell it as a toy. There are a bunch of variations on how to play with the lawn darts so we won’t get into the specifics but they all amount to throwing the dart and having it land on your lawn for points. Clearly naming them wasn’t too hard.
The problem with lawn darts is the whole ‘throwing a sharp metal object around areas where kids tend to hang out’ thing. After a few thousand injuries people caught on and the Food and Drug Administration classified them as a “hazard” in 1970.
This didn’t technically ban them, it simply meant they couldn’t be sold in toy stores or toy departments or without a warning label.
Warning signs are 100% Effective… when not ignored.
Tragically in 1987, 7-year-old Michelle Snow was killed when she was struck in the head with a lawn dart in California. Her father, David Snow, then led the charge to get them banned in the United States.
A year later on December, 19th, 1988 the U.S Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) issued a ban. Between 1980 and 1988 the CPSC estimated over 6 thousand people had visited the emergency room due to lawn dart accidents and 81% of them were under 15 years old.
In 1989 Canada also banned the sale of lawn darts following their own investigation into injuries.
4. CSI Fingerprint Examination Kit
(Case Closed)
“Wait, were WE the real crime scene all along?”
Well, this is embarrassing…
Who would have suspected the Crime Scene Investigation: Forensic Lab kit, based on CBS’s hit television show, to be its own crime scene? Definitely not the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization when in 2007 they tested 8 kits and found asbestos in 6 of them.
For those of you who don’t know, asbestos is a type of mineral that is resistant to heat, electricity, and corrosion. So it’s pretty useful… if you ignore the whole cancer thing.
“Maybe we shouldn’t ignore the cancer thing…”
See when asbestos dust gets inhaled, it stays with you forever, causing serious damage over time. Laryngeal, ovarian, and lung cancer are common for those who inhale or ingest asbestos with the most widely known being mesothelioma.
So it was pretty shocking finding it in a children’s toy, especially since the type found was one of the most dangerous, called tremolite. The sale of the CSI Kits was stopped and multiple states issued recalls. A class action lawsuit was brought against CBS while Planet Toys Inc, the makers of the kits, filed for bankruptcy.
Were the kits to blame for the bankruptcy? I don’t know, but it certainly didn’t help.
5. Kinder Surprise Eggs
(Surprise, Still Illegal)
“Surprise it’s a to- stop eating it!”
Okay technically these aren’t just toys, these are also chocolate but the reason they were banned is because of the toy, so it counts.
The interesting thing about Kinder Surprise Eggs is that they have always been illegal in the United States due to a 1938 law that prevents non-nutritive items in food. Since toys, I’m told, are ‘non-nutritive’ and are at the center of Kinder Surprise Eggs, they have never been sold in the United States… legally.
Over the years they have been ‘accidentally’ imported including in 1997 and according to U.S Customs, it happens a lot. Eventually, in 2017, the Ferrero company released a new version in the U.S. called Kinder Joy Eggs that separates the toy from the chocolate, allowing the chocolate to be sold.
Meanwhile, in Europe, chocolate has always been sold without restrictions, but that almost changed in 2000 when three families campaigned to ban the ‘Surprise’ eggs. Unfortunately, each family suffered a death of a child from choking on the toys in the chocolate.
Although considered by the House of Commons they, and the Department of Trade and Industry, decided against a ban.
Read our full article on Kinder Surprise Eggs, here.
Related Article: Thuggies: The Dolls with a Criminal Record
Quick Facts
Despite asbestos being found in one of the three different types of CSI kits sold by Planet Toys Inc. in 2007, they still refused to stop the sale of all three kits. Eventually, they had to… because of bankruptcy.
In 2020 Lawn Darts went back on the market in the United States using darts with blunt tips. Prior to this a fully plastic version called Jarts were, and still are, on sale.
The U.S Consumer Product Safety Commission originally believed lawn darts only accounted for 2 dozen injuries until they were asked to investigate further and realized lawn dart injuries weren’t being calculated correctly. They then found over 6 thousand incidents of injuries.
